Re: Re: COKE in the South

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Of course, how one says 'soft drink' in Polish does not tell us a thing about 
the current state of the morpheme COKE in the English language in America 
(where it has a number of meanings, by the way, that are not associated with soft 
drinks).

In a message dated 3/4/05 10:05:17 AM, preston at MSU.EDU writes:


> In the early days of the introduction of tooth-destroying US
> sofdranks into then-Communist Eastern Europe, Coke carved out a place
> for itself in Warsaw, but Krakow went for Pepsi. (Poznan also had
> Coke, but I'm not sure of the rest of the national distribution;
> seems to me that Gdansk-Gdynia-Sopot was also Coke territory.)
> 
> Since they were "Western," these sofdranks had a much higher status
> than in the US. If you asked for one in even a pretty fancy place, it
> was not brought in a chilled glass (with throat-destroying ice,
> according to local belief), but the bottle itself was prominently
> displayed on the table, so that envious nearby diners could se what a
> high-roller you were. (Much more clout than a bottle of Russian
> champagne, delicious but cheap - and, of course, from the BAD PLACE!)
> 
> In those days in Krakow, however, where I had on occasion to order
> for others, I asked for a "Coke" (I actually said "Coca-Cola") and
> was served Pepsi without hesitation, often by a waiter in a tux, and
> once with the bottle lovingly wrapped in a white napkin. I shoulda
> asked what year it was.
> 
> What other evidence do we have of non-US use of Coke (or Coca-Cola)
> as a generic?
> 
> dInIs
> 
> 
> >From:    RonButters at AOL.COM
> >: In a message dated 3/2/05 9:46:09 PM, stalker at MSU.EDU writes:
> >
> >:: I like this. Southerners, who use Coke generically,(note those
> >:: non-restrictive clause commas) are aware of the legal sense of the
> >:: term and are rejecting it. Does this correlate with the "save your
> >:: Dixie cups; the South will rise again syndrome?
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >: JIm's nonrestrictive clause commas are wrong, but it would be
> >: difficult to maintain that the shorthand use of "cokes" by SOME
> >: Southerners sometimes borders on the generic. In my experience after
> >: living nearly 40 years in North Carolina (I haven't checked this
> >: against any empirical data), there are SOME people who use
> >: "cokes" (almost always in the plural) to refer to soft drinks
> >: in general, though they are fading out in areas where the large number
> >: of immigrants from the North are often confused by such utterances as,
> >: "What kind of cokes do y'all have?" Most frequently, it seems to me,
> >: there use is plural.
> >
> ><snip for bandwidth>
> >
> >: ...Sometimes words do indeed undergo what the
> >: lawyers call GENERICIDE, and maybe COKE has done this for some
> >: people: COKE(S) may have some kind of double-meaning for some people,
> >: i.e., a dictionary that properly describes COKE for some Southerners
> >: might should have entry #1 for the trademark status and #2 for the
> >: generic use. But such people are a decided minority in the US, and I
> >: suspect that they are dying out in the face of dialect mixture and,
> >: of course, modern advertising...
> >
> >Agreed that the nonrestrictive clause bit was wrong (very wrong, in fact,
> >IMObservation), but, that said...
> >
> >I'm not so sure that the use of COKE you discuss is dying out, since *i*'m
> >one of these people (with a meaning #1 for COKE [note the singular!] of
> >'Coca-Cola' and a meaning #2 of 'sweetened carbonated beverage'), and i'm
> >only 34. I'm from Southern Maryland, pretty much as far north as you can 
> get
> >and still hear (semi-?)generic COKE (yes, that's COKE in the singular), and
> >in my fieldwork there, you get occasional COKE as a generic from 
> respondents
> >of all ages.
> >
> >It might be worthwhile looking at the possible parallel of PEPSI as,
> >perhaps, a generic for sweetened carbonated beverages in parts of Idaho and
> >(i think) Montana, and maybe elsewhere.
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
> >     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
> >     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
> >     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
> 
> 
> --
> Dennis R. Preston
> University Distinguished Professor
> Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
>         Asian and African Languages
> Wells Hall A-740
> Michigan State University
> East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
> Office: (517) 353-0740
> Fax: (517) 432-2736
> 
>