Bad Girls speak

[Jonathan Lighter]

It's clearly a polarity "anyone."  Even though they're in L.A.

JL

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Bad Girls speak
>
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>
> At 11:00 AM -0500 1/25/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >Time for an update on sociolinguistic items exposed to the cable audience
> by
> >the young ladies of The Bad Girls Club.  Few are brand-new, but the
> >"reality" element of the show, at least insofar as the dialogue is
> >concerned, shows these and similar utterances are "out there."  All the
> >speakers are women.
> >
> >"Kendra sets her sights on a sexy new boy toy."  (Not a younger man
> >regularly "dated" by an older woman, just a casual boyfriend/ sex partner.
> >The narrator is the speaker.)
> >
> >"I wouldn't eat anyone's box!"
>
> I wonder if that's a polarity "anyone" (= 'There isn't anyone whose
> box I'd eat') or a free-choice "not (just) ANYone" as in Marta's
> remark from "Barcelona" (a somewhat tonier production, to be sure)
> when she says "I don't want to go to bed with just anyone anymore; I
> have to be attracted to them sexually."
>
> >Folklorists & Freudians: At Speed Dating, Natalie asks prospective
> >boyfriends, without introductory context, "Which do you think is more
> >important? The size of the boat, or the motion of the ocean?"  As she
> >explains to her mansionmates later, "If he says the size of the boat, it
> >means he has a tiny penis."
>
> And here I would have drawn the opposite conclusion, but what do I
> know.  And then there's also the female perspective, as in Maria
> Muldaur's 70's classic "It's Not the Meat, it's the Motion".
>
> LH
>
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