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The Eh-B-Cs of Linguistics
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January 13, 2004 -- All her life, Hancock native Laura Walikainen has been steeped in the dialect of the Upper Peninsula. So, when she talked with her linguistics professor about starting a research project, an obvious choice was the much beloved and much maligned word "eh," along with its corollary, "hey."
"I looked up everything I could on the 'eh' phenomenon, and it almost all dealt with the Canadian 'eh,'" says Walikainen, a junior majoring in social sciences at Michigan Technological University. "There were no studies of 'eh' on the U.S. side of the border, 'eh' in the U.P."
In the language of linguists, "eh" and "hey" are discourse particles: small, seemingly incidental words between sentences that nevertheless have important functions in conversation. In the case of "eh" and "hey," they are often used to solicit agreement or pass the conversational ball to another speaker.
Under the direction of Victoria Bergvall, an associate professor in Michigan Tech's Department of Humanities, Walikainen went out into the field to conduct basic research on the use of "eh" and "hey." It's not as glamorous as you might think.
"I would stand around in Wal-Mart for hours waiting for someone to say it," she said.
Armed with a notebook, she lurked behind posts and paper towel displays, hoping that someone, anyone, would utter "eh" or "hey."
"It's the hang-around methodology," Bergvall chuckles.
What Walikainen found was surprising. "Eh" may slowly be dying out, at least in this corner of the U.P., and being supplanted by the incoming varient "hey."
She tracked the use of "eh" and "hey" by age group. Those age 65 and older said "eh" three times as often as they said "hey."
Among the middle-aged, the split was about 50-50. Young people, however, were three times as likely to say "hey" as "eh."
Apparently, "hey" is cool and "eh" is for fuddy duddies. "It feels more socially acceptible to say 'hey' instead of 'eh' in my age group," says Walikainen, 21. "Many times, people have made fun of me for saying 'eh'. It feels better to say 'hey.'"
It also feels right. "One thing that came to me during this study was how important this little particle is," she says. "Once I purposely left off the 'hey' when I was talking with my mom, and it felt so wrong."
"I think the most interesting thing is that the locals don't necessarily say 'eh'; they also say 'hey,'" Bergvall said. "When we set up the study, we wanted to find out what was up with that."
So why is the dialect changing?
"Eh" may be losing its predominance in local parlance in part because of unwarranted attention by national media.
"One of Laura's sources talked about how 'eh' might be less used because it's stigmatized by 'Doug and Bob Mackenzie,' who appear as the mooses' voices in the new Disney movie 'Brother Bear,'" Bergvall said. "The two moose endlessly use the Canadian version of 'eh.' Even in the website for the movie, the moose are saying 'Click here, eh!'"
No indigenous eh-sayer would ever say that, but for proof that Hollywood can get it wrong, you can visit http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/brotherbear/ and place your cursor over "Enter Here."
"The two moose are reprising characters from a comedy skit by Rick Moranis and actor Dave Thomas, who in 1983 did a movie, 'Strange Brew,' and a series of SCTV comedy skits about beer-swilling, eh-saying guys up north," Bergvall said. "I asked my son what he thought of the moose in the movie. He thought they weren't very smart.
"Our concern is that the negative image of unintelligence is thus linked to eh-sayers in general and is now made national by this movie."
In any case, Walikainen's data clearly illustrate the generational shift in usage, Bergvall says. "It's a small but nicely done study, and it's very appropriate for undergraduate research," she said. "Laura is learning what research means. You get one thing nailed down and then you have more questions and have to go back to work."
Walikainen gave a presentation on her study at the North American Undergraduate Linguistics Conference, held at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in October.
That doesn't mean she can quit hanging out at Wal-Mart. "I'm still researching the meanings of 'eh' and 'hey,'" she says. "People who use it don't think about it. I'm not done yet."
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