"sort of" is elitist?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 5, 2004, at 11:21 AM, Douglas Bigham wrote:

> Sorry for coming in late, but maybe we're missing the point.  Reading
> the
> original post, I thought "Yeah, *sort of* is more pretentious than
> *kinda*, I
> guess".  I didn't think it had anything to do with the Women's
> Language stuff, or
> bothersome adverbials.  Just that good ol' boys say "kinda" not "sort
> of".
> But that was just a gut-reaction.

someone should check this out.  gut reactions like this are notoriously
unreliable.  people's beliefs about who uses particular forms are often
way off-base.  (that is, of course, an interesting topic of study in
its own right.)

arnold