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It is this use that I was referring to when I spoke to my friends about it and when I suggested that it’s about love. I think I want to concentrate on Type 1, the use that men reserve for their friends. Bert and Ernie by See-ming Lee via Flickr When you lay them out like that you realise how rich that simple little word is, and all the things it can communicate. I find each of these uses really interesting. The man who is set on pushing into the queue or who believes an injustice has occurred might snap back, “I’m not your mate.” Of course, this use has the potential to be received as sarcastic. To stop a man pushing into a queue you might say, “The line starts back there, mate.” The nickname says that you have no hard feelings about the fact that the guy looked like he was going to push in, you’re not attacking him you’re just informing him in a friendly way.
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You might think that we’re aping those men because we want to be like that. By adopting their language sarcastically Ron and I are distinguishing ourselves from them. I think it’s partly that we’re making a mockery of the blokes who we are not: the jocks and and the hard lads and the cool kids and the real men. We have just used them in text messages for years, and maybe once or twice in real life. I suspect that Ron thinks these words are a bit naff just as much as I do, but we’ve never said it to each other. It’s an unwritten agreement that we’re ironic about it. I have an old friend who is male and we sometimes refer to each other with these stylised ways, calling each other mate or bro or dude over text message. I don’t mind it when someone uses ‘mate’ with their tongue in their cheek. Recently the word came up in conversation with a mixed group of friends, and one of the women said she didn’t really like it either.
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And yet it’s so common and apparently so harmless. I’ve always felt weird towards it, especially when people stick it on me.