you all

[Beverly Flanigan]

I heard Lehrer say this the other night too, and I took it pretty much as
Matt said--a formulaic response with a self-repair added on since there
were only two addressees.  And Lehrer is a Texan, not a Canadian!  Peter
Jennings is the Canadian now American.

At 08:58 PM 1/24/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>I take it as a formulaic peculiarity of his on-air style. He usually ends
>each segment by saying "thank you all X very much" where X is a number; So
>if he's been talking with 4 people he says "thank you all 4 very much".
>Also, he's pretty clear in making it "you all" and not  "yall" .
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Dialect Society on behalf of James C. Stalker
>Sent: Sat 1/24/2004 8:30 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject:      you all
>
>Jim Leher (Newshhour, Jan 22) made the following statement at the end of a
>discussion of political matter with Shields & Brooks.  "Thank you all, both."
>  Can we take this as a bit of evidence that the plurality of you all
> (yall) is
>weakening, or we just relegate it to politeness or a mistake?
>
>Jim Stalker
>stalker at msu.edu