Sometimes Realizing You’re Being Invited Requires Trumpets and Heralds

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Christy. I’m calling from Norfolk, Virginia Beach.

Hi, Christy. Welcome to the show.

What’s on your mind today?

Well, I called about the Virginia invite as what my friends and I started calling this weird phenomenon, I guess.

I moved to Norfolk to do my PhD several years ago.

And when I got here, you know, everybody was a little different.

I’m from outside of Philly.

So between classes I would stand with one of my friends and you know we we had the same taste of music. So she asked me one day like oh what did you do in Philly and I was like oh we used to go to a club night and she’s like oh we have one of those here it’s it’s it’s on Tuesday in fact me and my friends are going this week and I was like oh and I’m waiting I’m waiting I’m thinking you know oh are they gonna invite me you know and she doesn’t and so I’m like that’s weird I’m kind of rude you know so a couple of weeks later same thing happened she’s like oh yeah yeah my my friends and I you know we’re gonna go to the club again this week doesn’t invite me.

So finally like after this happens four or five times I said you know I think I’m gonna go there myself this week and she says oh good that’s great like I’ve been inviting you for weeks I don’t know why you didn’t come oh you didn’t invite me you never invited me and then the guy I was dating and he’s now my husband you know one weekend I asked him well what do you want to do this week and he’s like oh you know Tommy and I thought we could go play some pool and I’m like oh fine go hang out with Tommy then you know and he’s like what you don’t want to play pool he’s like you didn’t invite me.

So here I am feeling like a crazy person and I’m working in the writing center with with another one of my friends who was actually in the linguistics program and she’s from down here I said look this is something you guys do down here like do you do that and I explained the whole thing to and she like stops and I see the wheels turning and she goes oh yeah we do that that’s weird and like see it is weird we just started calling it the Virginia invite and I ask my students all the time I’m like hey do you guys do this and they’re like oh yeah we do that’s weird so I don’t know what’s up with that oh my goodness so you moved to Virginia from outside Philly yeah and people tell you that they’re going to go do some fun thing and you’re waiting for the the invitation and it never comes no it’s super awkward silence as far as they’re concerned they have invited you because they mentioned it.

Oh so they say yeah that’s it they believe it so you’re you being present is as good as and them mentioning it is as good as an invitation because from their point of view maybe it would be rude to bring it up and not exactly yeah so they’re thinking I wouldn’t have brought it up unless you were invited because that would just be rude yeah okay see I would think it would be rude too that’s why I’m waiting for the invite yeah yeah you want the extra step.

Yeah and so we’ve got a problem here ask your linguist friend about this we have a problem here of implicature it basically means what was implicit and what was said or done isn’t clear to you they think it’s implicit in their statement that you’re invited and you don’t think it is implicit right yeah the other problem we might have is also might be with English is there’s a problem with the way the pronoun we w-e works in English for example if they say we’re going to the club it might not be clear if that we includes you the person they’re talking to it might only mean the speaker and whoever they’re talking about but not also you some other languages don’t have that problem because their pronoun for we does automatically include the person being spoken to or they may have up to four pronouns for we that include a variety of combinations of people including or excluding the speaker.

Yeah and linguists have studied you know the pragmatics of invitations and that little dance that people do the least common type of invitation is the unambiguous one.

Do you want to have lunch tomorrow?

But otherwise, you know, there’s a bit of negotiation with an ambiguous invitation.

I don’t know that that practice is exclusive to Virginia, though.

No, I wouldn’t think that it is.

I expect this to be common throughout the English-speaking world and probably other languages.

If we mention this now, people are going to probably report this everywhere.

Because by not specifically asking the question, they’re not exposing themselves to the chance that you might say no and reject their proposal.

And this is why we don’t often explicitly ask questions or specifically invite people.

Right.

That’s really funny.

I haven’t thought of it that way.

Maybe where I’m from is just maybe we’re just weird where I’m from.

No, Christy, it’s that you’re super cool.

You’re super cool and they were afraid you would say no.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

And, you know, we haven’t even talked about ostensible invitations.

I have friends from Austria who talk about the American invitation.

They ran into people while they were traveling who said, you know, come visit us in Lake Tahoe if you’re ever in town.

And so my Austrian friends showed up on their doorstep and then people were like, what? What are you doing here?

And they said, you invited us. We’re here.

Oh, that’s really funny.

But, yeah, this kind of thing does happen all the time.

This is why so much of spoken language, so much of it is renegotiation and restatement.

We’re constantly seeking clarity on what was meant and what was said.

Constantly.

It’s really cool.

So was it fun?

Yeah, it was.

Actually, I met my husband there, so worth it.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

It worked out.

Yeah, it did.

It did.

Christy, thank you so much for calling us.

Yeah, glad it all worked out.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, me too.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

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