Guys for Girls Redux

[Mark A Mandel]

On Tue, 13 May 2003, Kathleen E. Miller wrote:

#My friend replied, "DUDE, you're pregnant!"

ISTM (It seems to me) that people who say "DUDE!" very often use it as a
non-vocative interjection, more like "Wow!" than like "Hey, guy!" My
main data points are from my own offspring, now 26 and 22. I recall
hearing especially from my daughter, the older one, "Dude!" as a
one-word utterance when she hears something surprising. I may be wrong
on the precise boundaries of the emotional/discursal content, but I'm
pretty certain it's not vocative or in any other way referring to an
individual.

-- Mark A. Mandel