www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/12/08/dude.study.ap/index.html
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Dude, you've got to read this. A linguist from the University of Pittsburgh has published a scholarly pa per deconstructing and deciphering the word "dude," contending it is muc h more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers. Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word derive s its power from something he calls cool solidarity -- an effortless kin ship that's not too intimate. Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspect ed as gay. "It's like man or buddy, there is often this male-male addressed term tha t says, 'I'm your friend but not much more than your friend,"' said Kies ling, whose research focuses on language and masculinity. To decode the word's meaning, Kiesling listened to conversations with fra ternity members he taped in 1993. He also had undergraduate students in sociolinguistics classes in 2001 and 2002 write down the first 20 times they heard "dude" and who said it during a three-day period. He found the word taps into nonconformity and a new American image of lei surely success. Anecdotally, men were the predominant users of the word, but women someti mes call each other dudes. Less frequently, men will call women dudes and vice versa. But that comes with some rules, according to self-reporting from students in a 2002 la nguage and gender class included in the paper. "Men report that they use dude with women with whom they are close friend s, but not with women with whom they are intimate," according to the stu dy. His students also reported that they were least likely to use the word wi th parents, bosses and professors. Historically, dude originally meant "old rags" -- a "dudesman" was a scar ecrow. In the late 1800s, a "dude" was akin to a "dandy," a meticulously dressed man, especially out West. It became "cool" in the 1930s and 194 0s, according to Kiesling. Dude began its rise in the teenage lexicon wi th the 1981 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." "Dude" also shows no signs of disappearing as more and more of our cultur e becomes youth-centered, said Mary Bucholtz, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "I have seen middle-aged men using 'dude' with each other," she said.
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