Male and Female Dudes

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Paul. I’m calling from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Welcome to the show, Paul. What can we do for you?

I have a question about the word dude.

Dude?

Dude.

Dude, D-U-D-E.

I’ve noticed that college-age students use it as a unisex word.

So in the days of my youth, I graduated high school in 86. It was primarily used to address a man.

But now I’ve noticed that girls are calling each other dude. And I wonder, when did that start?

Are they calling each other dude?

Are you sure that that’s what they’re doing?

I am positive.

In fact, I’ve talked to them about it.

Oh, you have?

They just shrug it off and say, oh, yeah, I’ve always done that.

The reason I question that exact way that you put that is because there’s a type of usage called evocative usage where you kind of just get someone’s attention.

Usually at the beginning of a sentence, like I might say, hey, buddy, move your car. I can’t get out of my driveway.

That buddy is evocative use. And this is the dude that is primarily used by young women to refer to other young women.

They’ll say, dude, you’ve got to buy that dress.

OK, so they’re addressing.

So they’re addressing them.

And it’s pretty much about the only place that you’re going to hear a lot of women using dude in that way when they’re speaking to another woman.

So it’s not so much about calling them a dude. I mean, you could maybe make a case for that, but it’s mostly about getting their attention, putting something at the beginning of the sentence that says, pay attention to what follows.

So we do a lot of this.

Man, I can’t believe I got another speeding ticket.

So that man is doing that job, that vocative job.

Boy, you’re smart, Grant.

Yeah, there we go.

Exactly like that.

Say some more of that. I like that.

What they’re probably not saying is like, I went down to the record store with these three dudes and they were Mary and Sue and Joan, right?

When you put it that way, it does seem that it is being used in the evocative sense.

The only speculation I may have to that is, in doing my own research, I noticed that it was cited as being used by females in Less Than Zero, the novel that came out in the 80s.

And in that context, it was used by a daughter addressing her mother.

But now that I think about it, that may also have been in the evocative sense.

If you want to completely nerd out on this, and this is an activity that we hardly endorse at all opportunity,

In 2004, Scott Kiesling, who was at the University of Pittsburgh, published a paper in the Journal of American Speech titled Dude.

And it is literally about dude and this use and many other uses.

And he confirms that young women are using dude, but only in the vocative sense.

That’s so interesting.

They’re not saying that women are dudes, and they’re not ungendering it.

They’re strictly using it to get attention.

I see. Well, that clarifies a great deal. It’s been bugging me.

So watch for that, Paul. Let us know what you think.

Will do. Thanks a lot, guys.

Okay.

Yeah, sure. Our pleasure.

Bye.

Dude shows all the signs of being, like, cool, which is the word that will never leave slang.

Never, ever.

But continue to be used.

Yeah, you think.

Just constant saying.

But, of course, in the 60s and 70s when people said man, where we say dude a lot now,

Maybe people then thought that man would continue forever.

It’s just really uncommon today to have someone say, man, that’s an awesome dress.

Oh, I think maybe I do, but I don’t use dudes.

Really? A woman like you in her 30s?

Yeah, I know, I know. He said he graduated in 86. I’m thinking.

Yeah, I’m thinking too. He’s only two years older than I am.

What have you observed about language?

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