In an online poll, readers of the Telegraph recently voted the following Tim Vine joke as their favourite: "I had a car crash the other day.
A dwarf got out of the other car and said, 'I'm not happy'.
To which I replied, 'Which one are you then?" I have no doubt that Tim Vine's masterful delivery would have made this joke even funnier than the fairly amusing pun it already is.
Thankfully, I am not a comedian so I am free to safely deconstruct the joke a bit further without destroying my professional reputation.
You see, the joke depends on the person you're telling it to being familiar with the Disney film 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,' in which each of the seven dwarves are given names that reflect their primary personality attribute; "Grumpy", "Sleepy", "Sneezy" "Happy", "Bashful" "Dopey" and, er "Doc" (who, although not a practising physician or with a PhD, by virtue of his maturity and pince-nez, has a certain doctoral bearing).
Furthermore, the pun on the word "happy" only works because of the word "dwarf," which enables the listener to make a connection between what would have to be a real person in the modern world, able - for example - to drive a car, and the fantasy world of Walt Disney's animated classic.
Phew! Sorry, I realise that was painful but my point is that the reason why that joke is funny is because the word "dwarf" makes that connection so straightforward (unlike my analysis).
There are, of course, a whole plethora of dwarf gags that are a whole lot cruder.
For example: "What do you call a poor dwarf? Short changed.
" Now, substitute the word "dwarf" for "short person.
" Assuming you found the joke funny in the first place, is it as funny with the word change? Now follow the same process with this one; substituting the word "dwarf": "What is the definition of "p***** off"? A dwarf with a yo-yo.
" And finally, "A dwarf walks under a bar...
" As funny the second time around? So much of what we laugh at depends on stereotyping, objectifying the subject of the joke.
Using the word "dwarf" in these jokes isn't just about shortness, it's about the "dwarfness" of the target of the joke so that they can be safely distanced from the listener and the quotidian reality of the variation in heights between human beings.
The problem is that the same word gets used in the joke and in reality.
Here's another scenario: a dwarf walks into a bar and orders a drink.
While he is waiting, a drunk but friendly man sitting on a bar stool engages the dwarf in small talk.
(Get it? But that's not the end of the joke).
As the ice begins to melt between them, the drunken man suddenly asks, quite randomly: "What do you call it these days anyway?" The dwarf is at a loss; "sorry?" he says.
"You know," says the drunken man and he makes vague, increasingly uncomfortable, up and down hand gestures in the dwarf's direction.
"Sorry?" says the dwarf, still nonplussed.
"You know," repeats the drunken man, his up and down hand gestures getting wilder and more agitated as he strives to conquer his increasing unease and make himself understood.
"Oh," says the dwarf, pitying the drunken man for his lack of clarity, "it's an Elvis costume - I'm going to a Fancy Dress party.
OK, maybe it needs a bit of work but the question (What do you call it these days anyway?") does get asked.
I'm not suggesting that the drunken man ought to be viciously castigated.
After all, he is drunk.
He is also trying to do the "right thing" and is aware of the potential sensitivities around language.
However, to the drunken man's question the dwarf might have reasonably asked: "Why do you have to call it anything? If you are referring to the fact that I appear to have a medical condition that results in dwarfism, why is that important now? Here in this bar with me dressed as Elvis? We've only just met.
" It's also not the drunken man's fault because we have all been so bombarded (especially over the last 20 years or so) with a barrage of re-wordings that it's not surprising that it does leave people wondering "what you call it these days?" Referring to someone as having "restricted growth" or as "short-statured" have both been proffered but have not been easily taken up in the same way as we use terms like "wheelchair users," "a person with learning difficulties," or someone having "mental health problems.
" What is present in these terms, of course, is the person - the person with a difference.
Attempts to find an alternative for 'dwarf' or 'midget' have not been taken up seriously by the general population, any more than a ludicrous phrase like "vertically challenged" or "height compromised.
" So what is really wrong with the word 'dwarf?' Surely, at the end of the day, most people are able to discern between a real person and an animated Walt Disney character.
You would hope, and it's almost certainly true - at least on a conscious level.
However, 'dwarf' is a word so packed with connotations, defined by centuries of folklore and fairy tales, that it can't just be taken at face value.
Unless we were aiming to insult them, we wouldn't dream of referring to someone as a 'cripple' or a 'hunchback' these days.
Synonyms for 'dwarf' are: gnome, goblin, troll, elf, leprechaun - all belonging to fantasy and often comedy, and all words I have found that, at one time or another, have been used to refer to me.
And if the word 'dwarf' itself is so innocuous, why does it get hurled at me from time to time out of the windows of moving cars or muttered sometimes, amid giggles, when I enter a room? One day, in the Sixth Form College where I teach, I caught part of a conversation between two students, in which one of them (referring, I could only conclude, to me) said: "He's not a dwarf - he's just small.
" Technically, medically, I am a dwarf.
Standing at 4'6," I am unusually short and an inch below the upper parameter by which dwarfism is commonly defined.
But the student was quite avid in wanting to exempt me (or protect me?) from the category represented by that word.
Perhaps more offensive though than the word 'dwarf' is 'midget.
' In my experience of being labelled, I find that the two words are interchangeable.
On another occasion, behind me in the corridor just outside my classroom, I heard a loud voice seemingly greeting someone: "All right, Midge?" I didn't respond.
I was half-insulted and half-curious as to whether such an old-fashioned first name had been revived or it was, as I suspected, short for 'midget' but was aimed at a diminutive friend of the speaker.
However, I was swiftly enlightened when I turned to see them pass and saw the owner of the voice sniggering and heard her male friend tell her: "You should have said 'dwarf.
' So, what's the difference between a dwarf and a midget? Well, if we want to be all 'dictionary' about it, a dwarf is commonly defined as a person of abnormally small stature owing to a pathological condition that produces disproportion or deformation of features and limbs.
A 'midget,' on the other hand, is a dwarf whose skeleton and features are of normal proportions.
If it is, as some may claim, simply a case of calling a spade a spade, we should at least be accurate.
And then, even if accurate, why should dwarfs or midgets remain almost uniquely privileged in being labelled according to a genetic or pathological condition, regardless of where they are and what they're doing? Things have got better.
Like the drunken man, people are much more aware of the potential sensitivities of language and want to do what they can in order to avoid causing offence.
In the US, dwarves and midgets have been known for some time now as 'little people'.
It is impossible to say how much this has contributed to the palpably more positive attitudes towards dwarfism in the US.
I am, personally, wary of the word 'little.
' I went through most of my school years as 'little Alex'.
I think there may have been at least one other 'Alex' in my school at the time and so, perhaps, it was an automatic means by which to differentiate between us.
I have a strong feeling, however, that had I been, definitively, the only 'Alex' in the school, 'little' would still have been part of my name.
So why not simply the word "short"? For example, "Oh, look Mummy, there's a short person.
" That's no good, many will declaim! How on earth are we supposed to distinguish between the 'short' and the, you know...
dwarfs or midgets? This is just political correctness gone mad! Why not "very short?" Rather than a clunky and contrived compound of technical sounding words, why not use two very ordinary words that can easily be put together with the word 'person' to denote the fact that someone is very short? Perhaps there is a need in human nature to laugh at the extreme variations of our physical form.
Perhaps the appearance of people with dwarfism, in particular, presents such a provocative parody of it that we need appropriate words as an outlet for our shock or fear or relief that it is not us.
However, it seems very unfair that while so much effort has been made to take care with the language we use to refer to almost every other kind of physical and mental difference (except, of course, when we are aiming to be deliberately insulting or talking about them well away from earshot), the media and the general population are still often complacent when it comes to references to very short people.