[Lexicog] "like"

Tue Sep 6 12:54:06 UTC 2005

You sound almost fierce about it, Fritz!

Some of you may have seen the newspaper column where the author gets 
curious about the main speech verbs of English, namely "go", "be like", 
and "be all". She winds up asking George Lakoff about it and gets a 
verbose and not totally comprehensible discourse in reply, and ends the 
article rather abruptly with the sentence: "And so I go like all, 'Oh.'"

I've wanted a copy of that column, if by chance anyone has it.

En serio: I think switching to these verbs from verbs like "say" is a 
symptom (/facilitator?) of a cultural change from a worldview in which 
truth and factuality are desirable to one where mimesis and image are 
more valued. It is not so important *what* was said as *how* it was 
said. The complements of these verbs very often do not even purport to 
be quotes of actual words, but rather attempt to convey, often via 
gesture, facial expression, body language, intonation, etc., the 
emotional import of what was said, or not said as the case may be. I'm 
sure many of you have heard, as I have, things like this: "And she's 
all, 'WhAAAAt? That is so RANDOM!' Of course she didn't SAY anything, 
but …."

--David T.

Chaz and Helga Mortensen wrote:

> I'm like,
>
> "There's like another language with a phenomenon like this besides 
> English?! Hello?!!
>
> -Chaz
>
> En serio: I first heard this when seeing an old James Dean movie from 
> the late 50s.
>
> On Sep 6, 2005, at 6:17 AM, Fritz Goerling wrote:
>
>     Howdy, Rudy,
>
>     This adolescents' use of "like" is like German adolescents' use of
>     "irgendwie" (= somehow).
>     It is not just a "crutch for lexical indecision" (Diamond, Siegel,
>     see below) but also a sign
>     of a poorly developed vocabulary which ranges from "cool" (or
>     whatever the "in" terms are)
>     to its opposite "uncool" (or whatever the "in" terms are).
>
>     Fritz Goerling
>
>
>
>         Rudy Troike
>
>         * *
>
>         LINGUIST List 16.2552
>         Mon Sep 05 2005
>         _________________________________________________________________
>
>         From: Alexandra D'Arcy <alex.darcy [address-marker.gif]
>         utoronto.ca>
>         Subject: Like: Syntax and Development
>         Institution: University of Toronto
>         Program: Department of Linguistics
>         Dissertation Status: Completed
>         Degree Date: 2005
>         Author: Alexandra D'Arcy
>         Dissertation Title: Like: Syntax and Development
>
>         Dissertation Director(s):
>         Sali Tagliamonte
>
>         Dissertation Abstract:
>         Discourse LIKE, as in (1), is one of the most salient features of
>         present-day vernacular English.
>
>         (1) a. LIKE, Carrie's LIKE a little LIKE out-of-it but LIKE
>         she's the
>         funniest. (3/T/f/18)
>         b. Well, you just cut out LIKE a girl figure and a boy figure.
>         (N/8/f/75)
>
>         It is overtly stigmatized and associated with adolescents,
>         where it is
>         perceived as a crutch for lexical indecision (e.g., Diamond 2000;
>         Siegel 2000). In the literature, LIKE is sometimes
>         characterized as a
>         'meaningless interjection' (OED) that can be used 'grammatically
>         anywhere' (Siegel 2002:64).
>
>         Descriptions such as these suggest that LIKE is unconstrained,
>         yet
>         language, despite inherent variability, is rule-governed (see
>         also
>         Underhill 1988; Andersen 2001).
>
>         LIKE has received much attention in the pragmatic literature
>         (e.g.,
>         Schourup 1983; Andersen 1997 et seq.), but it has never been
>         investigated from a variationist perspective. Consequently, this
>         dissertation presents an accountable analysis of LIKE in a
>         large corpus
>         of contemporary English. The hypothesis developed in this work
>         is that
>         LIKE is not random, but interacts with syntactic structure in
>         regular
>         and predictable ways. To address this issue, the variable
>         context is
>         circumscribed according to structural criteria and the
>         analyses are
>         embedded within current Minimalist Theory (e.g., Chomsky 1995 et
>         seq.). Over 20,000 structurally defined contexts are examined,
>         comprising data from 97 speakers between the ages of 10 and 87.
>
>         This method reveals that LIKE is 1) highly constrained by the
>         syntax
>         and 2) occurs in specific positions among speakers of all
>         ages. Indeed,
>         examination of language-internal constraints reveals that the
>         community
>         shares a single variable grammar for LIKE (Poplack &
>         Tagliamonte 2001).
>         This feature is shown to have developed gradually and
>         systematically,
>         arriving at its current state through regular processes of
>         language
>         change. Using the grammaticalization models proposed by
>         Traugott (1997
>         [1995]) and Brinton (forthcoming), it is argued that after
>         initially
>         developing as a discourse marker, where it occurs
>         clause-initially and
>         links sequences of dialogue (Fraser 1988, 1990), LIKE then
>         begins to
>         enter syntactic structure, spreading to one maximal projection
>         at a time.
>         _
>

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