It's like "valley girl speech" -- inane, meaningless, and feigned.
Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils
I don't like it!!
There’s a word I’m not liking lately, and knowing my love of words, you probably have some in your head. I’ll help you out: Yes, it’s a four letter word, and, over the past few years, maybe five or six, its popularity in conversation has skyrocketed! I cannot go, it seems, a day without hearing it; and I’m not talking about hearing it once or twice. I mean repeatedly, four or five times before the speaker sets one set of teeth atop the other, or pauses an instant for air. Then another with the same “4-letter encumbrance” takes it up!
You know, this is supposed to be a stage, and I went through it. I wanted to use a phrase that “caught on” so I could feel some sort of pride when someone picked it up, carried it across the country, and planted it in another locale, until, to my delight, everybody was using it; but nobody ever “spoke it forward,” not even after I became a teacher and my job was to plant “word seeds.”
What’s the word you ask? It’s like,” and every time I hear it, it darn near drives me mad! It’s like “valley girl speech” – inane, meaningless, and feigned. When I hear it, I’m reminded of “ghost air,” if you can imagine that. It has no substance, it has no power, it is just plain, stale air with no meaning!
“Like” is supposed to be pleasant. People used to smile when they said it, as in “You look just like your mother;” which always curved the lips – unless the mother was really horrifyingly “yoogly!”; or I like that perfume you are wearing… or grilled chicken…or any kind of food but “chitlins!”
That word makes me gag! I hate it! Do you know why? I hate stuff that doesn’t make sense; and, since “like” from these young grammar “stylists” does not conform to grammatical rules, I have no use for it. A bevy of girls – or boys – is discussing something – sorry…someone, and one makes what is loosely called a statement: “…Yeah, and he like, was like, standing there, you know, like watching them, like take the, you know, handle, like in his hand, and like…”
Like is a verb, a preposition, or a suffix; so, for heaven’s sake, what just got said? Nothing! Ab-so-lute-ly nothing! Yet, the whole gang remains there, transfixed, like insects on a fly strip! I’d have been a half mile away by the time that was done! I cannot stomach anything with no rules, no standards, no pattern – just hodge-podge…nonsense! Folks from the past would’ve just shaken their heads and grunted a dismissal as only “Mis’ Bertha” could do.
Eleanor Roosevelt is credited as saying," Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."
Think. When do you hear like? Where do you hear it? Nine times out of eight, someone, usually a young someone, is doing that third kind of “discussion.”
My dear granddaughter came by last week and started telling me about her senior year plans, and, before she could get two sentences out, she caught my flat expression, and I said, “Like…”
She stopped, protesting, “But I didn’t say it in my interview…”
I didn’t ask the question she heard in my eyes, but she finished the whole visit with “nary another like!”
Story Posted:08/26/2016
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