The LIKE Epidemic

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So if you can like help me figure out about when and where this linguistic virus like grew, I’d really appreciate it. People use this curious filler like all the time, even on news radio. I worry hearing moms talk like this; they depend on the word like every five syllables like oh my god. Their children start like picking up the like off the floor and mopping like every breath with it and the saddest part is like I’m not exaggerating.

So like is this originally like an American phenomenon? I really don’t mean to like offend anyone but like didn’t this start as a caricature of the blonde American Valley Girl*? I know East Coasters are also fond of their like. Did it sweep in from the West, fly over and spare the Midwest? Hit mostly like the major cities? Can older readers tell us if you like remember Americans talking this way like in the 50s or 60s? Hey readers like in the other parts of the world, have people like forgotten how to talk over there too? If the like virus does run amok there, is it like an airborne disease from the States or has it like grown from native soil?

As a linguist, I’ve been trying like hard to uncover the subconscious role of this filler. There must be like a rhyme and reason to the madness. Seems it like began with the strange substitute for the verb to say.

So he said, “I’m freezing!”  —-> So he’s like, “I’m freezing!”

How in the world did this like happen? Words take root, like have a purpose. This one’s got me. The filler doesn’t like seem to discriminate the part of speech that it wants to like introduce. We’ve like allowed a linguistic aberration, an unnecessity, to make its home in our speech like a five-headed monster that we’ve like taken in for a pet. Language takes the path of least resistance, will like look to save spit. It’s not supposed to grow weeds. Why is it that people like depend on this word? What is it they feel that they can’t quite like express without it? Why are we like wasting b r ea th?

This is like one of the serious posts on class and language like coming out of the Race Around the World.

*Wikipedia: Valley girl is a stereotype depicting a socio-economic class of white women characterized by the colloquial California English dialect Valleyspeak and vapid materialism. The term originally referred to an ever-increasing swell of semi-affluent and affluent middle-class and upper-middle class girls living in the early 1980s Los Angeles bedroom communities of the San Fernando Valley.

East Meets West: A Literal Translation

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NoStandingPeter asked that I tell this story from our dating days.

It begins in the laid-back land of Southern California where entire cities don’t push to cut their way through throngs of cars on impatient legs, daring drivers to run over them. Pedestrians actually keep to the crosswalk and – to the stupefaction of visiting New Yorkers – can be ticketed for jaywalking. Most parts of the west coast, in fact, don’t see people milling in masses – simply because they don’t walk. In the state formed out of freeways, your wheels are your feet. California streets also aren’t so talkative as crowded eastern cities are, with their slew of parking signs that dictate when and where vehicles may stop.

In love with the girl who had disavowed the fast pace of New York for the peace of the Pacific, California Boy flies out for her old stomping grounds to ask her father for her hand in marriage. She jump-starts her reunion with her parents and the love birds plan to meet in the City the morning he arrives.

It is Peter’s first taste of the Big Apple.

The first thing to overwhelm him at Grand Central is the moving multitude. Never has he seen so many…people. In such a hurry. Everywhere. Struggling with the luggage he realizes he doesn’t have the hands for in a place where most go on foot, Peter somehow drag-pushes it all out of the station to the sidewalk, hopeful for a taxi – when he notices the No Standing sign above his head.

I’m not supposed to stand here?
How…do I flag a cab, then?
But it says no standing. Anytime.
Oh, what if I get a ticket?

He looks to the left, looks to the right.

No cop.

California Boy shuffles the mountain of bags a few yards this way. Looks around. Some minutes later, a few yards that way. His heart quickens. He keeps up the goofy dance until he makes the connection between the light atop the cabs and the vacant backseat. That’s how you grab a taxi. Relief.

He hails a car and slumps in the backseat.

*  *  *   *

My friends and family were rolling, doubled over, when Peter shared his first nervous moments in the urban East. He’d had no idea the No Standing was a prohibition against vehicles looking to park there. If pedestrians were ticketed in New York, the city would transfigure into a ghost town. I’ve never given thought to the sign until this writing. Having grown up with it, it never occurred to me that someone could think it applied to anyone other than drivers. Do you have these signs where you live?

While we’re at it, here’s a glimpse of a fun memory from the trip. We had a blast swing dancing in the city, a night out on the town. You see, it was at a ballroom in California where we had met.

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