Date:    Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:10:33 EST
<br>From:    RonButters  RonButters[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]AOL.COM 
<br>Subject: THIS X SUCKS and the historical record
<br>
<br>In a message dated 3/26/98 10:36:59 AM, M. Mandel wrote:
<br>
<br>1.
<br>  And what IS "in the historical record"? . . . What got written and
<br>published. IMHO the "off-color object" was definitely in the minds of the
<br>beholder *and the user* at the time when the objectless verb became popular,
<br>which was probably part of its shock value. A generation has elapsed --
<br>several generations of teenagers -- and if the implied object and its
<br>connotations have faded in transition, we should neither be surprised nor
<br>conclude that they were never there.  
<br>
<br>Mandel raises a fundamental problem for lexicographers: should we draw our
<br>conclusions conservatively from "the historical record," or should we draw our
<br>conclusions from our own intuitions about what "must" have been the case
<br>("IMHO")? Intuition may often be a good starting place for a scientific
<br>hypothesis, but one usually does not stop there. (Of course, in the special
<br>case of word meanings, this raises a second sort of dilemma for the
<br>lexicographer: at what point does folk meaning become meaning?)
<br>
<br>The historical record is not so unreliable as Mandel implies: one needs to
<br>look beyond widely disseminated print sources--at coterie literature, student
<br>humor magazines, published letters, bad movies--any place that slang might be
<br>used with less censorship than in newspapers and magazines. One can also look
<br>(with caution) at contemporaneous commentary--the semiorthoepic commentaries
<br>of big-city newspaper columnists and campus humor magazines, for example.
<br>      Such a look at the "historical record" to date has shown me amazingly
<br>little in the way of concrete examples of an "off-color" object for SUCK at
<br>the time of the emergence of objectless SUCK in American slang--unless one
<br>hypothesizes that TIT or TEAT is "off-color" and that the phrase SUCK THE HIND
<br>TEAT is the "origin" of objectless SUCK.
<br>      It would be helpful if Mandel (and anyone else who would care to
<br>contribute) would make explicit just which potential off-color direct object
<br>they feel intuitively must (have) come after SUCK in the deep-
<br>structure/historical evolution of objectless SUCK. I would be delighted if
<br>Mandel and others would share with me any _data_ they may have about this.
<br>
<br>2.
<br>  . . . the expression "suck" without d.o. originated, or at least spread to
<br>cover the country, ex oribus teenagers, at a time when "suck" with d.o.s such
<br>as [eggs, rope, tit] was obsolete or obsolescent in colloquial speech with any
<br>meaning at all like the current one (which I would express as "be bad, be of
<br>poor quality, be undesirable, be despicable; [of an event or situation] be
<br>unfortunate").  
<br>
<br>This just ain't so. These expressions are alive today, though not popular in
<br>mainstream-culture adolescent speech. They were similarly alive and well
<br>thirty years ago. They also mean 'be bad, be of poor quality, be undesirable,
<br>be despicable; [of an event or situation] be unfortunate'.
<br>     I should perhaps make it clear that I am NOT arguing that objectless SUCK
<br>could have no other "source" or "meaning" than SUCK EGGS, SUCK ROPE, SUCK
<br>WIND, SUCK THE HIND TIT, etc. What I argue is rather that these are the
<br>linguistic models that were overt in the language at the time of the emergence
<br>of objectless SUCK; that they, too, were expressions of disapprobation and
<br>that SUCK has never been a very "nice" word; and that "SUCK + [any direct
<br>object that you might imagine]"--having no overt linguistic object to sustain
<br>it and no historical record --can only be a nonce creation (and reflection) of
<br>the mind of the imaginer. Indeed, many (most) speakers surely intend(ed) _no_
<br>explicit direct object _whatever_ (any more than THIS X STINKS implies--or
<br>originally implied--a particular source of the implied unpleasant aroma).
<br>Certainly, some native speakers of the language from time to time will imagine
<br>(did imagine) the same direct object that Mandel imagines (whatever that is).
<br>     IMHO the lexicographer needs to be cautious about sweeping assumptions
<br>that some intuitively clear single lexicosemantic source "must" have been in
<br>the minds of "the" American adolescents who (putatively) began to use SUCK
<br>without a direct object as a term of disapprobation at about the same time
<br>that SUCK with a frozen direct object was becoming less frequent. THIS X SUCKS
<br>(paralleling--and perhaps by parallelism even to  some extent deriving
<br>historically from--older THIS X STINKS) is--and was--a slang term of
<br>disapproval. Just what the speaker may be imagining as being sucked (or
<br>causing the stink)--if anything--varies (and varied) with context.
<br>