{"id":22341,"date":"2010-04-16T10:32:07","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T15:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=22341"},"modified":"2013-12-15T03:29:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T08:29:52","slug":"big-black-reward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/04\/16\/big-black-reward\/","title":{"rendered":"“Big Black Reward”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The photo below was submitted to Fail Blog as a failure of communication:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In English adjectives come after<\/span> before the noun that they modify such that, the way this is written, it reads as if there is a “big black reward” for the finder of the “lost dog” instead of a “reward” for the finder of the “big black dog.”<\/p>\n

So this is funny, right?<\/p>\n

It’s not simply funny because of the grammar mix up, it’s funny because “big” and “black,” when put together, have a particular connotation. We live in a society in which those words often go together because we stereotype black men as having large penises and being, generally, large.<\/p>\n

The fact that the grammar mistake is humorous, then, relies specifically on this stereotype… so it’s nice evidence that the stereotype is real<\/em>. The sign simply would not have the same impact if it read “Lost Dog Big White Reward” or “Lost Dog Big Yellow Reward.”<\/p>\n

Fail Blog<\/a>, via <\/span>Dr. Grumpy<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The photo below was submitted to Fail Blog as a failure of communication: In English adjectives come after before the noun that they modify such that, the way this is written, it reads as if there is a “big black reward” for the finder of the “lost dog” instead of a “reward” for the finder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,23384,256,285,1760,293],"class_list":["post-22341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-humor","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22341"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60300,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22341\/revisions\/60300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}