Questions tagged [sociolinguistics]
Use this tag for questions about language in relation to social factors, including differences of regional, class, and occupational dialect, gender differences, and bilingualism.
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Do men use "Well" to start a sentence more often than women?
Do men use "Well" more than women to start a sentence? Is there research out there?
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Why did "pigeon" replace the native word "culver"?
Pigeon is a borrowing from Anglo-Norman where the etymons are French pigon, pigeon. The earliest citation is found in Middle English, from 1375 per OED:
1375
Thomas Blont..hath indowed Dame Isabell.....
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What are the characteristics of masculine and feminine speech in English? [closed]
I imagine that people will instinctively say, "There is no masculine or feminine speech in English," but I am not so sure.
For instance, the stereotype is that men speak roughly and women ...
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Are the words Bank (money) and Bank (river) related? [closed]
In one of our class discussions about the origins of the word Bank (Money), a guy guessed that maybe it comes from the Bank (the land alongside a river) since the sand gets deposited there, as an ...
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"Look, lady", "Listen, lady" – lady as a pejorative
This question is inspired by the wonderfully-named subreddit r/IDontWorkHereLady.
When a proficient English speaker addresses someone as "lady" (as opposed to "ma'am"), it seems to ...
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Is the expression "to hire help" a euphemism for "to employ servants"?
When reading about the differences in the language used by upper-class speakers and middle-class speakers in the 1940s in the US in Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class, I ...
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Why have some younger & (in particular) highly-educated Americans recently begun to pronounce -t- as -d- in words where glottal -t- is idiomatic?
I'm not talking about "bidder" for "bitter" or "sidding" for "sitting," or "ladder" for "latter," etc. I'm talking about "Manhaddan,&...
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Why is the intransitive form of "obtain" so common in academic writing and so uncommon elsewhere?
There's a low-frequency use of "obtain" that's intransitive, and means something like "occur" or "hold true."
Merriam Webster says:
intransitive verb
1: to be generally ...
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"Evil always wins because it stops at nothing": A phrase or expression to reflect that sentiment
This springs from the many comments which over the years I have heard from adolescent students that appear to reflect the views of their supposedly upright and moralist parents—people who in spite ...
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What do you call it when people say 'like' a lot? [duplicate]
So like, I like, have like, a like, question, like, you know!
Like, is there a, like, term, for, like, when someone, like, talks, like, like this, you know?
PS: I'm also curious to know what other ...
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Olden version of "psychopath"
Apparently, the term "psychopath" was coined in 1888, and at that point, it might not have even been used by the laypeople. So, I*m wondering about a word used for people that display ...
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Extremism: what’s the cultural history of this word?
“Extremism” sounds like an ideology, by analogy with Marxism for example. Or it could be akin to a behavioural state like mutism or autism. With respect to these different directions, I’m wondering ...
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Are YouTube creators using "enjoy" in a new intransitive sense?
Many YouTube creators end their videos with a statement similar to
If you enjoyed, please remember to click the thumbs-up button!
Invariably, there is no explicit direct object for the verb "...
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Why was the word "bull" taboo in some dialects of English? What did it mean?
According to the American Heritage Dictionary in the entry for "critter", the word "bull" was once highly taboo (mainly in Ozarks).
What did it mean?
Why was it taboo?
Does the word still hold the ...
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What does it mean by: This might take a while?
I googled that and I got to know its meaning as This task will take a long time.
Why is it so?
Cause while is used for short time period( what I know)...
Ex: let's sit here for a while.
So why is ...
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