The “burp-talking” in Rick and Morty isn’t as meaningless as you might think

Enlarge / Constant burping is one of the defining features of mad scientist Rick Sanchez on Rick and Morty. (credit: Adult Swim/Comedy Central)

Eccentric mad scientist Rick Sanchez, of Rick and Morty fame, is as notorious for his constant mid-speech belching as he is for his brilliantly eccentric inventions—and for routinely dragging grandson Morty into highly dangerous situations. Now, paralinguistic researcher Brooke Kidner of the University of Southern California has made the first acoustical analysis of Rick's unique speech patterns. She described her work at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America this week in San Diego.

“Paralinguistics have been shown to carry significant meaning when inserted into conversation, and being able to understand the meanings of these less common sounds can lead to a greater understanding of natural language processing," Kidner said at a press conference.

Kidner's unusual study began with a phonetics seminar course at USC, focusing on non-speech sounds that occur in human speech—groans, gasps, sighs, the infamous "Loser!" sneeze, and so forth—and how we attribute meaning to them (sarcasm, for instance). The instructor noted that burps were an example of non-speech sounds with no meaning. Kidner brought up Rick Sanchez's constant mid-sentence burps in Rick and Morty as a counter-argument, and the instructor encouraged her to investigate further.