"It’s like, you know…"

When I told my California friend, Angela, about my language blog, she immediately requested a blog on why people say, “like” so much. You know what I mean – not the, “I like popcorn,” kind of like, but the, “He was like, so amazing,” kind of like.

I tried googling for some information but Google was not with me on this one. There is probably some English doctorate out there, or some witty publication on the insertion of “like” into everyday speech but as neither of those is at my fingertips this Sunday morning, I’m going to have to, like, wing it. I would certainly welcome insights from anyone reading this -- including you, Angela! (Not her real name but she knows who she is).

Here’s something to think about while you read: Is LIKE an intensifier? i.e., a word (like “really” and “very”) that has little meaning except that, spoken with the proper pause accompanying it, it helps the speaker accentuate the next word. For ex: “He was, like, so gorgeous!” or “My boss is, like, so nice.” (In those cases, the pause is shown with a comma. But other times people say “like” without pausing: “There were like 24 people in my psych class.” That’s a case when a listener might ask, “Were there LIKE 24, or exactly 24?” and the speaker usually means exactly. When spoken like that though, I leave the comma out.)

Which makes me wonder: Has LIKE become a verbal crutch – like saying, “umm,” which gives you time to think while you’re still talking? Or is it a type of tic, or “verbal flavoring,” added unthinkingly, like salt to a hamburger?

Many people think the whole “like,” “you know,” and making-statements- sound-like-questions thing, as in, “So I went to the mall?” started with Moon Unit Zappa’s “Valley Girl” in 1982, which Moon Unit wrote and recorded at age 14 (very cool). But that would be like, totally wrong – because the culture had to already exist so she could make fun of it. (Check out the lyrics, though– they’re hilarious):

http://history.acusd.edu/gen/snd/valleygirl.html

By now Moon Unit has grown from Valley Girl age to that of the Ladies Who Lunch (I doubt she’s one of them, but she must be pushing 40), and “like” is still with us. I know I say it, as do my husband and friends – but we say it so naturally that I hardly hear it; still, I notice it in my teenagers and their friends, who say it as much as, or more than, any Valley Girl ever did.

My guess is that “like” and “you know” started with the Drug Culture (should that be capitalized??) in the late 1960’s, perhaps as hippies tried to describe to their friends the effects of the various substances they were on: “It … it … it like blows your mind, man,” or some other articulate description like that. (Even “blow your mind,” Angela told me, was a new expression back then -- also probably derived from the drug culture.)

Since I was still in middle school (or junior high, as it was called back then), I am not giving you an “I was there” report. But at least I was around. I know for sure (or “fer sher,” as Moon would say) that my parents’ friends, and even the milkman (yes, I remember having one—he and my parents were all part of Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation); even the kids on TV (Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, etc.) did not say “like” or “you know” or even “for sure.”

Mom and Dad, who would not play bridge with Lorelei Gilmore’s snobby parents in the Gilmore Girls but would certainly know them from the Club, were the ones who brought this strange speech habit to my attention: I was at Northwestern, mid-to-late 70’s and it was during my weekly (or maybe not even that regular), pre-cellphone-era phone call home that they both interjected, “Louise! You’ve got to stop saying, ‘like’ and ‘you know!!’” I was like, confused, you know? What were they like talking about?

When I got off the phone I asked my roommate, Barb, to try to talk without saying “like” or “you know” and after a few attempts, we burst out laughing because neither of us could do it. I started listening for it in other people and it was definitely, completely pervasive. Insidious? Viral? Or just … language? Northwestern students, Barb and me included, were mostly from the Midwest – far from California’s Valley Girl culture – so there was not a direct influence. (And the varying Midwestern accents heard on campus were the stuff that Henry Higgins could sink his phonological teeth into). (But that’s another blog).

Anyway, by the time I got to New York in the 80’s, the “you know” element was less noticeable, but “like” in heavier use than ever. By then the verb, “to say” had a new alternative – “to go,” so you could say something like, “So I went like, ‘What did you say?’ and “She went like, ‘Nothing! I was like, so confused I like, didn’t like know how to react.”

Cut to 20+ years later, to last week, in fact, when Angela attended a reading at a new Borders store with an Internationally Best-Selling Crime Writer and Essayist. known for his minimalist way with words. Apparently even he had not escaped the “like” habit in speech: this could be due to his being 20 in 1968, and thus possibly among the first to start using “like” – even if not in the use cited earlier -- because the word is clearly catchy.

Still, maybe it’s time for a little LIKE Awareness. When The Author spoke at the reading, Angela said he said, “like” like every other word: “It was like” “I was like” and “She was like” and so on. That’s just so 21st century to have a famous, prolific and successful writer who’s still incapable of speaking without the L-word. It’s like … like, you know – well, I don’t, like, know – but …