i’m doing all this research on when “like” is used as a filler vs. “um” or “uh” or whatever & i’m really loving this
basically my fav pattern so far is how these teen girls use “like” pretty exclusively when they’re sharing these concepts that are unknown to them or just guess work, ya know?
they’ll say “here’s the, um, living room” but then they’ll say “in this picture my brother is, like, howling or something”
& i love it i mean i love the way they use “like” to express uncertainty and idk pensiveness? “um” expresses a break in a sentence, some disfluency. but “like” holds actual semantic meaning and is an indicator that expresses what follows isn’t gonna be totally accurate but just to the speaker’s best estimation.
i mean, he’s, like, howling or something, right?
girl talk is cool talk
I actually just wrote a 45 page thesis on this so here’s some more info on that if you wanna know more.
1. Like used in this way can be considered either a discourse particle or an approximative adverb. A discourse particle is a focusing agent which shows that hte information directlyt foloowing it is the main point of the utterance. It’s a language-efficiency tool and makes it more direct. IT is also used in moments of high excitement for this reason–you want people to know the point and you want it to hit them in the fucking face. An approximative adverb like is used to show that the information it’s modifying is imprecise and therefore, approximate.
2. This isn’t girl talk! Like’s usage is barely different among genders of the same age group, but is heavily stratified by age. THe reason it’s commonly thought of as “girl talk” is because it illustrates uncertainty and impreciseness–this is an example of sexism in language, because it intones that women don’t actually know what they’re talking about (FUCK THAT). It was once true that like was used primarily by women, but with shifting power paradigms, its usage is becoming more equal by gender.
3. You mentioned before that you uncovered this information concerning like while researching its relation to uh or um: this usage of like is known as a hesitation marker and has no semantic content, and is therefore unrelated to the type of like you’re describing. Hesitation marker like is often thought of as all the unconventional uses of like which is why people think that it’s a garbage filler word (though I don’t think there’s any such thing as a garbage word tbh), but it has so many unique uses which aren’t represented in English in other forms.
4. FUNFACT: A related use of like is as a quotative complementizer. I won’t delve into the syntax portion of what a complementizer is, but the quotative part obviously refers to quoted information. Here, like can be used to show either that the quoted information is estimated to the best of the speaker’s ability or that there is a storytelling aspect, typically with exaggeration or acting. YOU CAN TELL THE DIFFERENCE AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT. When the quoted information preserves the tenses in the original utterance, it is intended to be a direct quote. When the verb tenses are adapted to the present conversation, it is the second category, and is either an exaggerated quote or the speaker is just trying to convey the gist of the original utterance.
5. Language fucking rules.
I love you, Marie. I was even going to text you after work about this…I wanted to know your sources!
:D
(via bonehandledknife)
