English Motherfucker, Do You Speak It?

About

English, Motherfucker, Do You Speak It? is a famous catchphrase spoken by actor Samuel L. Jackson in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction. The line became a commonly used catchphrase online and resulted in numerous memes over the course of the 2000s, including but not limited to image macros, photoshops and Demotivational Posters. Similarly, the lines "Does He Look Like A Bitch?" and "Say 'What' Again I Double Dare You," taken from the same scene, have seen similar popularization.

Origin

On October 14th, 1994, Quentin Tarantino's third film Pulp Fiction release in North America, becoming a massive hit and spawning many iconic scenes. One of the most well-known scenes sees Samuel L. Jackson's character Jules hold a gun to a man and shout, "English, motherfucker, do you speak it?" (shown below).

It's unknown when the phrase was first used online or started being used in memes, but early examples can be found dating back to 2008, such as a demotivational poster featuring a version of the phrase and an image of Jules uploaded to Ebaum's World^[1] on April 16th, 2008 (shown below).

Spread

The phrase gained considerable popularity in memes over the course of the 2010s used across social media platforms and imageboards. For example, in February 2010, an anonymous demotivation.me^[2] user posted an image of a penguin yelling the line at a seal, garnering over 9,700 visits in 11 years (shown below).

The phrase saw significant popularity on 4chan^[3] that year as well, often brought up in "favorite movie quote" threads on /tv/ and alongside images of Jackson, also used to criticize users who make grammatical mistakes or fail to understand something (example shown below).

On February 19th, 2014, DeviantArt^[4] user h311Man posted an image macro featuring the phrase, garnering over 5,000 views in seven years (shown below).

Related Memes

Does He Look Like A Bitch?

Does He Look Like A Bitch? is another line of dialogue spoken by Jackson in the same scene of Pulp Fiction, which also became the subject of memes over the course of the 2000s, often associated with an image of Jackson grimacing from the scene (examples shown below).

Say "What" Again I Double Dare You

Say "What" Again I Double Dare You is another line of dialogue spoken by Jackson in the same scene of Pulp Fiction, which also became the subject of memes over the course of the 2000s (examples shown below, left and right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References