There is a word that gets hated on a lot. It’s like, hearing it gets some people upset. They don’t like it, and they don’t like its use.
Someone could say something like, “Be that as it may, when he uses it, he sounds like a child.”
The word I’m talking about is “like.”
It has three main uses, and people generally don’t have a problem with one of them — its propositional use as in this sentence: “This movie is just like any other romantic comedy — lame.”
They do, however, take issue with the other two uses of the word.
The quotative version used to indicate dialogue, as in “He told us, like, ‘Quit pruning my shrubs,’ and we were all, like, ‘Take more pride in your shrubbery.’”
The final use seems to be the most blood-boiling. It is the filler used as a discourse marker. It’s used in sentences such as, “If the airport lost my dog, I would just, like, die,” or “Just because you dreamed he can, doesn’t mean, like, Bigfoot grants wishes.”
But “like” is a juggernaut. It is ubiquitous in our generation’s language. It sounds low and immature, and that is reason enough for some people to deny its use.
But if you look long enough, you will begin to realize why “like” has sprung up everywhere. It is extremely useful. As a college student, I come from a generation of observers. Everyone is constantly updating everyone else about their stories, their interests and their lives so much that we have websites and social networks dedicated to this end. And we can’t get enough.
Often times, we relay something we saw, heard or read. More than any other past generation, we witness many stories, and that’s a lot to remember if you want to retell them later.
You might not be entirely sure what someone said or how exactly an event occurred, but it is easy enough to get around directly quoting or literally describing a situation by throwing the word “like” in there.
“I heard that house show was, like, crazy.” We can be mostly sure that the house wasn’t a den of clinical insanity, but just in case someone takes us literally, we throw a “like” in there, so we’re good. It softens the blow and keeps us from committing to a statement. It’s a verbal disclaimer: “Please don’t, like, drink the bleach.”
People have a generalized view that “like” is used by young women who are intellectually slow. The stereotype was initially recognized in the 1982 song “Valley Girl” by Moon Unit Zappa and Frank Zappa.
Rest assured, men use it just as often as women do, yet somehow, they fly a little lower on the radar and seem to get away with using the word, coming out far less scathed than their female counterparts.
In the end, it is the use of “like” in place of
“uh” and “um” that paints the word, to some, as a nervous tic which should be trimmed out of all sentences.
So while I, like, know why you, like, don’t want the word to be spattered all, like, around someone’s spoken sentences, most people would, like, agree if you had “ums” and “uhs” in their place, there’s no, uh, way it wouldn’t, um, be just as, uh, obnoxious.
Most of us aren’t practiced orators, and it is hard to spout continuous, uninterrupted brilliance to pontificate using zero fillers and wield flawless grammar.
So, could you maybe, like, lighten up a little?
Wesley Campbell is a fifth-year English major. His column appears on Wednesdays.
