Thanks

[Joel Shaver]

When speakers 'wish to thank,' it also fits the 'announcement' format
a lot better- you're not just addressing the thank-ee, but the whole
assemblage.

Joel Shaver
University of Glasgow


On May 19, 2007, at 4:47 AM, James Harbeck wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
> Subject:      Re: Thanks
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>
>> (I have data on this from a study I did
>> recently: two separate groups (n>100 each), rating either "We want to
>> aggressively pursue this opportunity" or "We wish to aggressively
>> purse this opportunity," rated the formality of the "want" verson as
>> a mean of 3.49 out of 5, and of the "wish" version as a mean of 3.92
>> out of 5. A Student's t-test gives significance at 0.001. These
>> sentences were actually part of the distractor set from the study,
>> but it's an interesting snippet)
>
> I almost forgot to mention: they also were more likely to rate the
> "wish" version as correct. Numbers for that rating: "want": incorrect
> 44, correct 54; "wish": incorrect 26, correct 81.
>
> One thing I got from that study was a demonstration that correctness
> judgement and formality rating usually _but not always_ go together
> to at least some degree. In some cases the correctness judgements
> vary while the formality ratings don't: in some cases, vice versa;
> and in some cases, the version with the greater incorrectness
> judgement actually gets a higher formality rating, at least slightly.
>
> James Harbeck
>
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