Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum
Report your use of Brokieisms in so-called "real life"
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Wojtek on December 16, 2017, 08:42:40 pm ---I also wanted to ask you something. As I'm unremittingly learning English, I was surprised to hear some expressions, not necessarily brokeisms though. What I can recall right away is Alma's [...] we can still smarten up and head on over to the church social and Jack's I guess I'll head up on to Lightning Flat. What struck me as odd is these prepositions piled up perhaps to add emphasis (?). Is this an ordinary thing to say, or rather unusual? What I mean is would you go for such a lengthened expression in spoken language instead of, simply, 'go'?
--- End quote ---
Good question. It's a pretty ordinary phrase, even among "city people" -- not just "country people" like Alma and Jack. I'm trying to think why people say it. I guess it's when they want to be more casual, gentler, friendlier. The differences between "head on over/up/out to ..." and simply "go to" are pretty subtle, and "go to" usually works perfectly fine (as it would be in the examples you cited). But "go to" may sound a little harsh or abrupt in some situations.
For example, my brother has very few flaws but one of them is that he sometimes hangs around in a no-hurry, leisurely kind of way instead of getting going to do something. So if we had decided to go out for breakfast but were still lingering in his kitchen drinking coffee (we're not from Texas), I might say, "Well, shall we head on out to breakfast?" rather than "Well, shall we go to breakfast?" because the latter seems a little sharper-toned.
So maybe Alma used the phrase because she knew Ennis would be resistant to the suggestion so wanted to ease into it gently. And maybe Jack used it because he wanted to leave room for Ennis to say, "No, don't go! Stay with me and we can pursue the sweet life." (Well, Ennis wouldn't say "pursue," but you know what I mean.)
CellarDweller:
Those are some good uses, Wojtek!
Front-Ranger:
Sometimes, Proulx uses what we have come to lovingly call "Brokeisms" to telegraph little messages to further her story. For instance, Aguirre thinks, "Pair of deuces going nowhere" and it emphasizes the theme of duality--twice!--in five words!
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on December 17, 2017, 06:17:49 pm ---Sometimes, Proulx uses what we have come to lovingly call "Brokeisms" to telegraph little messages to further her story. For instance, Aguirre thinks, "Pair of deuces going nowhere" and it emphasizes the theme of duality--twice!--in five words!
--- End quote ---
Proulx is one of those writers where you can tell nearly every word was very carefully chosen for a specific reason.
And fortunately, Dianna Ossana and Larry McMurtry followed suit! And so did Ang Lee! And so did the set designers and so did the prop designers and so did the costume designers and so did ...
Literally, every line, every scene, ever object in the movie including knives and pots and shirt colors and bears and beans ... everything is significant. I'm sure there are other works of literature that do that, but I'm not aware of many movies that do.
Front-Ranger:
You bet, friend. Two others that I love are when Jack says he is "pretty good with a coat hanger" and how the situation was like straightening a coat hanger to open a locked car and then bending it back to its original shape. Both refer to unlocking/opening a person's soul and deeply hidden nature.
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