# "You \[expletive\], you!" (Joe Pesci) - is this speech pattern common anywhere? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162 "2018-01-08T21:16:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162/21 "2018-01-10T01:45:01Z")
Yes, it’s definitely used as an emphatic. ---
**Author:** ![Noel\_Prosequi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b19c9b/32.png) [@Noel\_Prosequi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noel_Prosequi)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162/22 "2018-01-10T04:34:19Z")
I am familiar with it, but I notice all the examples above are from songs or movies. I can’t think of a single real-life example I’ve ever heard, and if I heard it, I would imagine it would sound hokey, like someone trying too hard to borrow tough-speak from a movie. My sense is that it could no longer be said with authentic spontaneity. I could imagine writers on Friends have Ross say it as a marker of clumsy affectation, for example, but not as natural use of language. I had the impression it was a movie trope from around mid 20C whose life was artificially extended by force of its own (theatrical) repetition. Like adding a Jimmy Cagney “see?” at the end of each sentence, or the ineffectual fist shake at someone who escapes, although those died a natural death. I can still recognise some still-current Soprano-isms, like the “There he is!” use of the third person to greet someone in what should be a second person context. But the repeated “you” doesn’t seem to work as an intensifier to my ears any more. It just sort of steps on the actual insult, and peters out. You’re left with nowhere to go after the second “you”. You can’t start another insult with a third you, for example. “You motherfucker, you! You cocksucker, you!” just doesn’t work. Other old-timely threats might work after the second you, however- “Why I oughtta…!” ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162/23 "2018-01-10T05:11:33Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > I can still recognise some still-current Soprano-isms, like the “There he is!” use of the third person to greet someone in what should be a second person context. That’s a Sopranoism? I have friends that have been doing this forever. Then again, they are Italian, so maybe that’s a connection. I never thought of it as being connected to any particular ethnicity, though. It’s just a way to make it sound to the group you’re with (or even yourself, I suppose) that you’ve been talking about the missing party member, wondering where he is and all that. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162/24 "2018-01-10T05:28:42Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I’ve a feeling that I’ve heard of this kind of construct in some old English/pre-English language like Anglo-Saxon poetry or something, but I can’t put my finger on it. I found a couple lines from Shakespeare that seem to fit the bill, but nothing earlier. > [@Henry IV](#): > > Falstaff. Setting thy womanhood aside, thou art a beast to say otherwise. > > Hostess Quickly. Say, what beast, thou knave, thou? > [@Much Ado About Nothing](#): > > Leonato. Marry, thou dost wrong me; thou dissembler, thou:— > Nay, never lay thy hand upon thy sword; > I fear thee not. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162/25 "2018-01-10T15:38:27Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > That’s a Sopranoism? I have friends that have been doing this forever. Then again, they are Italian, so maybe that’s a connection. I never thought of it as being connected to any particular ethnicity, though. It’s just a way to make it sound to the group you’re with (or even yourself, I suppose) that you’ve been talking about the missing party member, wondering where he is and all that. Yeah I doubt any locution in the Soprano’s was intended to be an invention of the show though it’s possible some were by accident. It was supposed to show how NY area\* working class Italian Americans speak. Or spoke, given the general tendency of the Soprano’s to show 1960’s-70’s mobsters dealing with the world of the late 90’s early 00’s. I would say having gone to school in the NY area with mobster’s kids in the 60’s-70’s and still living in the area. The show is basically anachronistic, for entertainment. And I agree specifically ‘there he _is_’ is common in NY area and I’m not saying it’s uncommon elsewhere. Same with the original ‘you blank you’. I think Hollywood at one time had a tendency to adopt NY-speak as particularly ‘authentic’, even when not portraying NY mobsters. And NY/Hollywood had and still do to some extent a cultural connection generally. Though some of those patterns surely existed outside NY and long before Hollywood. \*theoretically NJ, but that dialect is NY area Italian American working class, though also shared to varying degrees by other white ethnic groups and even non-whites. But nailing down features which are specifically Newark (where most of the Soprano’s protagonists are supposed to have grown up) v Brooklyn or Long Island etc. is really in the weeds. It’s an ethnic/class thing more than specific geography within the NY area. I’m from Queens, similar age to what Tony Soprano would now be, and while many people from Queens speak similarly to him, I don’t at all. Everyone has an accent, but mine is pretty different, and people from elsewhere in the US can rarely locate me to NY by speech. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-expletive-you-joe-pesci-is-this-speech-pattern-common-anywhere/806162.md?page=1)