{"id":95,"date":"2013-06-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yule-tide.generalsemiotics.net\/index.php\/2013\/06\/18\/post-87-up-for-that-down-for-that\/"},"modified":"2013-06-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T00:00:00","slug":"post-87-up-for-that-down-for-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/18\/post-87-up-for-that-down-for-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-87: Up For That, Down For That"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n“Would you be up for that?”<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong> is what I asked.
“Yeah, I’m down for that”<\/em><\/strong>, he replied.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
I was puzzled that these two opposite-seeming phrases could mean exactly the same. I’d never thought about it.<\/p>\n

Translation into simple-English:
“Do you want to do that?”<\/em><\/strong>
“Yes, I do<\/u> want to do that.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After the matter was settled (he “did want to do that”), I noted with interest our use of opposite words (“up” and “down”) to mean the same. How could this have come about? A linguistic puzzle, perhaps.<\/p><\/div>\n

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A thirty-second analysis followed, twice the time spent on the fifteen-second conversation itself. He <\/span>said that “up for that”<\/strong> sounded old-fashioned<\/em> to him. He claimed it was something his father would say. (“He” is the 23-year-old Californian I’ve alluded to on these digital pages before.) \/ He is from the San Francisco Bay Area. He further proposed that “down for that”<\/strong> may be a more Pacific-Northwest-centric phrase, befitting the supposed laid-back attitude of the natives of that region (“down” being the more “laid-back”, I guess). “Up for that”<\/strong> sounds more optimistic and energetic, though, doesn’t it? “Down for that”<\/strong> sounds a little negative, a little sarcastic, a little cynical, a little suspicious…

<\/span>“Down for that”<\/strong> is a phrase I have never used. It’s always sounded “street” to me, by which I mean not-far-removed from ebonics. If I used “down for that”, I might as well call people “homeys” and so on. I’m not a “whigger” (as Whites who ostentatiously imitated Black speech were called, disparagingly, in my school-days). On the other hand, phrases \/ words from Black-slang have <\/em>frequently shifted into general (White) usage in the past century or two, haven’t they. <\/p>\n

<\/span> That now-ubiquitous word “cool”<\/strong> is one of the words that comes from Black slang, so they say. When did it become “non-racial” and become commonly used by (non-“whigger”) Whites? I don’t know. 1970s? Another linguistic puzzle. <\/p>\n

<\/span>What seems obvious to me, anyway, is that there have thus always been people alive who’d developed their linguistic-sensibilities before the crossover<\/em> occurred. White men of my grandfathers’ generation (both of mine were born in the 1910s-USA) would never <\/em>have used the word “cool”<\/strong> unless the temperature were involved. Maybe I’m just a bit too old<\/em>, too, and this “down for that” has been, unbeknownst to me, becoming “mainstream” these past years, after I’d already cast my lot against it. \/ I can’t imagine ever bringing myself to use it; I’d feel like a true idiot.\n<\/div>\n

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\nUpdate: <\/strong><\/span><\/font>Post-88 “Up For This, Down For That (Part II)<\/a>” is a follow-up to this post<\/font>.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Would you be up for that?”\u00a0 is what I asked.“Yeah, I’m down for that”, he replied. I was puzzled that these two opposite-seeming phrases could mean exactly the same. I’d never thought about it. Translation into simple-English:“Do you want to do that?”“Yes, I do want to do that.” After the matter was settled (he “did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yule-tide.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}