Two numbers have been puzzling parents, teachers, coaches and older — and perhaps the not-so-old — Americans these last few months: six and seven.
Whether it’s part inside joke, part rallying cry or part meme, no one really knows what to make of these two offending numerals.
If you ask most children what it means, they probably can’t tell you either — and that might be the point.
The trend, which likely originates from Skrilla’s hit rap song “Doot Doot (6 7)” and a handful of viral videos, has flooded social media and classrooms from kindergarten to high school.
For Cynthia Gordon, a linguistics professor in the College of Arts & Sciences, the trend is not just a funny — or perhaps frustrating — social phenomenon but also a point of study. Gordon researches online and social media discourse and how linguistic patterns can shape communities. When she first heard of the “6-7” trend, she didn’t know what it meant, so she researched and discussed the phenomenon with students in her Discourse of Social Media class to better understand the phrase.
“The only ‘6-7’ thing I remembered from my long-ago childhood was the joke, ‘Why was six scared of seven? Because seven eight (ate) nine.’ This has nothing to do with that,” Gordon said. “While it seems to be established that ‘6-7’ doesn’t carry much, or possibly any, informational meaning, it’s clear that it does carry social meaning, which is very important.”
We asked Gordon about the trend confusing Americans across the country and how linguistic trends shape everyday language.
Ask a Professor: How Linguistic Trends Form and the Meaning Behind ‘6-7’
Why do you think this trend started when it doesn’t appear to have any meaning behind it?
As a society, we tend to view language use as primarily for the exchange of information. But language use is also fundamental to our social lives; it’s how we build our identities, relationships and social worlds. This idea is central to my field, sociolinguistics, and the “6-7” trend serves as a good reminder that communication isn’t just transactional.
People regularly give social meanings to all sorts of things that don’t inherently carry social meanings — foods, items of clothing, cars, words and so on. For example, avocado toast is avocado smashed and spread on toast and then eaten, but it has developed social meanings (in part through being heavily featured on social media). It has been linked with the social attribute of sophistication, it signals meaning pertaining to the eater’s presumed health and it is sometimes seen as emblematic of millennials. Attributing meaning to people, places, objects, actions and words is how we navigate our social worlds.
How do linguistic trends like ‘6-7’ take on meaning and become funny or catchy in the process?
The “6-7” trend seems oriented to humor and play. It is only humorous, however, if a group of people are “insiders” and collectively evaluate it as funny. For some children, “6-7” has apparently caught on to the point of being disruptive in classrooms; the sequence of numbers might be uttered by a math teacher who is not in the know, unexpectedly eliciting students’ laughter.
As a linguist who has learned about this form, I find it interesting, but I do not find it funny. In other words, “6-7” does not exist for my benefit. Use of “6-7” connects insiders – young people – through shared understanding, building a community of children and adolescents that is set off from the world of adults. Forms like “6-7” allow young people to express independence from older generations, while building solidarity amongst themselves.
Before social media, how did linguistic trends take off? How does social media change how these linguistic patterns evolve?
Young people, young women especially, tend to lead linguistic innovations. Sociolinguists have explained this trend as related to women’s recognition and mobilization of language as a resource for social mobility, as well as their greater willingness to exhibit non-conformist linguistic behavior (this is especially true for working-class women.)
An example of a linguistic innovation led by young women is 1980s “Valley girl” talk, identifiable through features such as uptalk (using rising intonation at the end of utterances, even those that are not inquiries), use of newer words such as grody (for “gross”) and the frequent use of like. This way of speaking is traceable to California, but as a tween/young teen in Michigan in the second half of the 1980s, I used some of these features. Entertainment media helped spread “Valley girl” talk. Social media accelerates linguistic trends and gives wider audiences access to them.
How long do these linguistic trends tend to last?
It really depends. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone say “grody” in decades, but the term “like” continues to be frequently used, including in the form of the quotative marker be + like (e.g., she was like, ‘I think that’s gross’). In conversational discourse, be + like can be used to introduce what someone thought, felt or said. It’s a productive linguistic form! Because “6-7” seems to be a way of being silly, playing and (sometimes) acting in ways that adults find disruptive, I don’t think it will last very long.
What makes a linguistic trend go from a temporary fad to something that becomes a more permanent fixture in everyday language?
Be + like is one example. It is a useful strategy in many contexts, such as when a person is telling a story and conveying someone else’s attitude or words. My impression is that as entertainment media sticks around longer and longer (through being available on streaming services, and because some television shows, like The Simpsons, have now been on for decades), words and phrases from them may become more permanent. They become memes that constantly recirculate. A few years ago, Homer Simpson’s exclamation d’oh was added to the Oxford English Dictionary (though it is spelled doh). I can’t say I would have predicted that!
