Bush is, literally, an incredible speaker.

[conuly]

It is incredible how incredible he is!

*laughs at bad joke*

All joking aside, I have a question. Most people (and this includes me) dislike the more figurative use of the word "literal" as an intensifier. If you're standing here talking to me, you didn't literally die of shock.

And no, I don't especially care in an emotional way that it's been used that way for a few hundred years. I care in a less-deep-seated way - keeps me from complaining about it out loud - but really, it's one of those facts nobody really believes.

But nobody minds the use of incredible as a similar intensifier, or unbelievable. "That jump was unbelievable!" "That movie is just incredible!" Really? The movie is completely false but purporting to be true? You don't believe the jump was made?

Why is this?

(Incidentally, I read a comment lately complaining about how some people use y'all in the singular, and "all y'all" in the plural. "That's just not right!" While I agree it grates on my ears, it's no more "not right" than using you in the singular. And if y'all is acceptable, youse and you'uns and yinz ought to be as well. Less hypocrisy, more thought, mmmmkay?)

Comments

[conuly]

Um... I've never been very clear on where slang becomes dialect. I believe there *is* a distinction, but... it's a distinction that, if I understand it, I can't explain.

[opalcat.livejournal.com]

I have the same trouble with the distinction between "flat out wrong" and "dialect". Stuff like "Ebonics"... I know it's considered a dialect... but there is a line somewhere between here and there and I don't know where that line is.

[conuly]

*coughs slightly*

Can we not use the word Ebonics? It's all... well... I think it's a silly word, and it makes discussing the subject difficult. It was too clearly made up by an advertising staff with too much time on its hands, trying to combine for the pleasing connotations of phonics (and failing miserably, I might add...) AAVE. African American Vernacular English. It's a mouthful, but at least I don't feel like I'm talking babytalk when I say the phrase.

*checks watch*

Dang. It's not yet midnight. I can't count this onto my "rants for the week" for next week. This week was so stressful, I don't have a rantslist for it.

More seriously, I think there *isn't* a difference between "flat-out wrong" and "dialect". We've all heard that languages are dialects with armies and navies. Well, dialects are "flat-out wrong" ideas that have some minor political support. Or, conversely, things that are "flat-out wrong" are simply dialectical features that particular speakers dislike.

Consider "noo kyoo lar". This is a valid dialectical difference. Plenty of perfectly intelligent people use that pronunciation. However, certain parts of the public have glommed onto it as "just plain wrong" because Bush uses it. They use it to prove he's stupid. (Nevermind that every aspect of his speech has been carefully planned in order to gain him votes, and it's cursedly *worked*, it's all a sign he's stupid....)

And the reason people give for disliking the pronunciation? Well, it's not spelled that way. Nuclear. Except that again isn't considered "just wrong" when we say it "agin", and often *is* considered wrong when we pronounce it as it's spelled.

I can't predict what any individual person or group will consider "just plain wrong", but except for wildly ungrammatical (in the literal, not popular sense) sentences, they do seem to all fit into some dialect or another - even if the inner prescriptivist in us all (or not so inner) doesn't like it.

[opalcat.livejournal.com]

Can we not use the word Ebonics?
I dislike it, too, and consider its legitimacy/origins spurious, which is why I put it in quotation marks.

I think your "again" and "agin" (which DOES sound messed up to me) versus pronunciations of "nuclear" example is more a case of people finding it more acceptable to shorten or simplify words or drop sounds than to add them.

[conuly]

But it *is* simplifying a word - it's taking a word with a fairly uncommon set of sounds at the end (how many words do you know of that end cle-ur?) and substituting a much more common word-ending (especially for scientific words) - cyo-lar. A simple case of metathesis, like the one that turned acsian into ask.

[opalcat.livejournal.com]

My point is that I think people are more tolerant of changes that remove or blend sounds than changes that add sounds. In this case, you're adding a "yoo" that just isn't there.

[conuly]

Well, only kinda.... I could blather on about it, but I'd rapidly reach the end of my knowledge and have to work on supposition and making-stuff-up.

[conuly]

And I do get the point, but I'm busy in talking mode right now - point recognizing isn't the... um... objective!

[conuly]

Sorry. I Have Views on the subject.

[conuly]

This rant is entirely amateur, by the way. Nobody better say I'm misrepresenting myself.... *grumblemuttergrumble*