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> I suspect the use of "like" is related to the effect video media has already had on language. I'm not sure what you mean by this, can you explain?

• stcredzero 12y ago
  Well, like, when people use "like," it's like they're narrating a video scene in their own heads in a way that would cause another person from a video-soaked culture to, like, make it play in their heads too. ;) It's the same as how such narration worked before, but it's also different in that we have a corpus of video culture to make references to. Before widespread video, we were always referring to the imagined "movie scenes" evoked in our heads by narration. Now, we can refer to a corpus of specific pre-rendered movie scenes.
  • Hasu 12y ago
    > Well, like, when people use "like," it's like they're narrating a video scene in their own heads in a way that would cause another person from a video-soaked culture to, like, make it play in their heads too. ;) The syntactic filler likes, or the "its' like they're..." like? Those are very different. Syntactic filler such as that is universal in human speech and languages, but tends to be different depending on the language and speaker. There's nothing unusual about Americans attaching to the word "like" as syntactic filler. Or do you mean "like" as a synonym for "such as"? Like/Such as in this example here? I don't see how that has anything to do with video culture. People have spoken in hypotheticals since long before video.
    • stcredzero 12y ago
      The syntactic filler likes, or the "its' like they're..." like? If you pay close attention, you'll find that it's not always filler. Often, people are prefacing references to visuals from the common culture.