Guys for Girls Redux

Mark A Mandel mam at THEWORLD.COM
Wed May 14 21:30:21 UTC 2003


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



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