"sort of" is elitist?

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 27, 2004, at 9:36 AM, sagehen wrote:

>  My impression is that adverbial "sort of" was a British usage before
> it
> became American.  That could account for this /elitist/ taint that some
> perceive.

strictly speaking, true.  but adverbial  "sort/kind of" have been all
over american english for 150 years (at least) -- to the extent that
british commentators sometimes take it to be an americanism!

in any case, modern speakers have no awareness of this history, nor
should they.

look, some people have started to look for "elitist" aspects of john
kerry's speech, and they'll fix on anything, no matter how absurd.
much as other people have searched for every possible "illiterate"
usage in george w. bush's speech.  i don't know how to stop this from
happening -- merely telling the truth seems to be of no avail at all --
but these discourses are just totally fucked up.

arnold