When did English-speaking people start saying “sort of”? The phrase can be found at least as far back as 1788 – as is explained in this paper ‘History of the sort of construction family’ (presented at ICCG2: Second International Conference on Construction Grammar, Helsinki.) by David Denison FBA, Professor Emeritus of English Linguistics at the University […]
Tag: words
Kinda Sorta Linguistic Research
If you ever say “kinda” or “sorta”, there’s a good chance you’ve been using ‘Pragmatic Halos’ without even knowing about it. Linguistically speaking, ‘Pragmatic Halos’ can include phrases that are not strictly true (but that are neither lies or mistakes) and which are a normal part of honest, error-free discourse. “It is a truism that […]
Professor D’Arcy on like a contemporary vernacular
“The selective attention paid to the language of adolescents has led to the enduring belief that young people are ruining the language and that, as a consequence, the language is degenerating. One feature of contemporary vernaculars that is often held up as exemplification of these ideological principles is like, the ‘much-deplored interjection… that peppers the […]
Plain-words challenge: Wedding Words
Today’s challenge is to translate a paragraph into clear language that anyone can understand. This paragraph appears in the study “Consumption as common sense: Heteronormative hegemony and white wedding desire,” by Patricia Arend [pictured here], published in the journal Journal of Consumer Culture [vol. 16, no. 1, 2016, pp. 144-163]: “[This] article examines the white wedding desires […]