> One day you’ll find yourself saying “like” a lot. Please stop. If this generation can’t quit the habit, we’ll eventually have an American president who speaks that way too.
People who think this way really grind my gears. I especially enjoy that, like, there's no explanation for why this would be a problem.
People who abuse filler words do so to keep the line busy because they fear being interrupted. Their speech is a continuous and anxious stream of poorly formed sentences without regard for the listener. Trying to listen to them feels like taking a ride with a brake-happy, inexperienced driver.
What an utterly superficial way of looking at the presidency. GW Bush and Trump didn't talk like valley girls, but still said plenty of nonsensical garbage that lost them respect at home and abroad.
You really see nothing wrong with this?
Also it's significantly less noticeable in spoken conversation. smh...
This applies to all verbal interjection. You use some form of verbal interjection too, but of course you don't even notice that you are doing it, and you would also get angry if some other people told you that your speech pattern is stupid and that you should change how you naturally speak.
Weasel words and delaying terms are common regardless, and usually not desirable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filler_(linguistics)
> In linguistics, a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker or planner is a sound or word that participants in a conversation use to signal that they are pausing to think but are not finished speaking.
[snip]
> Every conversation involves turn-taking, which means that whenever someone wants to speak and hears a pause, they do so. Pauses are commonly used to indicate that someone's turn has ended, which can create confusion when someone has not finished a thought but has paused to form a thought; in order to prevent this confusion, they will use a filler word such as um, er, or uh.[1][3] The use of a filler word indicates that the other person should continue listening instead of speaking.[4]
More to the point: Every language has them. Every language has always had them. Journalists are trained to edit them out of "verbatim" conversational speech unless they want the person they're quoting to come off like an imbecile, but longstanding journalistic convention doesn't mean filler is in any way recent.
We don't always speak without filler any more than we always speak in iambic pentameter.
Many years ago I saw a study that ums and ahs helped listeners understand better because it indicated the next phrase was important.