A ''switcheroo'' is a sudden unexpected variation or reversal, often for a humorous purpose. It is colloquially used in reference to an act of intentionally or unintentionally swapping two objects. As a

comedic device Comedic device refers to a kind of device used to make a statement more humorous. In layman's terms, it is what makes things funny. List of comedic devices Repetition Repetition is the essential comedic device and is often used in combination with ...

, this was a favorite of

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

; for a time, he used so many switcheroos that friends referred to him as "Allen Woody." Some of Allen's switcheroo gags include: *Carrying a sword on the street; in case of an attack it turned into a cane, so people would feel sorry for him. *Carrying a bullet in his breast pocket; he claimed someone once threw a Bible at him and the bullet saved his life. Another example comes from the film ''

The Aristocrats "The Aristocrats" is a taboo-defying off-color joke that has been told by numerous stand-up comedians since the vaudeville era . It relates the story of a family trying to get an agent to book their stage act, which is revealed to be remarkabl ...

'', wherein

Wendy Liebman Wendy Liebman (born February 27, 1961 in Manhasset, New York) is an American stand-up comedian. Her standup style involves the use of gently paced, subtle wordplay.Katz, Leslie (December 22, 2015)"Three-timer Wendy Liebman savors her S.F. kosher ...

pulls "the old switcheroo". Whereas the joke normally is narrated as a vulgar series of actions followed by the clean punch line, Liebman narrates a very aristocratic series of actions followed by a very vulgar punch line. In his book ''

Gödel, Escher, Bach ''Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid'', also known as ''GEB'', is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, th ...

'',

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...

names one of the rules in his version of

propositional calculus Propositional calculus is a branch of logic. It is also called propositional logic, statement logic, sentential calculus, sentential logic, or sometimes zeroth-order logic. It deals with propositions (which can be true or false) and relations ...

the Switcheroo Rule, apparently in honour of an Albanian railroad engineer, name Q. Q. Switcheroo, who "worked in logic on the siding". This is in reality the '' material implication''.

References

Narrative techniques Discourse analysis Sociolinguistics Jokes English words {{sociolinguistics-stub

See also

References