COKE in the South

[Rachel Shuttlesworth]

Non-US generic use: When I lived in Guadalajara, Mexico for a summer
(1997, I think), my se~nora referred to any soft drink as "una coca."
Sra. Alvarez would ask, "?Quieres una coca?" and then give me the
equivalent of Sprite. At the time, it made me homesick for Alabama. When
I worked as a hostess in a restaurant during high school, I would take
drink orders from customers. When people said they wanted a coke, I
learned I should ask what kind.
Rachel

Dennis R. Preston wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: COKE in the South
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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

--
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Dr. Rachel E. Shuttlesworth
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow
University of Alabama Libraries
Box 870266, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0266
Office: 205.348.4655/ Fax:205.348.8833
rachel.e.shuttlesworth at ua.edu