Bad Girls speak

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:00 AM -0500 1/25/10, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Time for an update on sociolinguistic items exposed to the cable audience by
>the young ladies of The Bad Girls Club.  Few are brand-new, but the
>"reality" element of the show, at least insofar as the dialogue is
>concerned, shows these and similar utterances are "out there."  All the
>speakers are women.
>
>"Kendra sets her sights on a sexy new boy toy."  (Not a younger man
>regularly "dated" by an older woman, just a casual boyfriend/ sex partner.
>The narrator is the speaker.)
>
>"I wouldn't eat anyone's box!"

I wonder if that's a polarity "anyone" (= 'There isn't anyone whose
box I'd eat') or a free-choice "not (just) ANYone" as in Marta's
remark from "Barcelona" (a somewhat tonier production, to be sure)
when she says "I don't want to go to bed with just anyone anymore; I
have to be attracted to them sexually."

>Folklorists & Freudians: At Speed Dating, Natalie asks prospective
>boyfriends, without introductory context, "Which do you think is more
>important? The size of the boat, or the motion of the ocean?"  As she
>explains to her mansionmates later, "If he says the size of the boat, it
>means he has a tiny penis."

And here I would have drawn the opposite conclusion, but what do I
know.  And then there's also the female perspective, as in Maria
Muldaur's 70's classic "It's Not the Meat, it's the Motion".

LH

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