Showing posts with label really really? really.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label really really? really.. Show all posts

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Really! Really? Really.

Dear Netflix, is The Importance Of Being Earnest really a "Cerebral Drama"? Really! Really? Really. I'm not sure your recommender system ever actually read Oscar Wilde.


Pssst, for context on The Three "reallys" Construction see my comment on LL and repeated below:

The Three "reallys" Construction is strictly a spoken construction, as far as I can tell, so I can't do much of a search, but it's common in sitcoms and very commonly used in casual setting amongst friends when a person is faced with a situation that is (1) surprising, (2) intractable. The three "reallys" provide a cascaded enunciation of the cline from genuine surprise to complete defeatism (i.e., the person realizes there's nothing they can do about the situation).

really 1 = interjection like wow expressing internal surprise.
really 2 = interrogative, actually questioning the other person wrt the situation.
really 3 = expression of defeat (i.e., I give up).

TV Linguistics - Pronouncify.com and the fictional Princeton Linguistics department

 [reposted from 11/20/10] I spent Thursday night on a plane so I missed 30 Rock and the most linguistics oriented sit-com episode since ...