DCHP-2

eh eh?, eh! DCHP-2 (March 2017)

• • Eh is a preservation from British English, where some uses are still common. OED-3, s.v. "eh", identifies two meanings, which are roughly equivalent to meaning 1a (OED-3, meaning 2: 'often inviting assent') and meanings 2b and 3 (OED-3, meaning 3: 'a request for . . . repetition or explanation').
    This account distinguishes between four main functions (with meaning numbers): 1 Confirmational uses, 2 Contesting uses, 3 Pardon eh, and 4 Narrative uses.
    Its use in Canada and in other Commonwealth countries, e.g. as a marker of group identities in New Zealand, see Meyerhoff (1994), can be seen as developments of the inherited form. What stands out in the North American context is the perceived differential use of eh in Canada and the US, which created a precondition for enregisterment of eh as a Canadian form (see Agha 2006: 55). Enregisterment means that a particular form comes to be seen as a stereotypic marker of identity.
    While eh is found both in the US and Canada, during the post-war period eh in both places came to be seen as marking a Canadian-American contrast, and, within Canada, as marking a rural-urban contrast.
    The earliest evidence for eh as Canadian stems from Allen (1959, reprint 1975), who considered one meaning of eh (meaning 3, pardon eh), as early as the 1950s,
    

    so exclusively a Canadian feature that immigration officials use it as an identifying clue [to tell Canadians from Americans]. (Allen 1975 [1959]: 105)

    Hard evidence for this assessment, however, must have been scarce at the time, as eh was deliberately not included in DCHP-1.
    
  • Eh is a good example of the important role language attitudes can play in language change. Attitudinal change affected eh after World War II at a speed that was difficult to capture in the written record, posing a challenge to linguists and lexicographers alike. Since that time, eh has developed into the "quintessential Canadian English stereotype" (Denis 2013: 1). While occasionally used by speakers of higher social standing (e.g. former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1971 quotation under meaning 1c), there is strong evidence that eh in the Canadian context eh is aligned primarily with "blue collar, non-urban, male" speakers (Denis 2013: 5). The enregisterment of eh as a marker of unsophisticated, rural characters of the beer-drinking type is connected with the comedy skit The Great White North by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas (see the 1981 quotation and video link in meaning 5).
    Chart 1 shows the differential frequencies of eh in a Toronto speech corpus by the speakers' birth years and social class (red = blue-collar, blue = white-collar workers). It can be seen that across all ages blue-collar workers use eh more frequently and that for those born in the 1960s or later the overall frequency of eh, at least in big cities such as Toronto, has declined considerably. These speakers use other pragmatic markers, such as right, you know, yeah or huh, among others, in place of eh for meanings such as 1a, 1b and 1c. What is interesting is that eh is a rather infrequent feature in Canadian English. Despite an increase in reported use between the early 1970s, when only 15 and 27 percent of Canadians reported eh in meanings 1a or 3 (Scargill & Warkentyne 1972: 75-76), to 78 and 39 percent respectively in the 2000s (Gold & Tremblay 2006: 252), eh is not as frequent as commentary on it would suggest. In their Toronto data, eh is used only in 6 percent of cases, competing with right, you know, yeah and other terms (Denis & Tagliamonte 2016: 97) and is "very infrequent at all ages despite its status as a stereotype of Canadian English" (ibid: 98). Denis (2013: 7-8) cites blog data where more than 95% of uses of eh stem from Americans commenting on Canadians using eh, which stresses its performative aspect. Because of this association, if Canadians want to sound Canadian, they may use the form internationally.
    In the early 1970s, Walter S. Avis took issue with the idea that eh was Canadian. It was consequently not included in DCHP-1, but was listed in Avis' general language dictionaries (Gage-1 and its Beginner's and Intermediate editions) without a Canadian label. Responding to reviewers' criticism of its omission from DCHP-1, Avis was arguing that eh is general English with Canadians and Americans merely 'thinking' that there was a Canadian character to it:

    the implication seems clear that lexicographers class it as universal English. This being the case, how did word get around that eh? is a Canadianism? (Avis 1972: 90)

    Given that the lexicographers were Avis and his team at the time, their assessment of the status of eh is couched as a generally established fact that Avis, as far as the print record is concerned, defended brilliantly in his 1972 paper. As far as spoken language was concerned, eh was by that time already showing some signs as a Canadian identity marker and it was on the way to becoming "enregistered" as a Canadian emblem, despite its history in other varieties (as can be seen in a number of studies, e.g. Gibson 1976); Avis offered no spoken evidence and seems to have possibly missed early cues for the enregisterment in Canadian English of eh, which has a documented history of use in British, American, Australian and New Zealand Englishes, among others.
    Gold & Tremblay (2006) compared the use of Canadian French hein and Canadian English eh, both particles with very similar functions. They conclude rather differently from Avis some three decades earlier that:
    

    eh [, but not hein,] has developed into a marker of both dialect and national identity, taking on connotations associated with other non-linguistic institutional markers of Canadian identity. Eh has expanded its function from an oral discourse marker to an icon of Canadian identity, widely used in newspapers, advertising, and on the Web. (Gold & Tremblay 2006: 262)

    All meanings below are considered Canadian by virtue of enregisterment and cultural significance. Images 1 and 2 show examples of eh? in popular culture. In Image 1, a slogan button, a beaver, a symbol for Canada, says "Yeh" rather than "Yeah". Image 2 shows just two T-shirt designs of about 25 with eh available for order at https://www.wordans.ca/.
    

• 1a particle — informal, slang

  to elicit confirmation for one’s statement.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — This is the most common use of eh in writing, as it covers more than 95% of (written) uses in the BCE. When people talk about "Canadian" eh, this meaning is the most frequent type of example offered and, together with meaning 4, usually the only two types that are reported in popular media. In Scargill & Warkentyne (1972: 75-76) between 15 and 27% report the use of eh in So that's what he thinks, eh?.
  
  A prototypical sentence would be: You have a new dog, eh?

  • Gage-5, s.v. "eh" (2), marks and defines the term as (2) "Can. Informal, an all-purpose tag question", while meaning (3) is given as "Cdn Informal, a filler"; ITP Nelson does not mark the term as Canadian.
    COD-2 lists four meanings of eh, of which only meaning 2 is considered as "Cdn": 'ascertaining the comprehension, continued interest, agreement, etc. of the person or persons addressed: it's way out in the suburbs, eh, so I can't get there by bike. This meaning is complemented with a usage note:
    "This is the only usage of eh that can be categorized as peculiarly Canadian, all other uses being common amongst speakers in other Commonwealth countries and to a lesser extent in the United States."
    Note that our evidence does not confirm the exclusive status of this rather comprehensive meaning in Canadian English.

• 1b particle — informal, slang

  to elicit acknowledgment.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Rather than seeking confirmation of a belief or opinion (meaning 1a), the speaker aims to receive the interlocutor's acknowledgement of a fact. Boberg (2010: 122) suggests that this function, or a subtype confirming that the addressee has "understood what was said" (ibid), is a Canadian extension of uses.
  A protoypical example sentence would be I have a new dog, eh?

• 1c particle — informal, slang

  to create or confirm agreement.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — The function is to increase the chances that a suggestion will be accepted by the interlocutor, which is reached by toning down the suggestion's force with eh. It can be used in a number of contexts, from political interviews (see the 1971 quotation) to informal editorials (see the 2013 quotation).

• 1d particle — informal, slang

  to confirm a shared sentiment.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — This use is only possible when speaker and interlocutor (writer and reader) have shared the same experience. In some instances, this use is called exclamative eh (Gibson 1976, Gold & Tremblay 2006). The experience can be a specific context (as in the 1863 quotation of two pioneer settlers) or a general truth, such as living in the Western world (see the 2004 quotation).
  A prototypical example would be: What a great game, eh? or What’s he talking about, eh? [when the assumption is that all listeners are confused].

• 1e particle — informal, slang

  to confirm compliance.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — This use is synonymous with will you? and tones down the force of what is essentially a command or request. At times this sense is called imperative eh (e.g. Gibson 1976: 46-48) or classified as a type of command (Gold & Tremblay 2006: 249).
  A prototypical sentence would be Get me a drink, eh?. Both speaker and listener would be in the social roles or situations that would make the process of getting the speaker a drink feasible, yet eh, similar to will you, tones down the command.

• 2 particle — informal, slang

  expression of disbelief.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Linked to meanings 1a-1e, the function is not to confirm one's belief or obtain compliance, but to express one's surprise over the offered information.

• 3 particle — informal, slang

  to elicit repetition; "I beg you pardon?"; "what?"

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Referred to as "Pardon eh", this use is synonymous with I beg your pardon in the sense of asking for a repetition of what was said.

• 4 particle — informal, slang

  to check that the listener is following (narrative eh).

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Since Avis (1972), there have been reports that narrative eh is a distinctly Canadian use as it is claimed to be "found primarily in oral evidence of Canadian origin (1972: 101). Narrative eh used to be the most stigmatized use of eh, often associated with working class, uneducated or rural speech (see the 1946 quotation). Even today, however, narrative eh remains rare, though it is used by people of higher social standing, such as the former Newfoundland & Labrador Premier Danny Williams (see the 2004 quotation). Gold and Tremblay (2006: 254) report low uses of eh in general, but particularly negative assessments of narrative eh for English speakers even today.

  See also: Great White North

  • One continuing problem is the varying interpretation of category names. While Columbus (2010: Tables 4 & 5) identifies narrative eh as the third most frequent use of eh in the International Corpus of English - Canada (out of 18 categories), she seems to include meaning 1b in her "narrative" category (example in Table 6).

• 5 particle

  metalinguistic commentary to express a link with Canada or rural Canada.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Commentary on the Canadian status of eh has contributed its share to the enregisterment of eh and commodification (see Images 1 and 2) of the form in association with Canada. The SCTV skit The Great White North, airing on TV since 1981, has had a considerable share in this process as it "popularized several expressions putatively representative of vernacular Canadian speech, such as "how's it goin' eh?"; "had a good day, eh?" (Boberg 2010: 45). See the Video link for a clip of The Great White North skit below.