Debra Aarons
Biographic Data
| ID | 6501108 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Debra Aarons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Debra |
| FAMILY NAME | Aarons |
| SIGNATURE | AARONS D |
| AFFILIATIONS | UNSW Sydney |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
Stand-up comedy is one of the simplest theatre forms in existence. The comedian stands on a (usually) bare stage, talking straight to the audience in the hope of getting laughs. Yet it has never been more popular, with national scenes developing across every continent except Antarctica. In this insightful and accessibly written volume, diverse chapters explore the subject from many angles, ranging from national scenes, live venues, and recordings…
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an alternative history of stand-up
In this article, we use a critical analysis of the first season of the Amazon 2017-9 series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as the starting point to examine its central proposition: that a female Lenny Bruce could have existed at that particular time and place in comedy history. We furnish contextual analysis, and survey some routines depicted in the show in terms of both form and content, examining the titular Mrs. Maisel against female comics of her …
Puns and Tacit Linguistic Knowledge
The mechanisms involved in the production and understanding of puns-the way the Logical Mechanism (LM) operates over the Script Overlap (SOv) and Script Oppositeness (SOp)-form part of the array of analytic tools that are used to investigate the processing of puns and indeed other forms of linguistic humor. This chapter presents evidence for the idea that tacit knowledge of language is recruited by puns. The crucial element in the processing of a…
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedy
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedyIn How to Do Things with Words (1962), the philosopher John Austin claimed that we use words to do things in the world, not merely to express a state of affairs. This proposal introduced speech acts, and essentially initiated the study of linguistic pragmatics. Speech acts in everyday communication include persuading, apologizing, criticizing, humiliating, complimenting and a host of other…
Public conscience of ‘the chosen people’: Sarah Silverman in the Wake of Lenny Bruce
We locate the comedian Sarah Silverman's career trajectory within the rich tradition of Jewish public intellectuals in America, particularly those who have used comedy as their vehicle. We show that Silverman is in many ways the most current inheritor of the mantle of Lenny Bruce, not only in the sharpness of her observations and the unerring pitch of her comedy but also because of her perfect timing in the political zeitgeist. We argue that Silv…
Following Orders: Playing Fast and Loose with Language and Letters
By examining the nature of English cryptic crossword puzzle clues and their solutions, this article considers a peculiar interaction between some linguistic phenomena occurring in oral language and some elements of written language not normally regarded as linguistic units. Cryptic clues are analysed in relation to the mechanisms used in linguistic jokes, and they are shown to resemble, extend and augment these, based on the different rules of co…
Obscenity, dirtiness and licence in Jewish comedy
We examine the notion of obscenity in relation to constructions of Jewish sexuality in stand-up. Since Lenny Bruce, stand-up has been defined by extreme licence. Acknowledging that stand-up is reliant on the construction of performer identity, we examine the routines of Belle Barth and Pearl Williams, female Jewish contemporaries of Bruce, in contrast to Bruce, and show that Bruce used his construction of Jewish identity as a scourge to beat a wi…
South African Sign Language - one language or many? A sociolinguistic question
In this article we discuss the signed language used by the Deaf community in South Africa, and examine the historical conditions for its emergence. We describe the legal and actual situation of South Afiican Sign Language in South Africa today, larly in relation to schooling. We investigate the different factors that underlie the claims that there is more than one sign language in South Africa, and we spell out the practical consequences of accep…
Topics and topica1ization in American Sign Language
This paper presents a syntactic analysis of Topics in American Sign Language (henceforward ASL), in the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1986 a,b, 1991,1992)1. Topics in American Sign Language occur in a structural position to the left of the Complementizer Phrase. Researchers have previougJy identified topics by a particularnon-manuaI marking, thought to accompany all topics.: In this paper, a distinction is drawn between base-genera…
The interaction of classifiers and syntax in South African sign language
In this paper 1 we examine two aspects of constructions involving classifier handshapes in interaction with the syntax of an utterance. 'The first aspect we examine is the requirement that in South Afiican Sign Language, classifier predicates2 are preceded by at least one element in the topic position3 of a sentence. Accordingly, we explore the syntactic constraints on sign order in the use of classifier predicates in South Afiican Sign Language …
A Deaf Adult Literacy Collective
In this paper, we present a description of an adult Deaf Literacy project in South Africa. The project is under the auspices of the Deaf Community of Cape Town, a grassroots organisation run by Deaf people to serve the needs of the historically disadvantaged Deaf. The literacy project is staffed by Deaf signers, paired with hearing support teachers. This pairing facilitates the use of a bilingual model of English literacy acquisition, in this cas…
Clausal Structure and a Tier for Grammatical Marking in American Sign Language
Grammatical information in ASL can systematically be marked on the face. Such nonmanual marking extends over the c-command domain of the trigger, and therefore provides information about the hierarchical organization of the language. Consistent with evidence available from the distribution of non-manual markings—as illustrated with respect to wh-marking and negation—a basic clausal structure for ASL is proposed. Furthermore, we suggest, contrary …
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedy
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedyIn How to Do Things with Words (1962), the philosopher John Austin claimed that we use words to do things in the world, not merely to express a state of affairs. This proposal introduced speech acts, and essentially initiated the study of linguistic pragmatics. Speech acts in everyday communication include persuading, apologizing, criticizing, humiliating, complimenting and a host of other…
Obscenity, dirtiness and licence in Jewish comedy
We examine the notion of obscenity in relation to constructions of Jewish sexuality in stand-up. Since Lenny Bruce, stand-up has been defined by extreme licence. Acknowledging that stand-up is reliant on the construction of performer identity, we examine the routines of Belle Barth and Pearl Williams, female Jewish contemporaries of Bruce, in contrast to Bruce, and show that Bruce used his construction of Jewish identity as a scourge to beat a wi…
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an alternative history of stand-up
In this article, we use a critical analysis of the first season of the Amazon 2017-9 series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as the starting point to examine its central proposition: that a female Lenny Bruce could have existed at that particular time and place in comedy history. We furnish contextual analysis, and survey some routines depicted in the show in terms of both form and content, examining the titular Mrs. Maisel against female comics of her …
Clausal Structure and a Tier for Grammatical Marking in American Sign Language
Grammatical information in ASL can systematically be marked on the face. Such nonmanual marking extends over the c-command domain of the trigger, and therefore provides information about the hierarchical organization of the language. Consistent with evidence available from the distribution of non-manual markings—as illustrated with respect to wh-marking and negation—a basic clausal structure for ASL is proposed. Furthermore, we suggest, contrary …
South African Sign Language - one language or many? A sociolinguistic question
In this article we discuss the signed language used by the Deaf community in South Africa, and examine the historical conditions for its emergence. We describe the legal and actual situation of South Afiican Sign Language in South Africa today, larly in relation to schooling. We investigate the different factors that underlie the claims that there is more than one sign language in South Africa, and we spell out the practical consequences of accep…
Topics and topica1ization in American Sign Language
This paper presents a syntactic analysis of Topics in American Sign Language (henceforward ASL), in the Principles and Parameters framework (Chomsky 1986 a,b, 1991,1992)1. Topics in American Sign Language occur in a structural position to the left of the Complementizer Phrase. Researchers have previougJy identified topics by a particularnon-manuaI marking, thought to accompany all topics.: In this paper, a distinction is drawn between base-genera…
The interaction of classifiers and syntax in South African sign language
In this paper 1 we examine two aspects of constructions involving classifier handshapes in interaction with the syntax of an utterance. 'The first aspect we examine is the requirement that in South Afiican Sign Language, classifier predicates2 are preceded by at least one element in the topic position3 of a sentence. Accordingly, we explore the syntactic constraints on sign order in the use of classifier predicates in South Afiican Sign Language …
A Deaf Adult Literacy Collective
In this paper, we present a description of an adult Deaf Literacy project in South Africa. The project is under the auspices of the Deaf Community of Cape Town, a grassroots organisation run by Deaf people to serve the needs of the historically disadvantaged Deaf. The literacy project is staffed by Deaf signers, paired with hearing support teachers. This pairing facilitates the use of a bilingual model of English literacy acquisition, in this cas…
Obscenity, dirtiness and licence in Jewish comedy
We examine the notion of obscenity in relation to constructions of Jewish sexuality in stand-up. Since Lenny Bruce, stand-up has been defined by extreme licence. Acknowledging that stand-up is reliant on the construction of performer identity, we examine the routines of Belle Barth and Pearl Williams, female Jewish contemporaries of Bruce, in contrast to Bruce, and show that Bruce used his construction of Jewish identity as a scourge to beat a wi…
Following Orders: Playing Fast and Loose with Language and Letters
By examining the nature of English cryptic crossword puzzle clues and their solutions, this article considers a peculiar interaction between some linguistic phenomena occurring in oral language and some elements of written language not normally regarded as linguistic units. Cryptic clues are analysed in relation to the mechanisms used in linguistic jokes, and they are shown to resemble, extend and augment these, based on the different rules of co…
Puns and Tacit Linguistic Knowledge
The mechanisms involved in the production and understanding of puns-the way the Logical Mechanism (LM) operates over the Script Overlap (SOv) and Script Oppositeness (SOp)-form part of the array of analytic tools that are used to investigate the processing of puns and indeed other forms of linguistic humor. This chapter presents evidence for the idea that tacit knowledge of language is recruited by puns. The crucial element in the processing of a…
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedy
How to do things with jokes: Speech acts in standup comedyIn How to Do Things with Words (1962), the philosopher John Austin claimed that we use words to do things in the world, not merely to express a state of affairs. This proposal introduced speech acts, and essentially initiated the study of linguistic pragmatics. Speech acts in everyday communication include persuading, apologizing, criticizing, humiliating, complimenting and a host of other…
Public conscience of ‘the chosen people’: Sarah Silverman in the Wake of Lenny Bruce
We locate the comedian Sarah Silverman's career trajectory within the rich tradition of Jewish public intellectuals in America, particularly those who have used comedy as their vehicle. We show that Silverman is in many ways the most current inheritor of the mantle of Lenny Bruce, not only in the sharpness of her observations and the unerring pitch of her comedy but also because of her perfect timing in the political zeitgeist. We argue that Silv…
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as an alternative history of stand-up
In this article, we use a critical analysis of the first season of the Amazon 2017-9 series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as the starting point to examine its central proposition: that a female Lenny Bruce could have existed at that particular time and place in comedy history. We furnish contextual analysis, and survey some routines depicted in the show in terms of both form and content, examining the titular Mrs. Maisel against female comics of her …
The Cambridge Companion to Stand-Up Comedy
Stand-up comedy is one of the simplest theatre forms in existence. The comedian stands on a (usually) bare stage, talking straight to the audience in the hope of getting laughs. Yet it has never been more popular, with national scenes developing across every continent except Antarctica. In this insightful and accessibly written volume, diverse chapters explore the subject from many angles, ranging from national scenes, live venues, and recordings…
Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Art (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (5 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (5 works) · Sign language (5 works) · Comedy (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works)