There’s one word that’s the bane of existence for English teachers, parents, and podcast listeners everywhere: “like.” this week explain meWe answer an important question for our listener, Alison: “Why do I use the word ‘like’ so much?”
Allison is a junior in college, and with graduation on the horizon, she wants to become more mature before entering the workforce. “When I’m in an internship interview or a job interview, I try my best to speak more clearly,” she said. “Why do I say “like” so often?”
To address this question, I had a conversation Valerie FriedlandSociolinguist and book author As, literally, friend: to argue for good in bad English. Although often dismissed as a “filler word,” Friedland argues that we use “like” in our conversations for a reason. “The reality of ‘like’ is that it came into our language because it serves some really important purpose for us,” he said. “Nobody starts using a word because it’s meaningless.”
Friedland talked to me about how “like” is essential in so many ways, how it entered the lexicon, and how people use it as often as we think.
Below is a portion of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
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I remember being as young as seventh grade and my parents were at a parent teacher conference. My mom and dad told my teacher, “He uses the word ‘like’ too much. How can we stop him?” And my teacher was like, “Oh, my kids do it too.”
I mean when you were introducing it, you were saying what the teacher was saying. You said “as he was.”
I can’t stop it!
But it was serving a function for you because it is a form of “like”. This is what we call in linguistics a “citational like” and it is an alternative to the verb “like” in “say”. What you’re doing is saying, “I’m not narrating to you what the teacher said. I’m just reminding you of what she said.” This is a really useful tool because it allows you more flexibility when telling a story.
That makes sense.
You can sometimes use it to draw attention or highlight. It can also be used to hedge what you say. And many times you use “like” to indicate that it’s a subjective estimate of something. So you can say, “He’s like a doctor or something,” which implies that I don’t know exactly what he does, but it’s like a doctor.
Then, you can use it at the beginning of a sentence. And that’s a little different. It’s usually a sentient adverb, which makes it sound fancy and important, but what it really means is a linking “like”. So when you say something like “I don’t know what he did. Like, I think he was a doctor.
What all these choices have in common is that they all express some kind of subjectivity. And that’s the real power of “Like”.
Subjectivity is something that is often frowned upon and not taken as seriously as something that is considered a cold, hard truth.
absolutely There are many reasons why people don’t like “likes”. I think one reason is its whole purpose is imperfection.
Often we accept imperfection as uncertainty, but they are not the same thing. Being unclear about what someone is saying doesn’t mean they are unsure of what they are saying. These are actually two very important differences. Unfortunately, the people who tend to be associated with the use of “like” are also the people who are generally thought of as vacuous, empty-headed, and uninformed. And that is the youth and the women.
They are also the people who use “like” the most. So you throw this trait that marks impurity on a group that is often insecure, less sure of themselves, less confident – which is not a fair assessment of them – but still an assessment. This creates a feature that people don’t like.
What is it about words like this that makes it so flexible for all these different uses?
Like is a very, very, very old word. Words change and meanings change over time. And the older the word, the more often it can.
Around the 13th century, we first find “like” in our language and it is a verb. Then around the 15th and 16th centuries, we started using it in similes. And then around the 16th century, you start using it as a conjunction, where instead of just being between two objects, you’re comparing an object and a whole sentence: “He rode the bike as the sky was on fire.” Then, in the 1700s, you start seeing it as a speech marker, often from low-status criminal witnesses or criminal defendants. Giving evidence in Old Bailey proceedings London is where we actually start to see “like” used in this way for the first time.
Who uses “Like” the most now?
When we look at studies from the early 2000s, users under the age of 40 were the most “liked” users, and users over 40 used it to a much lesser extent. It seems to have really come into fashion in the 80s and 90s.
Its use has increased with each generation since. So is it true that this is a Gen Z feature? yes And they may use it more than the generation above them, because it continues to advance their speech. But what inventors were they? not at all And was it something that was really a strong trait of previous generations, millennials and Gen X? absolutely
