> 'Like' as a substitute for 'say' seems to be more recent, generationally-speaking. It is indeed! Earliest academic mentions seem to be around 1980, and as of

> 'Like' as a substitute for 'say' seems to be more recent, generationally-speaking. It is indeed! Earliest academic mentions seem to be around 1980, and as of 1990 it was used mostly by people under 30: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/455910.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/455910.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_... The "be like" quotative is popularly thought to have specifically originated in Southern California youth culture, but I'm not finding any good studies that address this (the one I linked mentions regional differences as a subject they didn't have the data to investigate).