That’s Erin Andrews above. She’s a broadcast professional, a long-time sidelines reporter in NFL games. She a professional public communicator. Here she is on one of her recent podcasts:
“And then I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, fuck, what did he say about going for it?’ Because I never want to quote a coach and get it wrong, so I’m like, ‘Oh my god’…I’m fully fucking out of breath, which is inappropriate. Like, get it together, sister! In through the nose, out through the mouth. It was all because the ramp was so long. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, how many people are watching … I’m so much better than that!”
And I’m like, “You sound like a moron, Erin, and this kind of illiterate blather just further embeds that toxic speech pattern in the next generation.”
Never mind the gratuitous “fucks,” that usage of “like” is worse than “um,” which was metaphorically beaten out of me as a child, and since I speak in public for a living, thanks, Mom, Dad, Miss Barrett, Mrs. Penwarden and the rest of my vigilent teachers. Are today’s teachers even trying to stop the “like” contagion? I doubt it: I bet they are infected themselves, and besides, they are too busy teaching kids to be communists.
My own daughter, after being taught by two articulate parents to speak grammatical and articulate English, now uses “like” every seven words, because that’s the kind of speech everyone around her all day uses. And I’m not about to correct a 32-year-old. Nonetheless, when I hear someone use “like” that way, my respect for them takes a nosedive, just as when I hear someone use “ain’t” or “we was” or “irregardless.” I can’t help it.
Frankly, I don’t want to.
“I can’t get behind that… kind of like… English”
As someone who taught at a women’s college, I trained my students to excise this from their speaking. They understood it makes them sound stupid and professionally weak.
All I had to do was play a few videos speaking this way. They understood immediately.
I even had students voluntarily “like” accounting in my class.
My mother’s primary target was “you know.” “If they already know what you’re saying, why are you telling them?”
Why did the blonde have trouble with her laundry?
“It says wash with like colors, but it doesn’t say like, which colors.”
By the way, I’ve read that “ain’t” is a perfectly valid contraction of “am not”, but nobody uses it in that context.
When I was in high school – before “I’m like” was the substitute for “I said” – the stupid phrase was “I go”. So instead of “he said” or “she said”, fellow students would say “he goes” or “she goes” and then “I go” and so on and so on descending into madness.
It was nauseating.
So I started responding with “where did he/she/you go?” And many of my friends looked at me with blank stares…”like…what?!?”
I think it’s Paul who often points out that many years ago, kids graduated high school having taken classes in Latin and/or Greek. Now they can barely compose a structured sentence in English. I’m guessing they have no notion of what a direct object is.
A speech curiosity that’s endemic right now: “Yes no.” Well, that, and “to your point.” Ugh. Fortunately, these things come and go. I remember “excellent!” being ubiquitous in the early 1980s.