Comments | anacrucis: it is probable that i'm just racist

anacrucis

it is probable that i'm just racist

Jun 20, 2006 11:30

Researching a case today, I called Philadelphia Gas Works on behalf of a customer. In a prerecorded message on the other end, I was greeted by a friendly and articulate woman who informed me with impeccable diction that my PGW representative was required to axe me a series of questions to verify my identity ( Read more... )

Comments 11

lietya June 20 2006, 16:24:46 UTC

Oh, dear.

I will say that the tendency of language is to evolve - put another way, when something like that is SO pervasive, it eventually tends to get adopted by "typical" speakers and loses the slang/dialectical/low-class stigma. (The "axe" pronunciation is in our dictionary already, labeled "dialect," so what we're seeing is step 2.... where it stops being solely dialect.)

personally speaking, though, this gives me the ickies. *sigh*

anacrucis June 20 2006, 16:52:25 UTC

IMO it's still not quite as bad as using apostrophe's to pluralize word's.

lietya June 20 2006, 17:09:28 UTC

no, not quite. up there, though. :)

anacrucis June 20 2006, 16:54:51 UTC

In all seriousness though, It was so clear and deliberate that it had to have been intentional and not just a dialectical bleed-through. Someone consciously decided that a certain percentage of customers would be more comfortable hearing the word "axe" than "ask" or something.

Thread 6

threnody June 20 2006, 17:56:46 UTC

My next call would have been to the department that handles complaints, but I don't care how many people use it to mean 'ask', that's not what it means. *is very stubborn*

aunticrist June 20 2006, 17:58:00 UTC

I fail to see how the post pertains to the subject line though.

anacrucis June 20 2006, 18:16:42 UTC

I guess because in my mind I primarily associate that prounounciation with BVE.

aunticrist June 20 2006, 18:45:17 UTC

Ahh.

fair enough.

taziarm June 21 2006, 02:52:38 UTC

Though "axe" seems odd to me, we live in weird times. By that, I mean the rigid establishment of rules of syntax, the notion of "proper" ways of speaking and writing that "aren't meant" to be changed is an outcrop of the spread of literacy and the printed word. Historically, language has been very fluid, changing so greatly that speakers of a single language often had problems understanding "their" language spoken by people living close by or from recent time-points in history. We see the same fluidity of language today which is wonderful... it leads to poetry, the flexibility for adopting new terms and sets of terms, new meanings for old terms, and finding new ways of describing an ever-changing world. It is entirely adaptive. This relatively recent notion of a standardized language is illusory. There are only temporary rules and meanings. A good example occurred recently when J's mom left our apartment saying, "I should go... I just shot my wad." We informed her that the expression meant something quite different to our generation ( ( ... )