I'm not entirely sure what happened to make the word like such a valuable stalling phrase, up with the grand company of umm and er, these phrases add nothing to everyday life other than a bit more CO2 into the air that I am attempting to breath.
Somehow this word has made it's way into daily speach quoth its presence as the first item on google when looking up definition of like-
informal
used to convey a person's reported attitude or feelings in the form of direct speech (whether or not representing an actual quotation).
"so she comes into the room and she's like “Where is everybody?”"
My only question is why use this word in such a manner, what was wrong with just saying 'and she says...' rather than needing to butcher the meaning of like? As I mentioned above, I find words that are used simply to stall and avoid silence to be so completely unnecessary, unprofessional and truly repulsive for lack of a better word, silence conveys great thought being put into carefully arranging the words as an art form, umm on the other hand conveys a fear that other people will have stopped listening to you and will interrupt if one so much as stops emitting toxic gas for a pause. Now, please do not take this rant as my saying that I am utterly perfect in every way shape and form, removing that tendency to keep talking is not easy to put it mildly, but its good to realize that it is not necessary to punctuate every sentence with one like per every 3 other words, being aware of a problem is at least a step toward fixing it; now some may say that there is no problem with the improper usage of the word like, and perhaps there isn't an issue if one likes the people around him to sound like a broken record. I can think of no other person who illustrates this more than President Obama, Mr. President used to take quite the care in avoiding the usage of stalling words and sounded far better and much more intelligent for the lack of umms and errss intruding on an otherwise very well thought out speech. long story short the usage of these words to stall for time just seems to lower the iq of the person speaking 30 points, at least to me it does, please do feel free to post dissenting views, you have nothing to fear except for immediate censure. Have a nice day
No comments:
Post a Comment