Fuggedaboutit—Alpha Male Linguistics

Hey, anytime. No biggie. Don't worry about it. Psycholinguistic research reveals that we choose our gratitude acknowledgements pragmatically, proving that such language isn't phatic (devoid of content) after all. University of Western Ontario psychologist Albert Katz suggests men, in particular, may use "anytime" to convey dominance by signaling they have sufficient means to do the favor again in the future.

In a study, people responded to written scenarios that described them doing someone a favor. Manipulating the "cost" of favors in terms of time, effort, or money, Katz and two colleagues asked the volunteers to choose responses to thanks and justify their choices. Not surprisingly, open-ended phrases like "anytime" and "whatever you need" were used less when favors were costly.

But there was also this surprising finding: When men used "anytime"—and explained their choice as an invitation to be asked to perform the favor again—it was far more often for high-cost favors and when the favor-asker was male. Katz speculates that the men were displaying "a linguistic form of alpha-male behavior," in other words saying, " 'Hey, I'm higher than you in the dominance hierarchy—I have the resources.' " —Conrad McCallum

"Anytime" Zones

Don't take these foreign language approximations of "you're welcome" too literally.

Spanish has the kindly un placer (a pleasure), the handy de nada (it was nothing), and the polite siempre a la orden (always at your service), while German gives us bitte (please), keine Ursache (no problem), nichts zu danken (nothing to thank) and gern geschehen (it happened gladly). And in French, there's ça me fait plaisir (that pleases me).