15 years of "getting jiggy" (was Re: Is this a good sentence?)

[Ben Zimmer]

 On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 5:42 PM, Ben Zimmer wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 10:41 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >
> > On Jan 17, 2013, at 10:22 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >
> > > "This is dedicated to those who love _themselves_ some heavy metal."
> >
> > I'm not about "good" or "bad" when it's not my dialect, but my guess (in print a few years
> > back) is that people who want to try out the personal dative because it's trendy ("I love me
> > some him", "I love me some Wilson Gray", "He needs him a new pickup", etc.) but don't really
> > control the construction end up using the reflexive (because they're used to using the
> > reflexive in ordinary indirect object sentences ("He got himself a new pickup").  So the
> > "correct" dialectal ordinary pronoun in the above sentence ("..to those who love them some
> > heavy metal") is naturalized to the reflexive ("…to those who love themselves some heavy
> > metal").
>
> I just came across a reflexive example, from the Sunday Mirror (UK),
> Jan. 20, 2013:
>
> ---
> http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-315548308.html
> We do love ourselves a bit of Ruth Jones. As the awesome Nessa in
> Gavin & Stacey, her ample bits shoehorned in to all that pleather (and
> getting jiggy with everyone from John Prescott to 'all eight members
> of Goldie Looking Chain'), she created one of the finest comedy
> characters of all time. Thus when we go to find out what's occurring
> (sorry, had to be done) with her today, we are very happy bunnies.
> ---
>
> I spotted this looking for current examples of "getting jiggy,"
> responding to a media query about the 15th anniversary of the Will
> Smith song "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It." Though "(get) jiggy" was in the
> running for Least Likely to Succeed in the 1998 WOTY proceedings, it's
> hung around in the sexual sense -- at least among UK tabloid writers
> (of the type who would muck up a personal dative with a reflexive).

Here's the result of the media query on "getting jiggy":

http://popdust.com/2013/01/29/the-world-has-been-gettin-jiggy-wit-will-smith-for-15-years/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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