Heard on The Doctors: unexpected "positive anymore." Trivia

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

I wasn't annoyed in the least by your posting this, and I don't consider it a random triviality. I was genuinely interested in your St. Louisan perceptions. I'm sorry that I didn't convey that in my reply. I'm still interested in whether the unexpectedness was due to the fact that the speaker is from St. Louis or whether it was something more specific about her social profile. This is one of the features we've been investigating in perceptual dialect studies, where we refer to "ignorant presumptions and assertions" as "data."

-Matt Gordon

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 7:45 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Heard on The Doctors: unexpected "positive anymore." Trivia

On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 1:08 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
<GordonMJ at missouri.edu> wrote:
> Why would you label this "unexpected"? Positive anymore's not as common in St. Louis as in other parts of the Midlands, but it's not unheard of there (per T. Murray's studies). Or is it the fact that a doctor said it that's surprising? Since the feature bears little social awareness, I'm not surprised to hear it from all social ranks.

Are you saying that the fact that my perception of reality has no
one-to-one and onto mapping onto your perception of reality renders it
unworthy of consideration, even as a random triviality?

That is real white of you, Professor Gordon.

And there's no need to pretend that you have any interest in what
motivated me to annoy you.

I understand, my friend.

The ignorant presumptions and assertions of others annoy me, too.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org