How cool is that? and crosstalk

[Gabriella Modan]

I would be very surprised if this was a Yiddish-influenced construction,
since my sense is that it did not originate in communities where Yiddish or
Yiddish-influenced English is common (i.e. Jewish communities or places
like New York where Yiddish English features are also found in the speech
of non-Jews.)

On another note, has anyone been successful in buying a copy of the 1979
version of Crosstalk recently, and does anyone know how different the 1991
version is?  From the descriptions I've read of it, it seems to have a
similar focus on the job interview, but it's not clear to me how tied it is
to Gumperz's work and how much it focuses on the concept of
conceptualization cues.

thanks for any info --

Galey

At 05:44 PM 10/10/2002 -0700, Greta Vollmer wrote:

>I'm wondering if anyone can offer some background on
>the increasingly popular "How xxxxxx is that?"
>We were musing about this in class and I want
>to say it's a Yiddish-influenced construction, but
>I don't really know.  Any ideas?
>
>Thanks,
>Greta
>--
>
>_______________________________________________________
>Greta Vollmer, Asst. Professor    Sonoma State University
>Dept. of English                  1801 E. Cotati Ave.
>Phone: (707) 664-2504             Rohnert Park, CA  94928-3609
>Fax:  (707) 664-4400
>greta.vollmer at sonoma.edu