jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 I've read a little Gay. . . didn't float my boat too high. Oh well. I'll try another at some point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 On the whole, one of the things that most irked me about Clem was his style, which I thought was WAY too wink-nudge, way too cutsey, and, at the end of the day, demeaning to those folks who actually use some of the idioms he was casually trying to incorporate into his own image. Sometimes imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, sometimes it's nothing but a pose. We've all got our styles, of course, mine (i think) reflecting all the 18-century stuff I've read (bit of swift, bit of steele, bit of smollett . . .) I don't mind stream of consciousness or any "difficult" literary style when its the right tool for the job. I found, often as not, Clem's use of it was nothing but obscurantism and an attempt to give the wink to the wider audience that he didn't really take the person he was speaking to seriously. All that said, he's obviously far from illiterate. I'm sure he'd be ecstatic that someone would fall for his colloquialism act so far as to call him that. My read was that he was an upper-middle-class university-educated person wanting to be something much more earthy and "authentic" than that. I imagine that Clem to be pretty smart, pretty well-read, and . . . in need of some better models of organic intellectualism than he's got at the moment. (and no I'm not suggesting he look here!) Don't KNOW if this applies to Clem, but I see him as an example of what I used to see often amongst my students: sharp young people with rotten role models. The way the university tenuring system works now, most of the people with power and prestige are not the best intellectuals--they are the best higher-ed beaurocrats and politicians, who are often deeply intellectually dishonest and politically opportunist. (In saying this I should note that I'm ABD, so you can write me off as bitter if you like.) Lastly: it's interesting the Clem were building here in his absence! --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Alfredson Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 I just want to know if he's ok. I thought he added some much needed character to this board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Here's another similarity: Faulkner was a Southerner and Clem liked to type "Ya'll" ← That would be unfortunate, as the proper contraction is "y'all"... ← Actually it's "yawl", a distinct word, not a contraction. But render unto Caesar and all that. Gotta let massa think we's all happy and educated and shit. ← Is that a Texas thing or what? Everywhere I've been in the South, its "y'all" - a contraction of "you all". ← Well.....you know how those Texans are, Dan... ← "y'all" is an attempt to make a word look legit. "yawl" is the sound, the word, and the meaning all rolled up into one self-sufficient entity. It neeeds no legitimizing, because it serves its purpose as is. Nobody who's a lifelong Southerner is slurring the words "you" and "all" when they say "yall", nor are they consciously thing "you all", nore are they meaning "you all" - they're saying "yall", they're thinkng "yall", and they're meaning "yall". Simple as that. "Decorum", however, dictates that language must conform to certain "standards" that are sometimes ours and sometimes somebody else's. It's "safe" to be "regional", less so to be non-dependent on an "established order" for legitimacy. So we play along with the notion that our speech is "colorful", and that what we're saying needs translation and/or some other form of explanation/legitimizing. Some of us even play along to the point where we actually believe it. More's the pity. In language, as in music, what "outsiders" think they're hearing and what is really being said is often at best only tangetially related. A white blues guitarist hears T-Bone Walker as a series of cleanly articulated notes in metric time and any number of similar people can't hear the difference, or if they can, hear it as being "the same thing", more or less. Non-Southerners hear Southern speech as a series of contractions and slurs and think that they understand the nuances and the mindset, like when we say "yall" that we're really saying "you all" and we just got a funny/colorful/regional/whatever way of doin it. Wrong on both counts. Yall need the contraction. We dont. No hard feelings, though - that's just the way it bes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost of miles Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Speaking of Faulkner, he's being widely read this summer, owing to the Oprah book club. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Speaking of Faulkner, he's being widely read this summer, owing to the Oprah book club. ← What are they reading? --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 And to answer the post that wasn't, "yall" is a transitionalary form of "yawl", an attempt to communicate unconfrontationally, lacking as it does be in the more suddenary manner of hard shock value which would be found to be contained in the realitism of the vernacularial veracity. I'm not so militant that I can't compromise! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Appears to be three novels y'all: Light in August As I Lay Dying The Sound and the Fury Good stuff. . . . Source page: http://www2.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook...asof_main.jhtml Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 And to answer the post that wasn't, "yall" is a transitionalary form of "yawl", an attempt to communicate unconfrontationally, lacking as it does be in the more suddenary manner of hard shock value which would be found to be contained in the realitism of the vernacularial veracity. I'm not so militant that I can't compromise! ← I think you are observing something that is true of all contractions--they become so internalized that one doesn't think "will not" but "won't" and we only recognize that won't and will not are interchangable because they teach us that in school. Y'all or yall or yawl has grown away from where it came from, but the proposition isn't that people now think "you all" when saying yall, but that that is where the word came from. Y'all is kind of like ain't--the contaction is just a kind of recognition that this sound used to, in some past world, represent two words. So it's a matter of etymology rather than of current usuage. --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Appears to be three novels y'all: Light in August As I Lay Dying The Sound and the Fury Good stuff. . . . Source page: http://www2.oprah.com/obc_classic/featbook...asof_main.jhtml ← Sound and the Fury is some heavy going. That's a Faulkner they ought not assign to 19-year-olds. --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Hell, I read it at 17 and it didn't kill me. . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Hell, I read it at 17 and it didn't kill me. . . . ← Yeah, me too and I hardly remeber anything about it except that it was sloppily edited and patience trying. OTOH, the Faulkner I read at 20 (the other two books Oprah has assigned plus Go Down Moses) I remember vividly. But maybe that's just me. --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 I remember a lot about Sound and Fury from 17, it fascinated me. I got more out of it rereading it in the 1980s though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swinging Swede Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 My sister was an exchange student in the US (New Mexico), and the daughter in her family consistently said "y'all guys" as second person plural. Was that just an ideolectal peculiarity, or has anyone heard of this usage before? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randy Twizzle Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 All I know is that Clementine used "Ya'll" and that's good enough for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 All I know is that Clementine used "Ya'll" and that's good enough for me. ← Pronounced yah-ILL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenLowe Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Der. Rat nails it, as far as Clem's style, IMHO - but I do disagree about finding Faulkner sloppy and unedited - Sound and Fury is it's own universe - Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 (edited) "y'all guys"? Never heard that. Hear lots of "northerners" saying "yous guys". . . . So glad you folk are "nailed" regarding Clem! Personally, I think it's a little more complicated than that. Edited August 3, 2005 by jazzbo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 "y'all guys"? Never heard that. Hear lots of "northerners" saying "yous guys". . . . So glad you folk are "nailed" regarding Clem! Personally, I think it's a little more complicated than that. ← I'm certain reality fairly well exceeds what I can imagine from the available evidence. --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swinging Swede Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Thanks, jazzbo. After posting I did a Google search and it appears that, although some use "y'all guys" jokingly, there are those that really have it in their ideolect or even dialect. One common case seems to be when people from a "you guys" area move to a "y'all" area. They are influenced by the speech of the new area they live in, but the transition is incomplete and they end up saying "y'all guys". There are several references to this phenomenon. But there are also areas where the locals genuinely say "y'all guys". I found it very interesting to read that in parts of North and South Carolina "y'all" is singular(!), and to indicate plural they have come up with forms like "all y'all", "y'all two" and indeed "y'all guys"! So in those parts "y'all" has moved from purely plural to purely singular just as "you" did earlier. Fascinating, isn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 (edited) Hmmmm. . . I can see where it would be fascinating, though my own bent is towards other fascinations! I haven't noticed (or "registered") "y'all guys," but I bet I do now that you've called it to my attention. "Yous guys" does stick out. . . . I never really noticed it in use "back east" when I lived in Ohio. . . but it does appear here and really stick out to my now Texan ears. And I have heard "all y'all" though mostly I've heard it as "all of y'all" which is even wilder in its way. When I was in Philly I used to say "gots" as in "Gots to go now." I got razzed big time for that in Africa, especially in Swaziland in a "British" boarding school, and eradicated it ! Edited August 3, 2005 by jazzbo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Rat Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Hmmmm. . . I can see where it would be fascinating, though my own bent is towards other fascinations! I haven't noticed (or "registered") "y'all guys," but I bet I do now that you've called it to my attention. "Yous guys" does stick out. . . . I never really noticed it in use "back east" when I lived in Ohio. . . but it does appear here and really stick out to my now Texan ears. And I have heard "all y'all" though mostly I've heard it as "all of y'all" which is even wilder in its way. When I was in Philly I used to say "gots" as in "Gots to go now." I got razzed big time for that in Africa, especially in Swaziland in a "British" boarding school, and eradicated it ! ← Somebody gots a problem with gots? Youse guys better watch it! --eric Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jazzbo Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Hey, it's not proper English. . . as far as English are concerned. I lost all kinds of points for spelling. . . aeroplane. . . aluminium. . . honour. . . centre. . . . I learned to adapt, and then learned to adapt back three years later when I returned to the USA! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost of miles Posted August 3, 2005 Report Share Posted August 3, 2005 Clem actually has southern roots, I believe--and is about 50, though his vigor & attitude often suggested someone younger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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