Underpants Gnomes

I’ve been working my way through a Cambridge textbook, Lexical Semantics by D.A. Cruse. It’s really difficult reading, because new terms are introduced at the rate of about three per page, and most of them are coinages suggested by the author rather than any agreed-upon linguistic standard—there is no dictionary available to help you the author isn’t clear. He keeps saying things like “these terms should be obvious” when they might be to a hardcore linguist, but for a rookie, well . . .

The modes of analysis suggested by the book seem quite useful, if I can just figure them out. I keep finding types of analysis that may be really helpful in certain parts of my research. But they’re kind of piling up to the point that I’m confusing myself. Watching an old South Park episode tonight, things became a lot clearer. My research plan has been the same as the business plan of the underpants gnomes:

1. Gather Underpants

2. ?

3. Make Profit

I’m oddly comforted by this.