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- Title
It's no problem to be polite: Apparent‐time change in responses to thanks.
- Authors
Dinkin, Aaron J.
- Abstract
This paper reports a rapid and anonymous study of apparent‐time change in Toronto among the use of expressions such as <italic>you're welcome</italic> and <italic>no problem</italic> as responses to <italic>thanks</italic>,<italic> thank you</italic>, and <italic>thank you very much</italic>. We observe change in progress toward <italic>no problem</italic> and <italic>no worries</italic> at the expense of <italic>you're welcome</italic>. Meanwhile, a change in stylistic stratification is also taking place: for older speakers, <italic>no problem</italic> is a less formal response, suitable principally for responding to more perfunctory <italic>thanks</italic>, rather than more formal <italic>thank you</italic>; among younger speakers, <italic>no problem</italic> appears at equal rates in response to all levels of thanking expressions. This combination of changes may explain the intensity of the negative attention <italic>no problem</italic> attracts from prescriptivists and in popular media, in that older people perceive younger speakers as using what to them is an informal variant disproportionately frequently when a formal variant is called for.
- Subjects
ENGLISH language terms &; phrases; GRATITUDE; LINGUISTIC politeness; SOCIOLINGUISTICS; CONVERSATION analysis
- Publication
Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2018, Vol 22, Issue 2, p190
- ISSN
1360-6441
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/josl.12278