unscripted speech

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>One minor point of interest... though Nagin was using surprisingly
>"unmonitored" speech (at least for a politician) and kept up moderate
>cursing throughout the interview, there were still some odd moments of
>self-repair. For instance, twice he said "lickety-s..." (as if beginning
>to say "lickety-split"), but then self-repaired and said "lickety-quick".

This was the most notable feature to me, word-wise.

Regardless of whether a better word might have been chosen in a prepared
speech, I wonder why "lickety-split" is being avoided, or why one would
consider avoiding it (given the very informal language otherwise).

Possibilities:

(1) the speaker thinks the expression might be an obscenity, or so viewed
by some of his audience;

(2) the speaker thinks the expression sounds unsophisticated or hickish;

(3) the speaker thinks the expression sounds overly light or humorous for
the context;

(4) the speaker thinks the expression may be a regionalism simply not
comprehensible to the broad audience.

(5) something else which I didn't think of.

-- Doug Wilson