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> Had [old white dudes] been the ones to pioneer these tics, we'd be praising them as enriching expansions of the language. We'd be reading The, Like, New Yorke

by Shish2k 13y ago

> Had [old white dudes] been the ones to pioneer these tics, we'd be praising them as enriching expansions of the language. We'd be reading The, Like, New Yorker I wasn't aware (and still don't care) which social group started adding "like" to everything; the reason it bothers me is that it adds noise without adding signal... (Though I'm not a linguist; maybe there is some signal there that I'm just not consciously aware of?)

laquiechanaenae 13y ago
Implied culture, style, and casualness are certainly signal, though not in the formal academic sense.
showerst 13y ago
That usage sense is called a discourse particle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C_filler.2C_hedge.2C_or_speech_disfluency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C... It can contain signal when used as a hedge ("The restaurant is only, like, five miles from here.") but generally that usage just substitutes for 'uh' or 'um' while signaling some group-membership (originally Valley Girl I think?)
Cushman 13y ago
Personally I've observed many meanings in use. As an adverb it means "figuratively" or "approximately". As a hedge word it more generally disclaims that what follows may be inaccurate or metaphorical. It's used in the place of "to say" or "to impart", filling in for the lack of a word which applies equally to text messages as to speech, with the implication (since it's a hedge) that the quoted speech is likely re- or paraphrased. It can be used as a mild intensifier, as in, "Okay, but, like..."; despite what you may think, simply adding weight to a phrase can and does alter it semantically. So it's a very versatile word, and there are other uses I've missed. And of course, it is used purely as a stall (er, a disfluency), though not heavily outside of a few dialects. All of this falls under the linguistic study of "discourse", the way humans talk in real-world communication with each other. In linguistics, rules of discourse are real and as important as rules of grammar. Nobody uses only "approved" words or meanings of words or interactions of words; the ideas human beings communicate are more complex than that. Having laid all that out, I'll say something you'll probably find challenging: the real reason you don't like it is because you don't know what it means. Which is of course the point of it, and the reason to label it as innovation.
wpietri 13y ago
Is that the reason it bothers you? That's the reason I'd give if pressed. But as the article shows, people are inclined to give a lot of reasons that don't hold up. There's a pattern to who's giving the reasons and who's on the receiving end that suggest that there's something else going on. For example, "like" is often used as a replacement for "um" or "er". But "like" bothers me more. And different cultures have different noises for that; one of my small delights is figuring out what country somebody is from by which noise they use to indicate that they are holding the floor but need a second to think. I actively enjoy those, even though they're equally low-signal. And there's a lot of word-compression slang (e.g., "totes" for "totally", "prolly" for "probably") that increases the signal, so in theory I'd like it. Thinking about it, a lot of the linguistic features that really bother me are exactly what the NORM pattern indicates: I don't like the ones from people with lower social standing. E.g., "ain't" as a class marker. I'm inclined to argue for the ones that privilege me (educated older white male), and against the ones that don't.

by Shish2k 13y ago

laquiechanaenae 13y ago

Implied culture, style, and casualness are certainly signal, though not in the formal academic sense.

showerst 13y ago

That usage sense is called a discourse particle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C_filler.2C_hedge.2C_or_speech_disfluency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like#As_a_discourse_particle.2C... It can contain signal when used as a hedge ("The restaurant is only, like, five miles from here.") but generally that usage just substitutes for 'uh' or 'um' while signaling some group-membership (originally Valley Girl I think?)

Cushman 13y ago

Personally I've observed many meanings in use. As an adverb it means "figuratively" or "approximately". As a hedge word it more generally disclaims that what follows may be inaccurate or metaphorical. It's used in the place of "to say" or "to impart", filling in for the lack of a word which applies equally to text messages as to speech, with the implication (since it's a hedge) that the quoted speech is likely re- or paraphrased. It can be used as a mild intensifier, as in, "Okay, but, like..."; despite what you may think, simply adding weight to a phrase can and does alter it semantically. So it's a very versatile word, and there are other uses I've missed. And of course, it is used purely as a stall (er, a disfluency), though not heavily outside of a few dialects. All of this falls under the linguistic study of "discourse", the way humans talk in real-world communication with each other. In linguistics, rules of discourse are real and as important as rules of grammar. Nobody uses only "approved" words or meanings of words or interactions of words; the ideas human beings communicate are more complex than that. Having laid all that out, I'll say something you'll probably find challenging: the real reason you don't like it is because you don't know what it means. Which is of course the point of it, and the reason to label it as innovation.

wpietri 13y ago

Is that the reason it bothers you? That's the reason I'd give if pressed. But as the article shows, people are inclined to give a lot of reasons that don't hold up. There's a pattern to who's giving the reasons and who's on the receiving end that suggest that there's something else going on. For example, "like" is often used as a replacement for "um" or "er". But "like" bothers me more. And different cultures have different noises for that; one of my small delights is figuring out what country somebody is from by which noise they use to indicate that they are holding the floor but need a second to think. I actively enjoy those, even though they're equally low-signal. And there's a lot of word-compression slang (e.g., "totes" for "totally", "prolly" for "probably") that increases the signal, so in theory I'd like it. Thinking about it, a lot of the linguistic features that really bother me are exactly what the NORM pattern indicates: I don't like the ones from people with lower social standing. E.g., "ain't" as a class marker. I'm inclined to argue for the ones that privilege me (educated older white male), and against the ones that don't.