Today I found this ASL Browser which shows you videos of American Sign Language signs. I like the sign for mosquito, myself.

Gina and I were discussing Meredith being excitée about going to Paris and it sparked another language mistake story:

Submarine says: So, one of the women in our group was messing up her spanish.
Submarine says: She was in front of a large room of people, speaking at the podium.
Submarine says: And she says "Soy embarrasada"... She meant I'm embarrassed... what she said was, "I'm pregnant"
Submarine says: WE were HOWLING!!!

Being the discourse analysis geek that I am, the first thing I thought was, "Wow, she's following the Labovian narrative structure perfectly!"

William Labov is a super-cool guy. He's done a lot of work in studying Ebonics and language change, and done a lot of work towards ensuring that black students who speak African American Vernacular English are taught in a way that does not discriminate against them based on language differences, but treats their language as worthy of respect, and ensures that they are taught basic skills (like how to read) in a way that takes their language differences into account. He speaks about this in his essay, How I Got Into Linguistics. He has also done work in discourse analysis with regards to narrative structure. He says that there are basically five parts of any narrative, where a narrative is defined as a story with at least two events that happen in a particular order. Here's his framework, as summarized by Deborah Cameron in Working With Spoken Discourse, p.153:

1. Abstract: a clause summarizing the point of the story/how it is supposed to be taken
2. Orientation: a series of clauses filling in background information, for instance the characters, location and time of the story. Often (though not always) these clauses have verbs which denote states rather than actions, like 'there's a woman lives up the road' or 'it was September 1976'
3. Complicating Action: a series of clauses each of which describes and event. The clause order is understood to represent the order of events in reality, so this section moves the story forward in time from the beginning to the end. Complicating action clauses have action verbs, typically in the past tense.
4. Coda: a section that shifts to present time-reference to restate the meaning or moral of the story. In addition, Labov and Waletzsky note the important point that throughout the narrative it is possible to find
5. Evaluation: talk in which the action has temporarily been suspended and the narrator comments on the action from outside the story world. This may be signalled by a shift of tense, away from the narrative time-frame.

Narratives don't need to include all of these aspects, really all that is needed is at least two pieces of complicating action.

In Gina's story, we find an abstract (So, one of the women in our group was messing up her spanish.) which tells the listener what the story is about and what kind of punchline to expect. We also find an orientation (She was in front of a large room of people, speaking at the podium.) so that we know what kind of situation the event happens in. We also find two pieces of complicating action (1. And she says "Soy embarrasada"... , 2. WE were HOWLING!!!), which happen in the order that they are told. Finally, we find some evaluation (She meant I'm embarrassed... what she said was, "I'm pregnant") which is addressed to the listener and is outside of the "story world" and serves as an explanation for those of us who don't speak Spanish. The emphasis on HOWLING!!! is also evaluative (though not in Cameron's rather strict definition of evaluation), because it puts the focus on the hilarity of the moment. Gina's story doesn't have a coda, but if it did it might be something like, "That's one of my funniest memories from that trip," which would serve to sum it up, restate that it's funny, and shift tense back to the present.

See, that's one of the crazy things about being in Linguistics. One of your friends tries to tell you a funny story and you get to analysing the structure of it before they're even done telling it. And that's on MSN. When it's in person, I'm noticing vowels and expressions and thinking about syntax. As Aaron has so kindly pointed out, NERD ALERT!