zlacker

In the 1970s, did the term "man" (in that context) have the same frat-boy, jock, alpha-male, etc. set of connotations?

>>oneeye+(OP)
No, it is clear that it did not. The usage of 'man' referenced upthread was, probably somewhat earlier than that time, transitioning from 'generic term of address for a male person' to 'means of communicating emphasis when addressing someone (not necessarily male)'. It wasn't used as a labeling term for 'type of man'; rather 'man' was, of course, as it still is, the generic label for 'adult male person'. I still hear vocative and emphatic usages of 'man' though the vocative usage seems somewhat old-fashioned to me.

My assumption has been that the vocative usage of 'man' was originally associated particularly with urban African-American speech and got picked up by youth culture during the 1950s and 1960s, much as was happening with other urban African-American slang and dialect usages.

The trajectory of 'dude' in the 1980s (possibly given a significant push by the film Fast Times at Ridgemont High) was somewhat similar to that of 'vocative->emphasis man', though 'dude' of course had been a term that had earlier on been used as a label for certain categories of men (e.g. the 'surfer dude' and the much earlier usages that go back to the 19th century).