bla bla bla

The title of this article is ambiguous. For more see Blah Blah Blah .

The phrase blah, blah, blah stands for unimportant words. It can be used with different meanings .

history

According to the Etymological Dictionary of the German Language , the onomatopoeia “Blah” can be dated back to the 14th century. Reference is also made to the Latin “blatāre”, translated as “ babble ”. In 1990, the linguist Anatoly Liberman listed "blaterare, blaðra, blab, babble, blatter, blather, bla-bla, babble, chatting " and wrote that some of these were related or that some were adaptations of "blaterare", but some were also unrelated . The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary states that the word “blah” originally established itself as an imitation in American English in the early 20th century . The phrase "blab, blab, blab" can already be found in books of the 19th century.

Various linguists and anthropologists saw “bar bar bar” for incomprehensible sounds as the Greek term “ barbarian ”, which referred to foreign people with difficulties in the language. An article speculates about an origin of the French "blague", German "Blech" and Scottish and Irish "blaflum", which are used to describe nonsense.

During the post-war period , the use of "blah, blah, blah" in English-language books increased. From 1960 to 2000 the frequency increased fifty-fold. Since around 1990, “blah blah” has appeared in German-language newspapers with increased frequency.

use

“Blah, blah, blah” is often used in everyday conversation. Examples from protest and music are also given. The phrase not only appears in songs , but is also used as a band or producer company name.

The phrase is apparently meaningless, but different meanings can be classified. The linguist Rita Finkbeiner differentiates the following classes on the basis of the criteria "sequential restriction" (translated from "sequential restriction"), "list" and "polyphonic":

• the "dummy element" that does not meet these criteria as a placeholder for something that has yet to be filled in.
• the "List extender" use, in which irrelevant aspects are left out in the own enumeration.
• the polyphonic use of the dummy utterance ("dummy utterance usage"), that is to say (not) reproducing another. It is sometimes pejoratively .
• the use of a list of an utterance, ie polyphonic, expanding ("Utterance list extender"). This reproduces a list of another person and shortens it by replacing it with "blah, blah, blah". The two examples examined by Finkbeiner clearly devalue the statement.
• use as a direct response (“turn-initial reply usage”), categorized as “sequential restriction”. A statement is answered directly with “blah, blah, blah” in order to devalue it.

Finkbeiner states that the word has no lexical meaning, so it is not an auto-semantic . When analyzing the polyphonic use, in other words the use for citation , she finds “blah, blah, blah” also in indirect speech . The philosopher Paul Saka goes into more detail on such citations under the heading "Blah, blah, blah: Quasi-quotation and Unquotation".

“Bla, bla, bla” is not just a German phrase, but also occurs in English , French , Italian , Polish , Spanish and Swedish , for example . In English, the phrase “blah, blah, blah” got competition from “Yada yada yada”. For American English , an analysis of the Corpus of Contemporary American English showed that "blah" occurs significantly more often in the three-fold repetition of "blah blah blah" than in the double or single repetition, both in the spoken language and in the language printed in newspapers.

Web links

Wiktionary: bla, bla, bla  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

• Rita Finkbeiner : Bla, bla, bla in German. A pejorative construction? In: Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer , Heike Wiese (eds.): Pejoration (= Linguistik Aktuell / Linguistics Today . Volume 228). John Benjamin, 2016, doi: 10.1075 / la.228.12fin , pp. 269-300 ( semanticscholar.org ).
• Rita Finkbeiner: Bla (h), Bla (h), Bla (h). Usage and Meaning of a Repetitive all-rounder . In: Aina Urdze (Hrsg.): Non-Prototypical Reduplication (= Thomas Stolz , Francois Jacquesson, Pieter Muysken (Hrsg.): Studia Typologica . Volume 22). De Gruyter, 2018, doi: 10.1515 / 9783110599329-003 , pp. 71-90 ( google.de ).
• Jessy Randall: Blah, Blah, Blah, Etcetera . In: Verbatim . Volume 25, No. 4, Fall 2000, pp. 15-17 ( verbatimmag.com ).
• Paul Saka : Blah, blah, blah: Quasi-quotation and Unquotation . In: Paul Saka, Michael Johnson (Eds.): The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation (= Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology . Volume 15). Springer, 2017, doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-319-68747-6_2 , pp. 35-63 ( google.de ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Friedrich Kluge , Elmar Seebold : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 25th edition. De Gruyter, 2011, doi: 10.1515 / 9783110223651 , p. 128 ( google.de ).
2. ^ Anatoly Liberman: Etymological Studies III: some Germanic Words Beginning with FL-. Language at Play . In: General linguistics . Volume 30, No. 2. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990, ISSN 0016-6553, p. 101 ( google.de ).
3. ^ Definition of blah noun from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary . In: oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com . Oxford University Press, Retrieved March 26, 2020.
4. ↑ Randall: Blah, Blah, Blah, Etcetera . 2000, p. 15.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Magazine Monitor: Who, What, Why: When did we start saying 'blah, blah, blah'? . In: bbc.com . May 7, 2014, Retrieved March 26, 2020.
6. ↑ Timothy Shopen, Joseph M. Williams : Standards and Dialects in English . Winthrop Publishers, 1980, Introduction , p. 11 ( ed.gov ).
7. ↑ Ralph Grillo : Dominant languages: language and hierarchy in Britain and France . Cambridge University Press, 1989, chap. 9 'Barbarous tongues': the hierachical ordering of difference , p. 174 ( archive.org ).
8. ↑ Kevin DeLapp: The View from Somewhere: Anthropocentrism in Metaethics . In: Rob Boddice (Ed.): Anthropocentrism (= Human-Animal Studies . Volume 12). Brill, 2011, doi: 10.1163 / ej.9789004187948.i-348.19 , p. 40, footnote 5 ( google.de ).
9. ↑ Randall: Blah, Blah, Blah, Etcetera . 2000, p. 16.
10. ↑ DWDS word progression curve for "blah blah" . In: dwds.de . Retrieved March 26, 2020.
11. ↑ ^{a b c} Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 297 f.
12. ↑ ^{a b} Randall: Blah, Blah, Blah, Etcetera . 2000, p. 16.
13. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 307.
14. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 302 f.
15. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 303 f.
16. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 304 f.
17. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 305 f.
18. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 306 f.
19. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 312 f.
20. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla, bla, bla in German . 2016, p. 313 f.
21. ↑ Saka: Blah, blah, blah . 2017, pp. 35–63.
22. ↑ Finkbeiner: Bla (h), Bla (h), Bla (h) . 2018, p. 87.
23. ↑ Tanja Ackermann: Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer & Heike Wiese (eds.). 2016. Pejoration. (Linguistik Aktuell / Linguistics Today 228). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamin. vii, 357 p. In: Alexander Lasch , Christa Dürscheid , Michael Elmentaler , Ulrike Freywald , Constanze Spieß , Jürgen Spitzmüller (eds.): Journal for reviews on German linguistics . Volume 10, No. 1-2. De Gruyter, 2018, doi: 10.1515 / zrs-2018-0038 , pp. 241–245.