you all

[James C. Stalker]

My email system is failing, or bailing.  I did not get Matt's message, so I'm
glad Beverly included it.  The observation is interesting, but raises the
question of why it is his style.  Given that "you all" is plural, why does he
adopt the style of specifying the number of speakers? Is it also possible
that he is (hyper)correcting, knowing that "yall" is perceived as Southren
(not a typo), therefore he is hypercorrecting to "you all" from "yall"?

Jim Stalker

Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU> said:

> I heard Lehrer say this the other night too, and I took it pretty much as
> Matt said--a formulaic response with a self-repair added on since there
> were only two addressees.  And Lehrer is a Texan, not a Canadian!  Peter
> Jennings is the Canadian now American.
>
> At 08:58 PM 1/24/2004 -0600, you wrote:
> >I take it as a formulaic peculiarity of his on-air style. He usually ends
> >each segment by saying "thank you all X very much" where X is a number; So
> >if he's been talking with 4 people he says "thank you all 4 very much".
> >Also, he's pretty clear in making it "you all" and not  "yall" .
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: American Dialect Society on behalf of James C. Stalker
> >Sent: Sat 1/24/2004 8:30 PM
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >Subject:      you all
> >
> >Jim Leher (Newshhour, Jan 22) made the following statement at the end of a
> >discussion of political matter with Shields & Brooks.  "Thank you all,
both."
> >  Can we take this as a bit of evidence that the plurality of you all
> > (yall) is
> >weakening, or we just relegate it to politeness or a mistake?
> >
> >Jim Stalker
> >stalker at msu.edu
>