accusative cursing

[Dennis R. Preston]

If you all have a look at my 1985 article, The Li'l Abner syndrome.
American Speech 60,4:328-36, you will find an experimental study that
shows the influence of respellings ("eye-dialect") on social status
judgments.

dInIs

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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject:      Re: accusative cursing
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>
>Around here many folks say / waz /.  One of them must have
>introduced "wuz" to indicate phonetic deviance.
>
>   JL
>
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: Re: accusative cursing
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 12:34 AM -0400 4/14/07, James Harbeck wrote:
>>Funny thing how spelling can make so much difference in some of these
>>things. Pretty much everyone in Canada pronounces "stupid" as
>>['stupId] and not ['stjupId], but if you spell it "stoopid" that
>>indicates that the person is speaking in a low-grade, uneducated
>>manner. Likewise, many high-price Brits pronounce "ate" as [Et], but
>>if you spell it that way ("et"), it's emblematic of a country hick.
>>And so on. The implication being, evidently, that these people,
>>forced to exhaust themselves writing it down, would write it that
>>way... ditto with "nekkid," I suppose.
>
>Along the same lines, consider the spelling of _was_ as "wuz" (as in
>the fan's complaint about an umpire's decision, "We wuz robbed"!). I
>remember reading that explained as the way people who spoke that way
>would write it, even though everyone else pronounces it "wuz" too.
>"Luv" is analogous but a bit more complicated (when it's not being
>used to indicate a non-standard British pronunciation with a rounded
>vowel).
>
>LH
>
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