"sort of" is elitist?

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 5, 2004, at 4:50 PM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "sort of" is elitist?
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> On Oct 5, 2004, at 11:21 AM, Douglas Bigham wrote:
>
>> Sorry for coming in late, but maybe we're missing the point.  Reading
>> the
>> original post, I thought "Yeah, *sort of* is more pretentious than
>> *kinda*, I
>> guess".  I didn't think it had anything to do with the Women's
>> Language stuff, or
>> bothersome adverbials.  Just that good ol' boys say "kinda" not "sort
>> of".
>> But that was just a gut-reaction.
>
> someone should check this out.  gut reactions like this are notoriously
> unreliable.  people's beliefs about who uses particular forms are often
> way off-base.

You ain't said shit! Which means, "I am in whole-hearted agreement with
you."

-Wilson

>   (that is, of course, an interesting topic of study in
> its own right.)
>
> arnold
>