unscripted speech

[Wilson Gray]

Ca.1973, I saw a young woman working behind the circ desk at Harvard's
Widener Library who was wearing a T-shirt with the Stones' tongue logo
over the slogan, "Lickety-Split! I LOVE it!"

That was for me a hapax. But I guess that I simply wasn't in the right
place at the right time, since seeing this T-shirt struck me as as
very funny and not as an obscenity. Indeed, it was pleasing to see a
young woman with her priorities in order.

FWIW, I asked my wife why it was that youg women these days are giving
more brain than they're getting. She opined that it was possibly a
problem of logistics. Girls can't whip out a twat the way boys can
whip out a dork.

-Wilson Gray

On 9/3/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: unscripted speech
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sat, 3 Sep 2005 07:21:30 +0200, Paul Frank wrote:
>
> >The power of an unscripted political speech:
> >(And an American English document)
> >
> >Mayor of New Orleans Audio
> >http://www.atypical.net/mm/nagin.mp3
>
> Also available from the NY Times:
> http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/national/NAGIN_AUDIO.mp3
>
> With a transcript:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/02/national/nationalspecial/02TEXT-NAGIN.html
>
> 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".
>
> Not sure if there's any significance to that-- probably just an indication
> that Nagin was dead tired at the time. By the end of the interview, you
> can hear he's completely drained and near tears. Very poignant.
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>


--
-Wilson Gray