"Like" abuse redivivus

[George Thompson]

A former colleague in the reference room, a purist and an arrant pain in the ass -- I admired him for it, of course -- if a student said "I want , like, a dictionary of literary criticism", would reply, "do you want a book that's like a dictionary, or do you want a dictionary?"

For my part, at least once I was posed a question by a fashionably inarticulate student that contained the highest possible ratio of "like" to substance words.  I completely lost track of the sense of the question, and had to ask him to say it again, without the "likes".
I too want to be a pain in the ass whenever possible, but this was a case of necessity.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
Date: Saturday, April 12, 2008 10:34 am
Subject: "Like" abuse redivivus
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU


> Actually, it's never been gone, but thirty years ago "like" abuse was
> a big deal among the "Death of English" crowd. Recent developments in
> global warming and so forth have rather shunted it from notice.
>
>   On campus yesterday I heard a young university woman explaining
> excitedly, "So, like, it was like I was like that's _impossible_!
> And, like, she was like 'No! It isn't!' Like, then I was like it still
> sounds kind of crazy like."
>
>   Admittedly this is not an exact transcription, but I promise you it
> comes very close.  She certainly used "like" more densely (no pun
> intended) than any other speaker I've ever heard.
>
>   I may have mentioned previously that the first time I became aware
> of "to be like," meaning "to think or say," was as late as 1984,
> though it has since been antedated by some few years.
>
>   JL
>
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