For a paper I’m giving at the LUCL Colloquium on 2 November, I started to analyse the response I got to the Attitudes Survey I have been carrying out since early May this year. The response, btw, has been truly phenomenal: I have 642 comments on the three sentences I asked people to write their opinions on. Well over 30,000 words of text to analyse, fantastic! The comments are great to read (yes, I did read them all), and they contain lots of interesting stuff, such as the following joke, which I’d like to share with you:

At a party someone used the sentence, “I only read one chapter.” Someone asked “What did you do with the other chapters? Eat them?” The group laughed and I quietly explained the joke to the original speaker. He was not amused.

Does anyone know any other such jokes, on other usage items, in English or in other languages? And should you be around on 2 November, you will be very welcome at the Colloquium.