One very creative use of language

One of my greatest joys is listening to conversations on the radio.  It gives me the opportunity to concentrate on the creative language people use without the visual distractions of other media.

Recently, a live interview with a local artist about his career produced a creative use of language that made me laugh out loud because it was so delightful.  Here is an approximation of part of the conversation.

Interviewer:  How did you develop a relationship with your mentor?

Artist:  Well, I had known him for a long time, but I didn't know know him until we worked together.

Did he say "know know"?  Yes, he did!  I'm guessing the artist was expressing the idea that the verb "to know" has several layers of meaning.  We can be familiar with someone's name, in which case we generally say, "I know of him."  We can have a mutual relationship with another person.  "I know Professor Smith; he was my instructor."  Or we can know someone on a deeper level, which this artist chose to express by "know know."   

After a little googling, I discovered that the doubling of a word to create a new meaning is described in the field of Linguistics as "contrastive reduplication"  (those linguists love esoteric labels!). And an interesting note is that the emphasis is always placed on the first word of the pair, KNOW know. Contrastive reduplication is usually found in informal spoken language, because emphasis is an important part of the expression.

I found a Facebook Community page entitled "Doubling up your words to add extra emphasis." Unfortunately, all it yielded was this one great cartoon.

So hunger comes in degrees. from being peckish, as I believe the British say, to being hungry enough to eat a bear, which would be more used in the American Southwest.

And I found this Zits cartoon of my favorite teenager.

"Up up" would be a great phrase to use when a friend in another time zone calls you at 5:00 am and asks if you are up yet.  You may be up enough to answer to phone but not up putting the coffee on yet.  

Here are a few other examples of contrastive reduplication:

"Do you like him or like like him?"

"Is it an e-book or a book book?'

"I can't go to the movies.  I have work to do."  "Housework or work work?"  (This is a conversation my husband and I often had when I was teaching.)

Other world languages use reduplication for other purposes, such as making the plural form of a word, describing a repeated action, or indicating that something is smaller or cuter.

But I like our American English use of doubled words to express a nuanced meaning of a common word. IKEA must have liked the idea as well, because they recently advertised an IKEA book book, with no new technology involved.   IKEA Advertisement