infobong.com

A friend sent me a link to this AP story describing a recently-published linguistics paper which analyzes the use of the word, "dude." According to the story, Scott Kiesling at Pitt is "contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers," but instead is situated in heteronormative male social bonds. Dudes use "dude" to express intimacy with other dudes. Whatever, I think I use "dude," much as I use "like" or the participle of another four-letter word: as a placeholder when I'm gathering my thoughts. I haven't read it, but you can download the paper as a .pdf here.