"Like" abuse redivivus

[Jonathan Lighter]

I suspect you're right, dInIs, but I didn't actually _hear_ the hyphen.  Seems like like-abuse either way, but next time I'll try to be more attentive.

  BTW, I don't think many such speakers are _trying_ to be "fashionably inarticulate." They're  inarticulate, period.  It also "helps" if they're a little bit excited.

  JL

Dennis Preston <preston at MSU.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Dennis Preston

Subject: Re: "Like" abuse redivivus
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A recent survey of active users of "like" shos that they don't like
S-final "like." If your memory is accurate, I suspect the "like" you
cite at the end of the sentence is not focus or quotative "like" but
an addition to "crazy," "He acted kinda crazy-like."

dInIs



>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>Subject: "Like" abuse redivivus
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>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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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

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