Andrews+Ch.+8

EXPLORATION: Social Climbing Up, Up, and Away DIRECTIONS: Read the following groups of words, and or each group, decide who is more likely to use them

davenport (only by a rare few older people) bubbler (my Northern friends) soda (used by most people I know, myself included, for any kind of soft drink or soft drinks in general) restroom (used mainly by people when they're trying to sound proper, or people in authority) brunch (used by people who are trying to sound sophisticated)

sofa (sometimes if people are trying to sound proper, some middle-aged people all the time) drinking fountain (no one that I know of) coke (I've only heard it used when describing Coca-Cola) bathroom (used by most everyone I know) lunch (used by most people)

Couch (used by most people I know, pretty informal) water fountain (used by most people I know) pop (used only by Northerners or Midwesterners, such as my boyfriend's family in Indiana) john (used only by men, pretty informal and kind of rude) dinner (used by most people I know to refer to the last meal of the day)

1. I use some of these words, about half of them. I have heard these words used so I know what they mean, but many of them I rarely if ever use or sound wrong to me. I would never use pop, bubbler, davenport, or john.

2. These different words are used to express the same things because of age and regional speech variations. Davenport is a term that used to be southern (I think) but that's fallen out of use. These terms probably developed independently to describe the same things.

3. I decide which words are more or less appropriate usually by whatever other people say. I'm also influenced by what I'm used to saying - for example, probably an even portion of people I know say restroom vs. bathroom, but I'm used to saying bathroom so that's what I stick with. No one has every ostracized me for it, so I don't change. If I'm in an unfamiliar place, I usually still stick with what I'm used to saying even if I'm the minority. When I visited my boyfriend in Indiana for a week, even though everyone else said pop instead of soda, I still stuck with soda.