terms for CA

[Arnold Zwicky]

elizabeth phillips:
  I'm also looking for way of referring to California (such as "La-la
  land" or "Tinseltown") and the origins of such names.

"Tinseltown" is, i believe, used for hollywood specifically - perhaps
by extension to los angeles in general (hollywood being, to the
outsider, the central element of l.a.), but certainly not for southern
california, or for california as a whole.  "La-la land" is, of course
a play on "l.a." and refers specifically to los angeles, though often
extended to some larger region - roughly the greater metropolitan los
angeles-land area - perhaps even to southern california as a whole
(though san diegans might not agree, and even santa barbarans might
demur), but not to the whole state.

"Tinseltown", with its reference to The Silver Screen and the glamor
surrounding it, is at least mildly positive.  "La-la land", with its
suggestion of kookiness, is (mildly, jokingly) deprecatory, and i
don't think i've heard angelenos use it except in explicit
self-mockery.

i don't think that northern californians would recognize either
expression as applying to the place where they/we live, and i
certainly have heard nocal folks use these expressions, as outsiders,
to refer to hollywood/l.a./socal.

(the line between socal and nocal is, of course, fuzzy.  my parents
and stepfamily, who have lived in various spots from santa barbara
north to san luis obispo and paso robles, reject both "southern
california" and "northern california" as names for the area where
they live.  they all live on "the central coast".  certainly not
in tinseltown or la-la land, even if their tv comes, by cable, from
there.)

"the west coast" (ditto "the left coast") refers to california
prototypically, though the expression takes in oregon and washington
as well.  "the west coast" also refers prototypically to the *coastal*
regions, where "coastal" takes in at least the first valley east of
the coast (the santa clara valley, for example, where i live, or the
santa ynez valley, where my parents lived for years).  the referential
center for "coast(al)" doesn't take in the central valleys, or the
even more eastern valleys of southern california - but "coast(al)" can
by extension take them in (even though residents of chico,
bakersfield, and needles find it odd to hear that they live on the
west coast, and i have no doubt this is true also for people who live
in spokane and walla walla).  by further extension, all of nevada is
on the west coast - this makes some sense, both geographically and
culturally - and sometimes arizona is too (as in the region for the
West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)