"sort of" is elitist? (now with data)

[Clai Rice]

FWIW: I just happen to have some relevant data on hand, the first Bush-Kerry
debate transcript. It is highly normalized, so any "kinda"s would be
recorded as "kind of" (warning: fixed-width font needed for best display)

11.ucs.louisiana.edu% kwic.pl -it 'kind of' BUSH2
 wasn't going to work. That's kind of a pre-September tenth mentali
 help is on the way, but what kind of message does it say to our tr
t think trying to be popular, kind of, in the global sense, if it's
Total tokens = 3
d11.ucs.louisiana.edu% kwic.pl -it 'sort of' BUSH2
Total tokens = 0
d11.ucs.louisiana.edu% kwic.pl -it 'kind of' KERRY2
 of thing. First of all, what kind of mixed message does it send wh
                         What kind of message does it send to be se
resident hasn't even held the kind of statesman-like summits that p
as just sort of described one kind of mistake. But what he has said
 the coalition. It is not the kind of coalition we were described w
where else in the world, what kind of world they're going to grow u
Total tokens = 6
d11.ucs.louisiana.edu% kwic.pl -it 'sort of' KERRY2
s that the president has just sort of described one kind of mistake
ss. He didn't. He cut if off, sort of arbitrarily.
, is one of the most serious, sort of, reversals or mixed messages
         And there, again, he sort of slid by the question.
thing that the president just sort of finished up with. Maybe someo
                           It sort of brought home the transition t
Total tokens = 6

According to my reading that gives Bush 2 uses of "kinda" as a qualifier
(downtoner), and Kerry 0, while Bush has 0 uses of "sort of" as a qualifier
and Kerry has 6. If Kerry's speech is taken as typifying "more elitist" and
Bush as "good ol' boy" than this small sample would confirm the the gut
reaction (to use Larry's term). Unless the supposition included the generic
usage as well, in which case there is no clear difference.

--Clai Rice

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Bigham [mailto:TlhovwI at AOL.COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 1:22 PM
> Subject: Re: "sort of" is elitist?
>
>
> 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.
>
> -dsb
> Douglas S. Bigham
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Texas - Austin
> http://hometown.aol.com/capn002/myhomepage/index.html
>