Relevance of a different kind
As I noted in
my
last posting, sometimes including information leads people to
search for the relevance of this information, so that what you say will
implicate more that its face value. Other times, information that
in most contexts would not seem relevant is included as a bow to the
intended audience -- in what I think of (thanks to Monty Python) as the
"news for cats" presentation. Here, excerpted from a review of
films in a San Francisco film noir festival, are three descriptions
that might strike many readers as odd:
With John Ireland and gay actor Raymond
Burr...
With Burr and handsome, rugged Jeff Chandler, whom Esther Williams
revealed was a heterosexual cross-dresser with a fondness for polka-dot
blouses.
Handsome, reportedly bisexual Franchot Tone came from a wealthy
family...
Until, that is, you learn where this review appeared.
It's from the 1/25/07 issue (p. 3) of the
Bay Area Reporter, a weekly paper
for the local lgbt audience: Tavo Amador, "Return to Dark City: Annual
'Noir City' film fest comes back to the Castro". For the most
part, the review could have appeared anywhere, but in at least three
places Amador threw in details that have nothing to do with the movies
themselves but might be thought to be of special interest to the
readers of
B.A.R. (I'm
inclined to be annoyed by this sort of thing, but I do enjoy occasional
dish, and I'm delighted by Jeff Chandler's reported "fondness for
polka-dot blouses", even though it's entirely off the point and
absurdly specific.)
The Chandler sentence also provides another example of
whom in a nominative context
(serving as an extracted subject of an object clause -- ESOC, as I put
in my extraordinarily
geeky
posting on
who and
whom):
... Jeff Chandler, [ whom Esther Williams revealed ___
was a heterosexual cross-dresser ...]
I didn't notice this until I typed the sentence in as an example of
"gay relevance". I'm beginning to think these things are fairly
common and I miss a lot of them. It might be worth searching
through some corpora -- ah, but which ones? -- for all occurrences of
whom, to see what the frequencies
of the various types are. Maybe -- I am ever hopeful -- someone's
already done this.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at January 28, 2007 01:03 PM