n most parts of the country, telling someone “Bless your heart” would be heard as a positive gesture.
In the South, however, you may get a different reaction.
In a recent story on the gay marriage debate in Alabama, the New York Times quoted someone using the phrase “Bless his heart.”
The reporter then defined the phrase by saying that it “tends to transmit a mix of pity, compassion and gentle judgment.”
Apart from your grandmother, who probably means it when she says it to you, the phrase is largely seen as Southern code, a way for Southerners to insult someone in a less direct way.
Michael Adams, an English professor at the University of Indiana, said the phrase’s snarkiness is exclusive to Southerners. Southerners know what “bless your heart” has come to mean, but elsewhere, it has kept its more heartfelt meaning.
“It stands for the South and indicates membership,” he said, in that if you know what it really means, you belong. “It’s been manipulated for social effect.”
Stanley Dubinsky, an English professor at University of South Carolina, said the phrase is often used in lieu of an insult followed by a “just kidding,” a way for the speaker to “sidestep responsibility for whatever they just said.”
“It is used to soften what would otherwise be an insult,” Dubinsky said. “When taken literally, it is quite a nice thing to say.”
Dubinsky said phrases like these often take a life of their own.
“Words are really slippery things,” Dubinsky said. “People set expressions and use them for whatever they want to use them for.”
“Bless your heart” is just one example of the South’s way with words. For example, “we’re living in high cotton” is a tip of the hat to the Southern economy.