2013.11 杜德的简史

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美国
杜德的简史
你知道......如果你对整个简短的事情感兴趣的话

作者：J.J. Gould

2012年5月12日，Coco Ho在里约热内卢的Barra da Tijuca海滩。(Ricardo Moraes / Reuters)
2013年11月号
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思考一下，老兄：当我叫你老兄时，我可能有一系列的意思--你会从我的语气和整体环境中理解我，但每一次，我也在加强一种特定的社会关系。无论我如何使用这个词，它总是暗示着同一件事：团结而不亲密。它说的是接近，但老兄，不要太接近。

那是怎么回事？

老兄可能是美国英语中最普通的中文词。在普通话中，根据我对单音节ma的发音，我可以说 "母亲"（mā），也可以说像 "马"（mă）这样截然不同的东西。


老兄有一个类似的品质。想一想你上次在朋友面前做了什么了不起的事情，他用感叹词Duuude肯定了你的了不起！或者你上次说了什么反对的话。或者你最后一次对某人说了一些令人反感的话，他开始用坚定而清醒的Dude来纠正你。在这些情况下，指称上可能没有任何明显的区别，但从经验上看，内涵上的区别是相当大的。

那么这个词本身是什么意思？我可以告诉你母亲是什么，我也可以告诉你马是什么。但什么是男人？

字典在这个问题上很纠结。例如，这里是梅里亚姆-韦伯斯特。

1：一个在衣着和举止上极为讲究的人。DANDY
2：一个不熟悉牧场生活的城市居民；特别是：西部的一个东方人
3：FELLOW，GUY--有时非正式地作为一种称呼。老兄，怎么了。

认真地说，花花公子？

无论如何，前两个定义在历史上是准确的。(正如理查德-希尔在他的研究报告 "你走了很远的路，伙计 "中所证明的那样，到19世纪后半叶，这个词是 "花花公子的同义词，一个在[美国]西部地区用来指称衣冠楚楚的人的术语"）。但它们也完全是过时的。花花公子的当代用法是在20世纪60年代初的太平洋海岸冲浪文化中发展起来的，它在80年代初进入主流流行文化，并且一直持续到最近，沿着同样的基本路线。

不，熟悉它的人都知道，这种用法从来没有很好地翻译成 "伙计 "或 "家伙"。但是根据斯科特-F-基斯林（Scott F. Kiesling）的说法，他是《美国演讲》杂志2004年一项开创性研究的作者，题目是，是的，"伙计"，这个词长期以来一直暗示着对男人之间友谊的特殊理解。基斯林认为，它的主要语言功能是使男人，主要是年轻男人，能够以一种明显的直率的悠闲的友情模式相互称呼："老兄使男人能够创造一种......与其他男人亲密无间的姿态（满足男性的团结），同时保持一种随意的......距离（从而满足异性恋主义）。"

然而，女性现在也在使用这个词--无论是对男性还是对其他女性。也许毫不奇怪，使用模式因性别而异。例如，基斯林的工作表明，女性在试图缓解与朋友或熟人的冲突时，表现出相对倾向于使用这个词。("伙计，你知道我不会那样做的。")但即使这种用法也是一个主题的变化。毕竟，你可以把花花公子的阳刚之气去掉，它仍然可以作为一种建立团结的方式，而没有亲密关系。

如果这让你想知道你是否可以把异性恋也拿掉，请考虑一下布雷特-伊斯顿-埃利斯。最近，在Out.com上，这位（同性恋）小说家抨击了娱乐业，因为除其他居高临下的行为外，他长期将同性恋者描绘成 "婊子般的小丑或女王般的好朋友"。埃利斯如何描述他希望看到更多的冷酷、不自觉的同性恋角色--"不出名、邋遢、有点懒"，"只想做自己 "的人？那个同性恋的家伙。"为什么，"埃利斯问道，"我一直知道的那个同性恋者和我一直想成为的那个同性恋者不在前面和中心？"

这可能是时间免除的那些修辞问题之一。花花公子一直存在，但它也在不断发展。

J.J. Gould是TheAtlantic.com的前编辑。




U.S.
A Brief History of Dude
You know ... if you're into the whole brevity thing

By J.J. Gould

Coco Ho at Barra da Tijuca beach in Rio de Janeiro, May 12, 2012. (Ricardo Moraes / Reuters)
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
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contemplate this, dude: that when I call you dude, there’s a whole range of things I might mean—you’ll understand me from my intonation and the overall context—but each time, I’m also reinforcing a specific kind of social relationship. No matter how I use the word, it always implies the same thing: solidarity without intimacy. It says close, but dude, not too close.

What’s up with that?

Dude may be the most Mandarin Chinese word in American English. In Mandarin, depending on how I intone the single syllable ma, I could be saying “mother” (mā), or I could be saying something as radically distinct as “horse” (mă).


Dude has a comparable quality. Just think of the last time you did something awesome in the presence of a friend who affirmed your awesomeness with the exclamation Duuude! Or the last time you said something objectionable to someone who began setting you straight with a firm and sober Dude. There may not be any obvious difference in denotation between these cases, but the difference in connotation is, you’ll appreciate from experience, pretty major.

So what does the word itself mean? I can tell you what a mother is, and I can tell you what a horse is. But what’s a dude?

Dictionaries struggle with this question. Here, for instance, is Merriam-Webster:

1: a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner: DANDY
2: a city dweller unfamiliar with life on the range; especially: an Easterner in the West
3: FELLOW, GUY—sometimes used informally as a term of address: Dude, what’s up.

Seriously, dudes?

The first two definitions are historically accurate, anyway. (As Richard Hill attests in his study “You’ve Come a Long Way, Dude,” by the latter half of the 19th century, the word was “synonymous with dandy, a term used to designate a sharp dresser in the [U.S.] western territories.”) But they’re also entirely archaic. The contemporary use of dude developed in the Pacific Coast surfing culture of the early 1960s, it entered mainstream popular culture in the early ’80s, and it’s persisted, until recently, along the same basic lines.

No, this use has never, as anyone familiar with it knows, translated well as “fellow” or “guy.” But according to Scott F. Kiesling, the author of a seminal 2004 study from the journal American Speech—titled, yes, “Dude”—the term has long implied a particular understanding of fellowship among guys. Its dominant linguistic function, Kiesling argues, has been to enable men, mainly young men, to address one another in a conspicuously straight mode of laid-back camaraderie: “Dude allows men to create a stance … of closeness with other men (satisfying masculine solidarity) that also maintains a casual … distance (thus satisfying heterosexism).”

And yet women now use the word, too—both with men and with other women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, usage patterns vary by gender: Kiesling’s work indicates, for instance, that women show a relative tendency to deploy the term when trying to mitigate conflict with friends or acquaintances. (“Dude, you know I’d never do that.”) But even this usage is a variation on a theme. You can, after all, take the masculinity out of dude, and it still works as a way of establishing solidarity without intimacy.

If that makes you wonder whether you can take the heterosexuality out as well, consider Bret Easton Ellis. Recently, on Out.com, the (gay) novelist lit into the entertainment industry for, among other condescensions, chronically portraying gay men as “bitchy clowns or the queeny best friend.” How did Ellis describe the kind of chill, unself-consciously gay character he’d like to see more of—the “not-famous, slobby, somewhat lazy” guy who “just wants to be himself”? The gay dude. “Why,” Ellis asked, “isn’t the gay dude I have always known and the gay dude I have always wanted to be not front and center?”

It may be one of those rhetorical questions time dispenses with. Dude abides, but it also evolves.

J.J. Gould is the former editor of TheAtlantic.com.