how-to-pick-up-a-linguist
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is titled "How to Pick Up a Linguist at a Bar" and shows a man delivering a pickup line to a woman: "If I told you that you have a beautiful body, according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, it''s probable the structure of my language has affected the way I perceive aesthetic standards."
The standard pickup line "If I told you that you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" is a classic cheesy come-on. Here, instead of completing the joke, the speaker detours into linguistics, suggesting that his perception of beauty may be a byproduct of the language he speaks rather than an objective observation.
The Humor
The humor lies in the collision between the sleazy bar pickup line format and dense academic linguistics. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a real and somewhat controversial idea in linguistics, and invoking it mid-flirtation is spectacularly unsexy. The joke also works on a deeper level: by applying Sapir-Whorf, the speaker is essentially undermining his own compliment, suggesting he cannot even trust his own perception of beauty because it may just be a linguistic artifact. It is the opposite of smooth -- it is a pickup line that deconstructs itself.
References
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (also known as linguistic relativity) proposes that the structure of a language influences its speakers'' worldview and cognition. Named after linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, the hypothesis exists in strong and weak forms. The strong version (linguistic determinism) claims language determines thought, while the weak version claims language merely influences thought. The opening line parodies the classic pickup line often attributed to the Bellamy Brothers'' 1979 song "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me."