Once in a small village there lived a girl named Barbara. Barbara was known all around town for her excellent rhubarb cake. As everyone liked to eat Barbara’s rhubarb cake so much, they called her Rhubarbbarbara. Rhubarbbarbara soon realized that she could make money with her rhubarb cake. And so she opened a bar: the Rhubarbbarbarabar. Of course, the Rhubarbbarbarabar soon acquired regulars. The most well-known amongst them, three barbarians, visited the Rhubarbbarbarabar to eat Rhubarbbarbara’s rhubarb cake so often that they were concisely named the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarians. The Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarians had beautiful, thick beards.
Whenever the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarians wanted to have their Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeards taken care of, they went to a barber. The only barber who could trim a Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeard naturally wanted to emphasize that and called himself Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarber. The Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarber learned about Rhubarbbarbara’s delicious rhubarb cake from the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarians and always consumed it with beer that he lovingly called Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeer.
The Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeer could only be bought in one particular bar. The name of the bartender who sold Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeer at the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeerbar was Barbie. After trimming the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeards, the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarber usually went to the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeerbar together with the Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarians to take Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeerbarbarbie to the Rhubarbbarbarabar to drink some Rhubarbbarbarabarbarbarianbeardbarberbeer and eat Rhubarbbarbara’s delicious rhubarb cake.
I love the phrase “what the entire fuck” because it implies that there exists some scenario that warrants only a “what the partial fuck”.
Similarly “what the actual fuck,” implying “what the figurative fuck” or “what the imaginary fuck”.
“What the actual fuck” is an interesting one because “actual” has so many distinct shades of meaning.
“Entire” generally means “whole” or “complete”, but depending on the particular context, “actual” can denote any or all of “real”, “literal”, “concrete”, “truthful”, “grounded” or “factual”.
Thus, when deriving the contrastive phrase, in addition to “what the imaginary fuck” and “what the figurative fuck”, we could also reasonably arrive at “what the hypothetical fuck”, “what the fraudulent fuck”, “what the fanciful fuck” or “what the counterfactual fuck”.
Language is fun!
It doesn’t work as well if you start replacing “fuck” with mammals, though:
What the actual sloth?
What the figurative ox?
What the entire camel?
What the intentional goat?
These are starting to sound like show names from the 50s and 60s. So not a lame show like Casper the Friendly Ghost, but an amazing show like What the Hypothetical Dolphin. I’d watch that show.
I feel fundamentally dishonest using the phrase “low key” so often because inside my heart and soul I’m actually and unambiguously and inappropriately obsessively 100% full scale high key about literally everything I ever think and feel and look at.
“i don’t judge people based on race, creed, color, or gender. i judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.”
i hate to burst your pretentious little bubble, but linguistic prejudice is inextricably tied to racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and ableism.
ETA: don’t send me angry messages about this…at all, preferably, but at least check the tag for this post before firing off an irate screed.
no one seems to be following the directive above, so here’s the version of this post i would like all you indignant folk to read.
no, i am not saying that people of color, women, poor people, disabled people, etc, “can’t learn proper english.” what i’m saying is that how we define “proper english” is itself rooted in bigotry. aave is not bad english, it’s a marginalized dialect which is just as useful, complex, and efficient as the english you’re taught in school. “like” as a filler word, valley girl speech, and uptalk don’t indicate vapidity, they’re common verbal patterns that serve a purpose. etc.
because the point of language is to communicate, and there are many ways to go about that. different communities have different needs; different people have different habits. so if you think of certain usages as fundamentally “wrong” or “bad,” if you think there’s a “pure” form of english to which everyone should aspire, then i challenge you to justify that view. i challenge you to explain why “like” makes people sound “stupid,” while “um” doesn’t raise the same alarms. explain the problem with the habitual be. don’t appeal to popular opinion, don’t insist that it just sounds wrong. give a detailed explanation.
point being that the concept of “proper english” is culturally constructed, and carries cultural biases with it. those usages you consider wrong? they aren’t. they’re just different, and common to certain marginalized groups.
not to mention that many people who speak marginalized dialects are adept at code-switching, i.e. flipping between non-standard dialects and “standard english,” which makes them more literate than most of the people complaining about this post.
not to mention that most of the people complaining about this post do not speak/write english nearly as “perfectly” as they’d like to believe and would therefore benefit by taking my side.
not to mention that the claim i’m making in the OP is flat-out not that interesting. this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook. the only reason it sounds so outlandish is that we’ve been inundated with the idea that how people speak and write is a reflection of their worth. and that’s a joyless, elitist idea you need to abandon if you care about social justice or, frankly, the beauty of language.
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real ramifications–in employment (tossing resumes with “black-sounding names”), in the legal system (prejudice against rachel jeantel’s language in the trayvon martin trial), in education (marginalizing students due to prejudice against dialectical differences, language-related disabilities, etc), and…well, a lot.
no, this doesn’t mean that there’s never a reason to follow the conventions of “standard english.” different genres, situations, etc, have different conventions and that’s fine. what it does mean, however, is that this standard english you claim to love so much has limited usefulness, and that, while it may be better in certain situations, it is not inherently better overall. it also means that non-standard dialects can communicate complex ideas just as effectively as the english you were taught in school. and it means that, while it’s fine to have personal preferences regarding language (i have plenty myself), 1) it’s worth interrogating the source of your preferences, and 2) it’s never okay to judge people on the basis of their language use.
so spare me your self-righteous tirades, thanks.
Oh my gosh YES, this post got so much better.
this is sociolinguistics 101. this is the first chapter of your intro to linguistics textbook.
and
and yes, this issue matters. if we perceive people as lesser on the
basis of language, we treat them as lesser. and yes, it can have real
ramifications
Solutions Without Problems 