'like'

David Parkinson davpark at microsoft.com
Wed Feb 18 20:22:03 UTC 2004


Interestingly (or otherwise), this appeared in today's Toronto Star:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/A
rticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1076973009917&call_pageid=968332188492&col=96
8793972154

In case the link goes stale, here is the full text:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  
Like wow! That L-word is taking over teen lingo


LOUISE BROWN
EDUCATION REPORTER

It's the new, like, grammar - like it or not. 

Canadian teens are sprinkling their speech with the word "like" at a
soaring rate, new research shows - with some 16-year-olds using it even
more often than the word "and." 

More than 20 years after the first Valley Girl, (popularized in a 1982
Frank Zappa song) swapped "like" for "said" - I'm like, `Gag me with a
spoon' and she's like, `Oh my God!' - the four-letter word has worked
its way into teen lingo at unprecedented speed.

In Toronto, the "like" fad seems to peak at age 16, when one in every 20
words now spoken is "like," according to a recent study.

The study was done by University of Toronto linguist Sali Tagliamonte,
who will run a three-hour workshop today for high school students on
teen slang.

"Parents and teachers get on kids' cases for talking in a way they think
sounds stupid - but `like' isn't really a heinous crime against
English," said Tagliamonte, one of dozens of U of T professors speaking
at a conference run by the Toronto Catholic District School Board for
600 students labelled `gifted.'

"Language changes. We don't talk like Shakespeare any more, and it's
usually young people who push the language forward."

In the past seven years, Tagliamonte has tracked a four-fold jump in the
use of "like" in setting up quotations (He's, like, `Go ahead.')

In a recent study of 1,240 quotations by Toronto teens, 60 per cent used
the word "like" to indicate a quote, up from 13 per cent in a similar
study Tagliamonte conducted in 1995 in Ottawa.

"It's unprecedented to find a feature of language increasing in
frequency this rapidly," she said yesterday. 

"It used to take millennia for language to change, but timelines have
telescoped with the advent of mass media." 

Still, linguists can't agree on why the word has become so popular. 

Some think people unwittingly use the word "like" as a stall tactic when
they're not confident about what they're saying, she said.

"What would that say about Canadians if that were true? That we're less
confident about everything? That would be scary," scoffs Tagliamonte.

Nor does she think it indicates a lack of specifics.

"I've heard people use it in very specific references, as in, `The heat
was, like, 467 degrees.'"

And she insists it is not a sign of a poor vocabulary.

"Some of my brightest students use `like' all the time, and they have
very strong vocabularies.

"So there is definitely something going on in the underlying grammar.
But the jury's still out as to what that is."

While the "l" word as a verb and adjective dates back to the 1200s, its
new use as a "quotative" (I'm, like, `wow') was first spotted by
linguist Ronald Butters of Duke University in 1982.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

David


-----Original Message-----
From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu
[mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Ellen F. Prince
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2004 12:06 PM
To: funknet at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [FUNKNET] 'like' 

Johanna Rubba asks:
>Hi folks,
>
>Another list that I am on is discussing uses of 'like' in current
>youth-speak. I know these uses have been studied, and was wondering if
>anyone could supply some references. I'm especially interested in any
>discourse-marker functions it has.
>
>Thanks!
>Jo

A splendid paper is:

Siegel, Muffy. 2002. Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics. J. of
Semantics 19(1). 



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