acroyear: (oh yeah)
[personal profile] acroyear
"How come 'Bless His Heart' and 'What an Asshole' sound so close to each other?" -- my office mate, today.

A Cultural Lesson

Date: 2005-02-02 04:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com
I have no idea if you're a Southerner or not. If you are, you already know this.

If you're not:

All violent cultures (The Old South, Feudal Japan, Elizabethan England, some of today's Middle Eastern cultures) have a strong system of formal manners and shades of expression that permit one to say nasty things indirectly without actually saying it in such a way as to get oneself skewered or one's ass shot off.

For a full explaination of heart blessing, see http://www.dixiebass.com/dixiebass/bless.htm

My family FEARS it when I interject "bless his heart" into a phrase.

Date: 2005-02-02 08:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] selkiesiren.livejournal.com
Yup...that's the Southern translation (according to my best friend, whose wife is "Suthun").

Gimme the raw info any day. But then, I was raised by New Englanduhs.

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