etymology - How (and when) was it that the verb 'go' began to mean 'say' in common usage?


i.e. "So then she goes, 'Hey!' and I go, 'What?' because I was on my way out..."


I was musing about this the other day, so I decided to try to find out. Unfortunately, my skills lie in different areas than language research.


My instincts tell me that this is an outgrowth of hippie culture in the West during the late 60's, but I have no proof of this at all. I remember being in elementary school in the 80's and my teachers would absolutely flip out over this construction and lecture "People don't GO, Brian. People SAY." Lecturing notwithstanding, listening to students at recess revealed many students 'going' this or that.


It seems now to be relatively accepted in spoken English, though not written. It also seems to apply to a wider range of use cases than say, e.g.:


"So he goes (makes face like a duck) and then..."


So, it kind of has taken on a meaning of 'to communicate, to embody a message, to say' as well as to literally move from one place to another. At least it has in the midwest...is this in use anywhere else in the US?



Answer



Nobody can say when -- or where, or by whom -- this usage came into existence. It's probably been around in one guise or another, in English and its ancestor languages, for thousands of years, because it instantiates a widely used and very important Metaphor Theme. There are a number of concepts converging here.


Go is used because it's part of the Path Metaphor for communication (which in turn is part of the Conduit Metaphor theme).


Go (a Deictic term, semantically related to come, bring, and take) means, initially, to move away from where one currently is located. Maybe directed toward someone else, or maybe just out.


Messages of all sorts go forth from a source. In particular, sounds go forth. Go is often used in children's language to refer to the stylized sounds that common animals make:



  • Cows go "moo", dogs go "bow-wow", cats go "meow", ...


So it's a very small step from



  • The dog goes "Woof!", and he goes "Ouch!", and I go "What!?"


to



  • He goes "I'm not sure we should see each other any more" and I go "What do you mean?"


and in fact, just another small step from there to



  • He's like "I'm not sure we should see each other any more" and I'm like "What do you mean?"


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