Surprising connections

I wrote a post about Buffy's grandmother's interesting phrases. I searched for one phrase ("ready for the fox farm") and found only three Google™ hits. One of those hits was in a book by Margo Howard presenting a collection of letters from her mother Ann Landers.

In a comment Jan Freeman not only directed me to some information about fox farm in DARE but she also indicated that she had contacted Howard and asked her about the term. Howard contacted me and told me that she enjoyed the post and in a quick volley of emails she shared a few more quick and fun details about her mother and her appreciation for Hubert Humphrey and his sense of humour.

What a pleasing network these interwebs can be. If I had known that a few people are actually reading I would have edited a little more carefully.

To those of you who read stop by occasionally -- my thanks. To those of you who share the site with others -- my thanks. To those of you who get in touch -- my thanks.

By the way: Jan Freeman is the fine thinker who coined the term peevologist which I have used several times on this site and in classes I teach. I believe the term captures very effectively the agenda of those people who are intolerant of real language but think it's because they love it -- my thanks.

"Thanks Lovely"--"Ask Lovely"

Is that how we would translate "Danke schön" "Bitte schön"?

On a web log I visit regularly someone left a comment regarding the amount of power produced by West Virginia coal, oil, and natural gas. She ended with "So America, you're welcome for the energy!"

For? When did you're welcome change its syntactic properties? On another day I might not have noticed this preposition. But something caused me to pause and think "which would I have said, for or to?"

Once I paused to think about it my literal side cried out "to! It's to! But there's a part of me that hears 'for' as appropriate. I wonder how I would respond if someone said "you're welcome" and I didn't know why. I'd probably ask "for what?" just as easily as "why?" But does that transfer to hearing it as "you're welcome for X"?

In that structure I find a literal paraphrase only in "I support your entitlement: I say so in reference to X." But that's an unlikely intention.

"You're welcome" has now become a parallel directive to "thank you"--both of them taking the same preposition.

I wonder if this has something to do with the tendency of people to respond to a "thank you" by repeating a "thank you" instead of offering the assurance "you're welcome."

"Thank you."
"Thank you."

So the speech act is separated from the context or subjuct of the speech act--and the relative role of the locutor/hearer to that context. What used to be I thank your for your offering and You are welcome to my offering has now become You are thanked /(regarding/for this interaction) and the simply restated You are welcomed /(regarding/for this interaction).

The new meaning of this exchange is then "I_recipient approve of this event" and "I_agent approve of this event."