The American Dialect Society

Thoughts on 'Yep' and 'Nope

Author(s): Dwight L. Bolinger
Source: American Speech, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Apr., 1946), pp. 90-95
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/486479
Accessed: 07-04-2015 16:09 UTC

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THOUGHTS ON 'YEP' AND 'NOPE

DWIGHT L. BOLINGER
Universityof Southern California
HAROLD WeNTWORTH1
gives the following informationregardingnope:
'1930 CENT.PENN. MTS.nope. Still or recently used. Shoemaker.'
And this concerningyep: 'tjpl, lisPtv li^PI are playful. 1892 U.S. |jp|
with an unfinished p is probl. well known all over the country.' The
second edition of Webster's New International gives yep as 'Dial. 8c
colloq. var. of YeS.'
As Wentworth keenly observes,the p in yep (and he would also have
to add that of nope) is 'unfinished.'There is good reason for its being so:
this p is not phonemicin the ordinarysenseof the word,but gestural.It is
the lip-closure of the gesture of finality which may be observed at the
end of any number of peremptorystatements,where it ordinarilypasses
unnoticed because other terminal sounds obscure it. Xttithyes and no
we cannot fail to detect the p because,as they are the most final things we
can say, the lip-closureof finality so often accompaniesthem; and also
because, with their brevity, the p is a relatively large and conspicuous
element. The p is 'unfinished'because the gesture would be destroyed
by opening the mouth for a subsequent release.
Lip-closingas a gesture is abundantlyrecordedby fiction if not by the
writings of lingulists.'She preserveda tight-lipped silence,' 'His mouth
was a thin line of determination,''He bit off everysyllable,'' "I will notl"
he said, underscoring every word and clamping shut when he had
finished'-these and similar descriptionsare comluonplace.If the speaker
is American, and will observe himself when he utters well as a sign of
dismissalof some discussionor activity (as in 'Well'-pause-'what do we
do next?'),he will often discoverthat he has used welp, with unfinishedp.
Like other actions, this gestureof finality may becomea mannerism.At a
recent graduationone of the oiciating deans managed it conspicuously,
on turning to go backstage,as from a job dutifully done, after having
recited his list of candidates.
Other variants of yes and no are equally revealing. Says Wentworth,
speaking of naw: '1917 N.E. OHIOnaw inl. In answer,often connoting
disgust that the question should be asked,whereasno is ordinarilyused.
General.'It is no accident that naw rimes with the vocalizedgesture aw!
which is recordedlexically as an exclamationof incredulity,disgust, and
like sentiments('Aw,I did not'; 'Aw,you'recrazy';sAw,that don't amount
1. American Dialect Dictionary} New York, Crowell, 1944, s.v. yes and no.

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THOUGHTS ON 'YEP}AND 'NOPE'

91

to anything').The same gesture may be noted in the exclamatoryuse of

go on! where the jaw is strongly dropped and the lower lip flaredout in
uttering a stressed and drawled on-this exclamation, too, is used, of
course, to scout the statement of someone else. The yeah of 'Oh, yeah?'
(incredulous)is in large measuregestural. So is bah!
The lip-roundinggestulre,with forwardthrust,which often accompanies
heavy deliberation or hesitation, finds its way into print in at least one
form, usually written 'no-oo-oo'('Will he do it?' 'No-oo-oo,I don't think
so'). This is, as every radio-listener knows, a favorite with Charlie
McCarthy.
The lip-retractinggesture, often accompanied by a manual gesture
with thumb and forefinger measuring a narrow interval, is a frequent
concomitant of the ee constellation of words, remarked by Jespersen2
(teeny-weenie,peep, neat, wee, etc.). Observing someone say 'He has a
keen mind,' with keen stressedand drawled,will often reveal this gesture.
Just what may be the nervousreason for it I do not know, but I suspect
that it is tension as a result of a feeling of inability to do justice to the
thing described;the tone here is also 'tense' or high, and its connexion
with a feeling of inadequacy was noted by Coleman. In any case the
kinship of the gesture and the sound is obvious.
Some gestural effects are not sufficientlymarked to be recognized as
more than allophonic. Thus the kissing gesture that may accompanythe
utterance 'My poor, poor darling' does not sufficientlydistort xpoor or
darling so as to create a 'variant'or a 'new word,' such as has happened
with no-naw, tiny-teeny, etc.
What importancedoes this have for language?
Any movement of the organism must affect, however remotely, the
articulationsof the organism;and the closer the movement approaches
the organs most active in the articulation, the greater the effect will be.
Facial gesture,and in particulargestureof lips, teeth, or jaw, cannot but
alter the movementswhich are regardedas 'language.'Gesture is part of
the movementcomplex by which we signal to our fellows; and if it turns
out that concomitant gestures are capable of shuffling phonemes and
creatingwords,we may find that the argumentabout what 'is' and 'isn't'
language is more academicthan we had imagined, and that language in
the conventional sense is a highly arbitrary,though in some ways convenient, abstraction.
Grantedthat the abstractionhas to be made, the question comes to be
at what point it should be made. Surely this point is not before the full
2. Language, New York, Holt, 1922, pp. 402, 407.

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92

AMERICAN SPEECH

implications of the phenomena that accompany language have been

developed}but after. We cannot afford to exclude anything until we are
informedof what it is that we are excluding. To do otherwise,to take an
a priori and receivednotion of what we are going to considerour object
of study} is to put ourselves in the position of the medieval scientist
who, in order the better to understandfire, took the orthodox positivist
step of excluding, at the beginning of his investigation,all consideration
of earth, air, and water, since, as everyone knew, earth, air, fire, and
water were four incommutableelements. Surroundingphenomena must
be investigated for themselves,without bias from any previous style of
investigation at least far enough for us to know their bearing,before we
dare to cross them off; otherwise we are too often caught with our
ignorance down. For some reason, the very insistence upon language as
a spoken phenomenon,i.e., as behavior,has been accompaniedby a close
concentration upon a limited number of behavior patterns, the latter
suggestivelyreminiscent,in their selection for ease of recordabilityJof the
'written forms'from which we were supposed to have been emancipated.
It is only by a return once more to the whole of communicative-behaviors
with energiesof linguists more evenly distributed,,that we shall avoid the
over-growthand prematurerefinementof one or two component parts.
To bear out further this argument}let us look at the relevance of
gesture to three departments which linguists are willing to recognize
as 'language.'
1. Gesture may be phonemic. Besides the examples already given, we
End the variantshuh7and h'm?-the formeraccompaniedby the hangingjaw gestureof astonishment.The closed-mouthvariantsm-h'm('yes')and
hJm-m('no') are more likely to be terminal in discoursethan the corresponding open-mouthedunh-huh and hunh-uh.
The ee constellation of 'small, tense' words has been referredto. Two
other constellationshave at least coincidental support from gesture, the
v constellationswith its snarl, the potency of which can be appreciatedif
the v is prolonged a bit, and the oo constellationsuggestiveof a staring
countenancesabout which cluster a great many English words suggesting
foolishness.Gesture finds its way into the morphemeshere both directly
and imitatively-in the main directly,with the v constellation,the speaker
3. Vituperatise, tntriolic, vindictim vengeful, ViciousJ trixenishJ violent, vehement,
tnle, villainousJ trenomous} euict, etc. 'Word Affinities, Americvn Speech, Feb. 1940,
p. 71.
4. Ibid., p. 7l. Besides those recorded there, I list ff,
IOEJ
the Goops, woof
(as in 'I ain't a-woofin'')J spook, coon, fruity, the Oozlefinch (a Tit7ze invention),
foc}zlc, and words in aroo.

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THOUGHTS ON 'YEP' AND 'NOPE'

93

giving vent to his own snarl; with the oo constellation imitatively, the
speakermimickingthe appearanceof someoneelse.
2. Gesturemay be intonationsl. The effectshere are more subtle, inasmuch as fundamentalpitch is not markedlyaffectedby positions within
the range of normal human gestures.If we include, however, the alterations of timbre which can be detected and taken as symbolic of the
gestures and gestural attitudes that cause them, then clear-cut effects
may be noted, particularlythose brought about by changesof head position. I have tried the following test: Asking a group of observers(five
students of phonetics) to face away from me, I uttered, first with head
thrust forward(as one does when anxious or surprised),then with head
drawn back (as when indignant or annoyed), the question 'He's coming,
isn't he?' The fundamental pitch of the profile was kept as nearly the
same as could be managed. The fIve unanimously identified the timbre
producedby the forwardthrust as indicative of anxiety-surprise,and that
of the drawn-backposition as indignation-annoyance,these two alternatives having been suggested to them beforehand. It is likely that the
drawn-backposition may have forced a slight lowering of pitch in addition to other changes.
On the whole, the phenomena of gesture and tone are parallel rather
than interacting.Terminal downmotion of pitch is usually accompanied
by mouth-closing;terminal upmotion, above all in questions, often with
mouth remaining open. In very emphatic speech there is a tendency to
punctuatesentencestressby downwardjabs of the head (considerstressas
tonal or as syntactic,as you like). Most remarkableof all, I note a tendency
to make head movements,where they are any, conformto the melodic line
-upward movementas the tone goes up, downwardmovementas the tone
goes down. The best way to test this is to try to reverse it on certain
profiles:with 'I know,' uttered with I at high pitch and with downmotion
followed by terminal upmotion on know, let the head firstmove up on I
with a down- and up-motion following as know is pronounced; this is
easy to do, but the opposite-down-up-down-calls for conscious effort.
The same difficultyis experiencedin forcing a down-upmovement to accompany'I know' when uttered with I at high pitch and know with sharp
downmotion ending at low pitch-the attempt seems to result in some
involuntaryupmotion at the beginning of know. Reversalof this tendency
occasionallycomes by way of some stereotypedgesture,as with the deferential bow that may accompanyprincipal stressin the question 'Do you
know?'where know describesa hump-shapedtonal curve. Or the stereotyped gesturemay itself symbolizethe same thing that the tone symbolizes,
whence it becomes indiSerent whether the melodic line is imitated or

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AMERICAN SPEECH

94

not; this happens with tonal profilesof admonition and the admonitory
gesture of sidewise motion of the head coming to rest at one side, with
the speaker peering out of the corner of his eye-a gesture which may
accompanythe utteranceor precede it.
3. Gesturemay be syntactic.As a determinantof questions, gesture
attains an importancethat it does not have in any other communicative
act whose chief ingredients are 'language.'There are various clues to
questions:verbal,such as interrogativewordsand do-didprefixes(referred
to by the etymological name of 'inversions');tonal, such as, primarily,
terminalupmotion; and contextual. The question is a complex,however,
of which gestureformsa necessarypart, since many utterances,without it,
are indistinguishableas questions.Take the utterance'Then you did it,'
with sharp upmotion and stress on you, and rapid downmotion concluding with pitch below singing level reached on it. With head erect,
lip-closureat end, and eyes averted, this is a statement. With head forward, mouth slightly open at end of utterance,eyebrowsraised and eyes
focused on the interlocutor'sface, this is a question. The only clues to its
questionnessare the gesturalconcomitants.Their importancehas not been
overlooked by the fiction-writers,who usually summarize them as an
'inquiring look.'
Why have gesturesseemedunattractiveas a branchof inquiry essential
to linguistics?There are probablyseveralreasons.First,'gesture'summons
to the mindsof mostpersonsnot facial contortionsbut bodilypostures.Says
Bloomfield:5'Still other responsesare visible, but not directly important;
they do not change the lay-out of things, but they do, along with speech,
serse as stimuli to the hearer.These actionsare facial expression,mimicry,
tone of voice (in so far as it is not prescribedby the conventions of the
language), insignificant handling of objects (such as fiddling with a
rubber band), and, above all, gesture.'This implies, and furtherreading
reveals, that gesture here is thought of as manual. It also implies that
facial gestures, unlike intonation, are never 'prescribedby the conventions of the language,'i.e., are accidentalconcomitants,lacking in stereotypes and bearing no constant and organizablerelationship to speech.
Facial movementsfrom this point of view are of a kind with chattering
teeth (fear and cold), stopped nasal passages(catarrh),chuckling (uncontrolled mirth),gasping(breathlessness),etc.-at best having a sort of nonce
expressiveness,at worst interfering with the more serious business of
*

communlcatlon.

5. Language, Nev York, Holt, 1933, p. 3g.

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THOUGHTS ON 'YE? AND 'NOPE)

gS

Most refractoryof all, however, is probably the fact that in facial gesture, as in intonation, it is utterly impossible to draw the line between
symbol (language)and symptom (non-language).The voice moves up at
the end of a question. Is this a learned, conventionalized,linguistic fact,
a symbolof questionness,or is it the result of nervoustension accompanying the feeling of uncertainty,which causes the musclesof the larynx to
contractand produce a rising pitch? It is, of course,both; but to anyone
who is wedded to the theory that linguistic phenomenamust not be contaminated by anything which is not preciselyanalogous to the ordinary
morphemes,long since freed of their instinctive ties, such a mixture of
symboland symptommust be avoided at all costs.The 'word'is comfortable to work with, for, being completely stylized, its form can be treated
without reference to its meaning. As with intonation, so with facial
gesture:leaving the mouth open at the end of an utterancecan be learned
as a device to suggestthat the argumentis not over; it is also an aultomatic
result of the intention, or thought, of continuing. A snarl is instinctive;
it is also the most potent device of incisive speech, and as such can be
learned.
The gestures referredto here are not viewed, as M. H. Krouts views
them, as 'autistic.'They are, on the contrary,to a large degreelearnedand
conventionalized,and hence are organizableand classifiable.They form
as much a part of our communicativesystem as words and tones, and
must, along with other communicativeacts,be integratedinto our organon
of that systembefore we can fully know how much importanceto attach
to any one of the parts-in particular,whether the present all-pervasive
attention to phonology is justified.7
1935,no. 4, pp. 1-126.
Monogrowphs}
6. Psychological
see R. H. Stetson,
7. Fora criticismof the currentfondnessfor 'logisticphonemics,'
Basesof Phonology,OberlinCollege,1945.

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