Sunday, March 2, 2008

THEEEEENKS


I've noticed a disturbingly frequent tendency
among young American women to
pronounce "thank you"
with an ear-piercing long "e" sound, as I have
dramatically
illustrated above. It seems especially prevalent in the
service
industry. This trend does not appear to be limited to a specific
geographical region; I hear it in the speech of women from Boston
to Orange
County. Rather, I think it is a kind of learned
behavior, psychologically
reinforced on young women by their
environment. It also seems to be
confined to "pretty" girls. Not
necessarily those that I would consider
pretty, mind, but the kind of girls who are told from a very early
age that
they are pretty, and are subsequently bred into size-0,
reed-thin, sorority
girls with bleached blond hair and acid-stained
teeth.

Anyone else witness this interesting psycholinguistic phenomenon?

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