Scott Kiesling of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh analyses the word Dude

Full of such classics as:

"Next we turn to investigate how this term is used in contextualized interactions among college-aged men in 1993, and to view some examples of its use in interaction, to understand how these indexicalities are put to use. I’ll first outline where dude appears, and then the various functions it fulfills in interaction..."