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Today we’re going to talk about unusual sentences you may have heard from people in customer service. So if you’ve ever wondered why someone behind the counter says, “Did you want cream in your coffee?” instead of “Do you want cream in your coffee?” or “I can help who’s next” instead of “I can help whoever’s next,” stay tuned.
Why Do People Use the Past Tense?
Using the past tense can sound more polite.
Regarding the question Did you want cream in your coffee?, a listener named Tullius writes that when he is asked this question, he thinks to himself, “When? Two seconds ago? I don’t remember, but I do [want cream] now.” This question about Did you want cream in your coffee? has come up in several places online. In addition to examples involving cream for coffee, people have complained about baristas asking, “Did you want a tall or a venti?”(1); store cashiers asking, “Did you need a bag?”; and sales staff asking, “Were you looking for something in particular?” (2) In all the situations, it would make sense to use the present tense: Do you want cream?, Do you want a tall or a venti?, Do you need a bag?, and Are you looking for something in particular?
The complaint is the same one Tullius had: Using the past tense carries the message that whether you wanted these things or not at some earlier time, you don’t now, in which case, why is the customer service worker even asking? This idea came up in episode 334, on using the past tense to say things such as, “The girl sitting next to me was named Stephanie,” even if the girl’s name presumably still is Stephanie.
Past Tense Can Indicate Uncertainty
However, as we discussed in that episode, the past tense has more functions than just indicating past time. In particular, it can allow us to talk about situations that are unlikely or unreal, a function called modal remoteness. One specialized use of modal remoteness is to show politeness, by phrasing something as if it’s less certain. For example, the past tense modal verbs could and would do this in the questions Could you do me a favor? and Would you like some dessert?
Similarly, the past tense auxiliary verbs did and were in our retail-related examples sound more polite than the present-tense versions because they’re not as in-your-face as the present-tense questions, which directly ask a customer about the here and now. Even though the customer-service worker is trying to help the customer, a direct question has a greater chance of being perceived as a pushy suggestion or as impatience: “Do you want cream or not? Hurry up and make up your mind; I have other customers, you know!”
Tullius had another comment about how some customer-service workers phrase things. He wrote, “I was recently asked at a popular sub sandwich chain, ‘Is it toasted?’ Plainly not, I thought, but wishing to be charitable, replied ‘Please.’ ” In other words, he was expecting something like Would you like it toasted? In a comment on a linguistics blog, a reader named Dan felt the same way, writing, “I’d say ‘I’ll have a turkey sandwich,’ and they’d respond, ‘What’s on it?’ And I’d be thinking, what do you mean ‘What’s on it?’? Nothing’s on it yet; you haven’t even started making it! Of course they meant ‘What would you like on it?’, but that would take too long to say….” (3)
We Have a Tendency To Shorten Things We Say Often
One theory is that these phrases are just an effect of saying something very frequently, the way phrases such as to make a long story short become simply long story short. As Dan noted later in his comment:
I think the lesson here is that anyone who has to say the same phrase 7000 times a day for several years is going to start trimming out the less-grammatically-mandatory bits. (Or, if they’re required by company policy to use an exact phrase, they’ll start trimming out the less phonetically-mandatory bits.)
Why Do People Ask “Can I Help Who’s Next”?
The blog post that Dan was responding to is actually about our last topic of unusual language in retail: the sentence I can help who’s next. The post was written by linguist Lynne Murphy, on her blog Separated by a Common Language. Can I help who’s next? has been the subject of numerous other online grammar discussions, usually by people who are annoyed that the person behind the counter says this instead of I can help whoever is next, or I can help the person who’s next.
The person gets fused into who’s next.
In sentences like these, the “who’s next” part is called a fused relative, in the terminology of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. You can think of it as doing the same job as the noun phrase “the person who’s next.” In fact, that’s why it’s called a fused relative: It’s as if “the person” has been merged into the “who’s next” so that we just have “who’s next” doing both jobs. Distinguishing fused relatives from ordinary interrogatives is an interesting exercise if you’re into language, but we don’t have time to go into the details here. The main point is, in present-day English, who isn’t the preferred way of forming fused relatives. Instead we prefer to use the pronoun whoever or not use a fused relative at all, and say the person who. The person who is next.
Other Places You Can Find Fused Relatives
Nevertheless, fused relatives exist in contexts other than serving people in a line. The linguist Geoff Pullum even quotes one from Shakespeare in a blog post on Can I help who’s next? (4) It’s a line from Iago in Othello: “Who steals my purse steals trash; ’twas mine, ’twas his, and has been slave to thousands.” Mark Liberman, another contributor to Language Log, has taken to calling fused relatives with who “Iago clauses,” and has collected several more examples of them in a post from 2013. (5) They include Who we cast is gonna do a great job, You play who you get, and Hire who you need. One commenter threw in this one from George Orwell’s 1984: Who controls the past controls the future. In a post on the blog Literal-Minded, there’s the example Who told me was my dad. (6)
Why Is “Can I Help Who’s Next”Annoying?
As for why Can I help who’s next? should sound incorrect to so many speakers, it’s probably one more effect of repetition. The other examples may sound fleetingly odd, but then they’re gone. But when you’re waiting in line and hear Can I help who’s next? again and again, and every time you do you think, Oh, I would have said ‘Can I help whoever’s next?,’ by the time you reach the front of the line, your mild curiosity might well have turned to annoyance.
But please, give those service workers a break, and focus on how they’re trying to help you, instead of on their grammar choices.
This podcast was written by Neal Whitman, who has a PhD in linguistics, blogs at LiteralMinded.wordpress.com, and is a regular contributor to the online resource Visual Thesaurus.
References
- 1. Patricia O’Conner. “Does she … or doesn’t she?” Blog post on Grammarphobe. April 27, 2009. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/04, accessed April 12, 2014.
- 2. Thread: Use past tense/passive to be more polite? June 27, 2011. WordReference.com language forums. https://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2186541, accessed April 12, 2014.
- 3. Comment on blog post “Can I help who’s next?” by Lynne Murphy. Blog post on Separated by a Common Language. Oct. 19, 2007. https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/10/can-i-help-whos-next.html?showComment=1192804140000#c4839489505111857777 , accessed April 12, 2014.
- 4. Geoff Pullum. “Can I help who’s next?” Blog post on Language Log. Dec. 4, 2005. This is the link, accessed Apr. 4, 2014.
- 5. Mark Liberman. “Fused relative clauses with who.” Blog post on Language Log. June 1, 2013. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4665 , accessed Apr. 4, 2014.
- 6. Neal Whitman. “Who told me was my dad.” Blog post on Literal-Minded. Jan. 15, 2011. https://literalminded.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/who-told-me-was-my-dad/ , accessed Apr. 4, 2014.