Report #7 – For this week’s post I have decided to interview two people, Toni and Lewis. Each of whom come from the south where figures of speech are used as part of the dialect. By doing these interviews I want to discover new expressions that I haven’t heard or thought of before, and for the next post I’ll research the origin.
Toni’s Interview:
Q: Do you have a figure of speech or expression that you remember from your childhood? Something that your mother, father, or grandparents said that just resinates with you?
T: “My grandparents were always saying something and I use a lot of the phrases they did. It is so a part of my normal vocabulary still that I don’t think of it that way (as a figure of speech).”
Q: Of the many phrases they said was there one that you grew up believing meant one thing, and then realized you were mistaken?
T: “Not sure about that. The one jumping out at me now is, ‘What goes around, comes around’ and it was used in so many ways, as a threat sometimes, and other times as a truth. It is the most common one that I use with my kids. Another one I still use that I learned from my parents and grandparents is, ‘You’re gonna make your bed and lie in it.'”
Q: So do you think that these “threats” or “truths” are common coming from a southern family? Are figures of speech regularly used for explaining topics or teaching lessons?
T: “Usually they were said in frustration, but yes. One of them that pops out at me is, ‘The pot can’t call the kettle black.’ We used that one a lot when people started talking about somebody in a judgmental way. They would use that expression on us. Sometimes they would refer that to themselves, once they got to realizing what they had been saying. They caught themselves on it.”
I finished hearing her wonderful stories of all the southern things her family said and did, and still say and do. In the end I told her I would find out where these figures of speech originated truly.
Lewis’ Interview:
Q: Do you have a figure of speech or expression that you remember from your childhood? Something that your mother, father, or grandparents said that just resinates with you?
L: “Yes, my grandfather would say that somebody, ‘vibrated on the same kilocycle’ as someone else. I inferred from the way he said it and who he was talking about, that it meant the two people agreed with each other, they saw things the same way. They had the same values. I heard it more recently said as, ‘They are kindred spirits.'”
Q: Of the many phrases your grandfather said, was there one that you grew up believing meant one thing then realized you were mistaken?
L: “When I was very young he used to say, ‘He ain’t got no po-try in his soul.’ He would put-on a thick country accent so I didn’t really understand what he said but people would laugh. I thought he was making a joke and was being a funny character. Later when I learned the word ‘poultry’ and heard my grandfather say the phrase again I remember thinking, ‘Well he is saying people don’t have any chicken in their souls and that doesn’t make any sense.’ I just could not understand my grandfather’s joke.”
Q: Did you ever figure out what your grandfather meant?
L: “It took me until I was really grown before I realized that he was using that country accent to say ‘po-try’ as in ‘poetry’ and that what he meant was, ‘He ain’t got no poetry in his soul.’ My grandfather was describing people who weren’t sensitive, who were, ‘block-heads’, ‘thick as a brick’, as I hear now.”
In the end I told Lewis, like I told Toni I would find out where these figures of speech truly originated.