unscripted speech

[Jonathan Lighter]

Beavis & Butthead types already recognized "lickety-split" as an "obscenity" back when I was in college. And you know when that was, you young whelps.

JL

"Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Subject: Re: unscripted speech
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>One minor point of interest... though Nagin was using surprisingly
>"unmonitored" speech (at least for a politician) and kept up moderate
>cursing throughout the interview, there were still some odd moments of
>self-repair. For instance, twice he said "lickety-s..." (as if beginning
>to say "lickety-split"), but then self-repaired and said "lickety-quick".

This was the most notable feature to me, word-wise.

Regardless of whether a better word might have been chosen in a prepared
speech, I wonder why "lickety-split" is being avoided, or why one would
consider avoiding it (given the very informal language otherwise).

Possibilities:

(1) the speaker thinks the expression might be an obscenity, or so viewed
by some of his audience;

(2) the speaker thinks the expression sounds unsophisticated or hickish;

(3) the speaker thinks the expression sounds overly light or humorous for
the context;

(4) the speaker thinks the expression may be a regionalism simply not
comprehensible to the broad audience.

(5) something else which I didn't think of.

-- Doug Wilson

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