Journalist's Query: "Like"

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 12:50 PM 12/2/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Le Sunday, 1 Dec 2002, à 09:02 America/New_York, Grant Barrett a écrit :
>
>>Anyone want to field this?
>>
>>>De: "Meadows, Susannah" <Susannah.Meadows at Newsweek.com>
>>>Date: Fri 29 Nov 2002  17:00:55 America/New_York
>>>Hello, I'm a reporter and I'm working on a piece about the usage of
>>>the word "like." I was hoping I could speak to someone at the American
>>>Dialect Society about the article. My number is 212-445-5412. thanks
>>>for your help,
>
>If you were kind enough to respond to this journalist's query, please
>let me know. Otherwise, I want to make sure to push it in the direction
>of people who might not be paying attention to the list.

I've had several students write papers on "like," with references from 
_American Speech_ and other scholarly journals.  It's been well studied, 
but apparently reporters don't know how to do an MLA or LLBA search!  I 
could pass on a couple of refs now that my grades are in.