prescriptivism, conventions, irony, and could(n't) care less

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:07 PM +0000 1/31/01, Lynne Murphy wrote:
[skipping over the "could(n't) care" stuff on which we've spoken our
respective pieces by now]

>Now, on a tangentially related topic, I've come to realize that Englishfolk
>frequently don't 'get' US ironic or self-deprecatory use of non-standard
>forms and ascribe all instances to the lack of a standard (or the
>'degradation' of the standard in the US).  A couple of Englishpeople have
>complained to me that, while assuring me they like US English, they can't
>take it that (not 'when' but 'that') Americans use adjectives where they
>should use adverbs (and at least one of them expressed fear that this is
>coming into US English).  The example they cite?  "You did/done good" (as
>heard on 'Friends' or 'Frasier' or whatever).  Now, when I say "you done
>good", there's a humor about it--it involves friendly encouragement as well
>as a bit of self-consciousness about making the compliment.  Now,this is
>not to say that all people use it this way, but I think there is a
>difference for a lot of people in the contexts and meaning involved when
>one says "you did/done good" and "you did well".  Or am I living in an
>idiolectal fantasyland?
>
While the adverbial use of "good" and other
adverbs-in-adjectival-clothing ("You played real good") relates to
the prescriptivism thread, I think there's something else going on in
the mainstreaming of "You done good", which is covert prestige
dialect borrowing, where a particular construction from what is
perceived as a lower-class dialect than the one the speaker normally
employs is imported wholesale for various sociolinguistic reasons.
So the importation of "You done good" into "middle-class" U.S. speech
is more like that of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" or "You ain't
seen nothin' yet"  or even "No problemo" or, once upon a time, "Long
time no see" than a simple matter of adverbializing an adjective.
I've heard "You done good, Sam" on a commercial for life insurance
(the voice-over is by Sam's widow, for whom Sam considerately took
out a generous policy before kicking the bucket), and I can imagine
borrowing e.g. "She done him wrong" or possibly "You done me proud"
but not, say, "You done the laundry without new Turbo-action
Stainsoff".

larry