Date:  Wed, 19 Nov 1997 11:18:40 -0500
From:  Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IS2.NYU.EDU>
Subject: Re: comedic

At 11:00 AM 11/19/97 +0000, you (bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]oak.cats.ohiou.edu) wrote:
>The term is now over for us and today I have a final in the sophomore
>drama class. Repeatedly the term <comedic> turned up in papers where
><comic> would have sufficed. Is this a new piece of jargon on the model
>of <societal> where <social> would do? There is a 1649 citation [I
>believe in a shorter version of the OED] 'pertaining to or relating to
>comedy' but in the the most recent MMLA a panel I was on was titled
>"D.H. Lawrence, Satirist: Revealing Eros Through Comedic Technique." So
>the term has some academic currency. I queried the coordinator of the
>panel, a retired colleague, used the word for the humor. I haven't
>searched for it on the net yet. Any intuitions? [distinterested parties
>only]
>

Fast guess, with no pretensions to being more than that -- When a word
starts to get used in everyday and popular senses, there's a tendency to
coin a more high-level way of expressing the putatively higher-level
sense(s) of that word, often through a related but morphologically more
complex word. Thus, "social" can mean having to do with courtesy or
friendliness (paying a social visit; someone is "a very social person"),
hence the emergence of "societal" for various kibnds of sociological (or
similar) uses. "Comic" is encountered in everyday and pop-cult usage in such
senses as a person who does stand-up (a "comic") or a kind of illustrated
story or joke in printed media ("comics"), or anything funny ("comic,"
adj.). Hence "comedic" as an alternative for would-be academic,
philosophical, etc. use... Not a sanctioning, just a stab at a possible
explanation....

Gregory {Greg} Downing, at greg.downing[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]nyu.edu or downingg[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]is2.nyu.edu