talking head 復習
Hands off our Irn-Bru, Trump! Or feel the bite of Scotland’s four good teeth …
This week my country woke to the news that the US had attacked Irn-Bru. Since Scotland doesn’t yet have an air force, we did the next best thing and scrambled into readiness our elite republican guard of journalists and media fishwives. From Wick to Gretna the sound of jerking knees was deafening and the air thrummed with the prickly indignation of talking heads. We love the smell of hyperbole in the morning. We quickly concluded that since Irn-Bru had no military or strategic value, then the object of the attack must have been to weaken our national morale. It was a bloodbath, except in a can and with lots of sugar. (Skip the rest)
今回取り上げる表現は、talking head です。文脈から「(アナウンサーのような)話し手」だと推測しました。以下で意味等を確認していきます。
まず意味を Collins Dictionary でみると、“(on television) a person, such as a newscaster, who is shown only from the shoulders up, and speaks without the use of any illustrative material” とあり、Macmillan Dictionary には “an actor or presenter in a television programme who speaks directly to the audience and who is usually shown only from the shoulders up” と定義されていました。
次に語源を Wiktionary でみると、“Probably from the fact that when a pundit is speaking on television, the camera often zooms in on his or her head.” とありました。
以上のことから、talking head は「(テレビに出てくる)プレゼンター、語り手」という意味であることがわかりました。(OkaUchi)
