dude

[Beverly Flanigan]

I don't know about AAVE, but just today one of my (white, Ohioan,
Cleveland?) students said "My dude wouldn't let me tape record him" (in
reference to a NNS language analysis project).  I was surprised to hear it
in this collocation.

At 03:57 PM 3/11/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>I used the word 'dude' in an example sentence on an exam and was
>surprised to find that many of my students associated the word with
>California speech exclusively or at least in origin. Let me be clear: I
>wasn't surprised that they made this connection with California (home of
>surfer dudes) but that they didn't consider the word could represent a
>different variety. In fact, the example sentence also contained a use of
>'crib' as in "house" and I thought this would trigger an association
>with AAVE. They did label 'crib' as AAVE in origin but still saw 'dude'
>as Californian.
>
>Thus, my question: What is the status of 'dude' in African American
>speech today? Is it still used? Is it considered old-fashioned?