M&D: Smallest possible spoiler (chapter 3)

[Mathew Jacobson]

>Dan Schmidt wrote:
>> 
>> We had a conversation a while back on how to interpret a few speech
>> tics in Gravity's Rainbow, notably Tyrone's "a-and."
>> 
>> I'm having trouble deciding how to hear Dixon's tendency to end
>> sentences with an ellipsis and a question mark, like this...?  Any
>> suggestions?
>
>I'm hearing a drop in volume and a rise in pitch, a sort of trailing 
>off...?  (I also visualize the speaker failing to make eye contact with 
>the speakee -- textually justifiable? Ennh.)  Not unlike my own speech 
>pattern when I try to run an unusually dumb idea by my wife, "Honey, I 
>figured I'd save us some money and fix the alternator myself...?"
>

Interesting call ‹

this is a peculiarly modern - uh... postmodern speech pattern.  Tons of kids from the slacker/gen-x talk like this.

Seems things are so confused about what is real and what is a commercial, and foax are so afraid of making declarative statements because they¹re not pc, or don¹t seem to fit in to some cult of relative moralism, or because they¹re afraid of being countered, that no one seems to be able to state anything as fact, or opinion with conviction for that matter...?

But did foax speak like that way back when?


Mathew Jacobson 
Green Mountain Forest Watch
48 Elliot St. Brattleboro, VT  05301 
grnmt at sover.net 
http://www.sover.net/~grnmt/