which we're going to get through this

[Jonathan Lighter]

Herb wrote, " I don't remember hearing it used much by college educated
speakers.  The social contexts have been working class."

"Working class" may be correct, but I can't count the times I've read this
construction on freshman themes since the '70s. And in speech, of course, it
remains common.

OTOH, conjunctive "which" in my experience means "and," though Herb's ex.
sounds more like "but."  That would be new to me.

Arnold undoubtedly knows of some analytical articles.

JL
.
On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      which we're going to get through this
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There are a couple of TV ads on currently featuring a working-class
> guy telling his family, in one, and his son in the other, that he may
> get laid off.  In the family ad he saiys something like "We may have
> to postpone some promises, which we're going to get through this."
> Those are not the exact words, but the use of "which" is as he uses it
> in the ad.  I suspect the usage may be employed by the writers as a
> marker of class, and I've heard it before in sentences like "We were
> going to go on a picnic Saturday, which it rained."  I don't remember
> hearing it used much by college educated speakers.  The social
> contexts have been working class.
>
> Wh-indefinite pronouns or question words started to show up as
> relative pronouns in the 10th c. under the influence of Latin, but
> with the demise of English as a written standard after the Norman
> Conquest, the shift disappeared until English once again became a more
> widely used written language in the late 13th c.  The wh-relatives
> came into literate, educated English between about 1300 and 1600, with
> a few changes in usage after that.  The King James Version (1611)
> translates the first phrase of the Lord's Prayer as "Our father which
> art in heaven," but since about the 18th c. "which" has not been used
> to refer to humans.
>
> The usage of wh-relatives does seem to be related to level of
> education, and I wonder if the use of "which" as a sort of
> coordinating conjunction, as above, might be a hypercorrection.
> Speakers who don't have the professional class rules governing "which"
> know that some people use "which" in ways in which they themselves
> don't.  The "which" plus coordinate clause construction arises as an
> unsuccessful attempt to emulate those rules.  Treating these sentences
> in this way is a WAG.  I've searched the ADS-L archives for postings
> dealing with "which," and I found the usual "that" vs. "which"
> discussions, quite a few of them in fact, but none dealing with the
> coordinating usage.  Does anyone know of scholarship that deals with
> this construction?
>
> Herb
>
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