It's going the way of the phonograph record, the drive-in theater and the typewriter. If "you're welcome" isn't exactly unwelcome, it's at least becoming unpopular. An assortment of phrases, words and even sounds are replacing it as responses to "Thank you."
If you don't think "you're welcome" is an endangered idiom, step inside a toll booth on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Now listen as collector Janine McLaren says "thank you" to 100 commuting motorists after accepting their money. Here's a compendium of their replies:"Thank you": 44
"Yup": 4
"OK": 3
"Wanna hear a good joke?": 1
"You're welcome": 1
Distracted cellular phone user: 2
Silence: 42
"We really don't expect a `you're welcome,' " McLaren says.
Good thing. "You're welcome" dates from around the turn of the century, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, and the way things are going it may not live to be 100.
A few minutes of channel surfing confirms a national shortage. On NBC's "Today" show one recent morning, there was Maj. Aaron Campbell of the Miami Dade Police Department replying to a "thank you" for a lengthy interview with a "thank you" of his own.
On ABC's "Good Morning America" about the same moment, Bob Schultz of the American Camping Association was using a hearty "You bet!" as his version of "you're welcome."
And on "This Morning" on CBS, breast cancer study participant Fern Maklin was responding to her interviewer's thanks with silence. (A few minutes later, on "Good Morning America," Maklin switched to "thank you.")
So what's happening here? Miss Manners, a k a Judith Martin, syndicated arbiter of etiquette, says "you're welcome" is among the conventional phrases that were once passed dutifully from parent to child. "They simply are no longer automatically taught by rote," Miss M. points out.
Allan Metcalf concurs. The executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, Metcalf believes that the disappearance of "you're welcome" is a language statement akin to a fashion statement. "It reminds me of the way young men nowadays wear baseball caps indoors," he says. "It's a changing of custom, and they're genuinely surprised that anyone should consider it improper."
The list of substitutes for "you're welome" includes "that's quite all right" (upscale), "anytime" (midscale), "forget it" (down-scale), "no sweat" (way down-scale), "don't mention it" (pilfered from the British), and "my pleasure" (also a British import). But the most common relacements are clearly "thank you" and "no problem," even though the latter is apparently absent from toll booth discourse.
" `No problem' has become the international catch phrase," says Jeffrey McQuain, a researcher and writer on language. "You even hear it used by people in othercountries who speak English as a second language. It's becoming a response for everything."
The problem with "no problem" is that it implies there was indeed a problem that the speaker has chosen to ignore. "It demeans the other person," contends Hilka Klinkenberg, who runs a small New York company that teaches etiquette to corporate executives. "It says, `What I did for you was nothing, so why are you thanking me?' "
But Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University and a commentator on lan-guage on National Public Radio, thinks that's precisely why "no problem" has become a hit. "It's the voice of the service economy," he says. "You use `no problem' when you want to indicate that you really didn't go out of your way to do something. It acknowledges that you provided a service. When you say `no problem,' you're really saying, "You don't have to thank me, sir, because I'm here to serve you.'
" `You're welcome,' Nunberg muses, "is what old bankers used to say from behind their marble counters."
To echo "thank you" with another "thank you," meanwhile, seems to be politeness run amok. "It's kind of an attempt at one-upsmanship," says McQuain. "It's an attempt to be as courteous as the other person. It suggests that you're equally thankful, that the other person has done something for you. Whereas `you're welcome' acknowledges that you've done something to be thanked for, which seems to make a lot of people uncomfortable."
According to Klinkenberg, ours has indeed become a culture that is embarrassed by showing thanks and appreciation. "Saying `thank you' and `you're welcome' smooths out interaction and makes people feel good," she says. "But as a culture we seem to be uncomfortable with a sense of reciprocality. I have to work very carefully with American executives who travel abroad, to make sure they understand how important it is to say `thank you' and `you're welcome.' Because in other cultures, it can be very offensive not to say it."
Nunberg, the language professor, has no problem with "no problem" and the other substitutes for "you're welcome." "It seems to me that there are a lot of `thank yous' that don't demand a `you're welcome,"' he says. "When a waiter pours you a cup of coffee and you thank him, he doesn't have to say `you're welcome.' That's his job."
But Martin, the etiquette expert, believes the proper answer to "thank you" remains the same. "I'm not fighting on the ramparts over this," she says, "but I use `you're welcome' because it's the convention that we know. I'm leery of do-it-yourself etiquette wherein people make changes for no good reason. Which I think is the case here."