autograph

[Bruce Dykes]

-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Pulliam <pulliam at IIT.EDU>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Monday, July 10, 2000 3:05 PM
Subject: autograph


>An African (not African-American) student in my American English
>Language class reports being asked at least twice in Florida and
>Tennessee for her "autograph" on a credit card receipt.  She wants to
>know if this is a regional usage.  I told her I didn't think so--that
>now and then clerks here in Chicago have said this to me, and that it
>was probably just coincidence that she heard it twice within a few
>days in the South.


Not common, but not unknown, up here in Northern NJ...

bkd