Language history and we: the case of “like”
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This is so oversimplified as to border on being incorrect. Even Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Like] is able to list several more uses in colloquial speech, including:
• As a quotative marker, to introduce direct speech: ”I was, like, ‘who was that?’ ”
• As a quotative it can also introduce ideophones: “The firework went, like, boom”
• As a hedge it moderates exaggeration: “I had to wait, like, hours for the bus to arrive”
• It can also indicate a counterexpectation, emphasising a contrast to what the listener might think: “There was, like, no free memory left”
None of these can be dismissed as merely ‘gaining time’. I can’t deny it has that role too, but that’s far from the only meaning of like, and to say otherwise just obscures the way it’s really used.
Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
I don't know why it rubs me so wrongly. Perhaps because (IMO) it's totally unnecessary and adds nothing except perhaps an air of pretentiousness.
It feels that it becomes an increasingly minority position, and what's left in the discussion is at best intelligentsia's coping mechanisms making use of isolated facts of history. Yes, there were always "lowbrow" language and culture, but what matters is the context of the whole stylistic gradient functioning. Of course there has been some legitimacy in these changes initially, when compared strictly to the oppressive, conformist "bourgeois" "high modern" culture of let's say 1850-1950. History moves in random directions, so who knows.
Isn't the of concept of low brow a strictly oppressive one? It only serves to further strip power from those outside the dominant group.
When the lowbrow group become dominant then their style and norms become the standard of highbrow.
> you also assume there is one form of expression per "group"
I didn't assume that or imply it in any way. I understand that there various linguistic strata and they each have their own substrata. I still stand by the assertions I made above, as while there are inter-group power dynamics at play in the defining of "brow level" there are of course also intra-group power dynamics.
That not this equals power is an interesting meme. Powerful people are usually crude (police, army, politicians, business magnates, aristocracy and the like isn't known for being very subtle either). Of course with humanities you can creatively construct almost any reading to the culture and society if you want to "prove" what you want. If you strictly equate cultural practices with social groups that can be dominant or not, there is already some gross simplification going on.
> a crude mode of communication where we don't care about communicating clearly or on subject
I didn't read this from it though. That seems somewhat orthogonal to the content of the article?
> or emphasizing respect to yourself and to the other person, or maintaining connection to the long term culture and history of thought.
This I do actually take issue with though. This is an example of what I meant above. I grew up speaking a "non-standard" English and I can say that I've never felt that using it was reflective of a lack for respect for myself or the people around me. Saying that someone should speak in a more "standard" or "high brow" way that comes unnaturally to them in order to show respect is an example of the power dynamic I'm talking about.
I come from Northern Ireland and my speech is heavily inflected. If I go to England and speak with people who have more linguistic dominance then I notice a change in how in received. There is an assumption that I'm less intelligent when I use my Hiberno-English, like saying "they learned me how to write" rather than "they taught me how to write." If the English of my home was dominant then we would see this effect in reverse.
Same for wanting to "maintain a connection to long term culture or thought." Those cultures and thoughts win out on the long term because of the power plays. How many languages have died out in the course of colonialism? Do think the speakers of those languages didn't want a connection to the history of thought, or did we just ignore them and forget them because they lacked the power to assert themselves?
> Of course with humanities you can creatively construct
What does this mean? Are you saying that your assertions are more rooted in hard science than mine? Or the whole field of social linguistics is hogwash? Then why have this conversation at all?
> If you strictly equate cultural practices with social groups that can be dominant or not
I didn't.
> Powerful people are usually crude
Is this an oversimplification? Are non powerful people usually not crude? This is the point: the sophistication is not an inherent trait of the language; it's socially constructed and perpetuated through social power dynamics.
So the thing that rubs me the wrong way, in connection with the OP, is people using intentionally sloppy language in a way that is mainstream cool, more than specific to any group that may be oppressed. I don't claim my thinking on this to be science based (I don't see how it could be), but I think there are hogwash rationalizations of the trend I'm talking about that pose as "science-based" (while being only interpretative) and/or connected to disadvantaged groups. I think it is different from being respected when using my maternal dialect (I hope you won't get offended by using this word, I don't mean to) and this is not what OP was about.
I do think there are connections to the history of thought that are universally available despite attempts of a bunch of North-Western European countries (plus the US) trying to paint themselves as possessing "the" intellectual history. That being said, I do think that how fruitful and useful an intellectual contribution is, is largely unrelated to the power status of the contributor. I also think we are getting into some deep digressions at this point, so I will probably leave you to make you counterpoints as you want.
Some people who monologue (like in a video) about a subject often use it. “Cleopatra was actually not black.” This makes some sense since you use it to emphasize something that you assume might be surprising, instead of using a more flat statement. But it gets weird when the speaker supposedly thinks that every statement that they make is surprising or even astounding to the hypothetical listener. No: many statements are expected, and some statements you had no prejudice about one way or the other, so the listener has nothing to be surprised about.
It feels like the the monologuer assumes that they are just blowing the minds of the listener on a continual basis.
It’s also often used for excessive emphasis: “I actually love ice cream”. Like “ice cream is literally my favorite flavor”. Excessive emphasis IMO should be sparingly used or else it loses its effect. It’s like “literally”: it can have a humorous effect when used to mean “figuratively”, but if you regularly use it like that it becomes lame. (But I have lost that battle: literally now literally means both “in the literal sense” and “in the figurative sense”.) I don’t appreciate the affect of someone who emphasizes every third sentence while speaking, and to me these emphasis words have the same effect when I read them.
But I also use "actually" for other purposes, so it's not as clear as it could be either. Still, it's less likely to be misunderstood than "literally" is.
Surely you could of included at least one more?
This particular thing appears to be largely generational and rather regional so I don't encounter it frequently.
Quite a different way to use "like" than what this article talks about.
My mum could use a single "la" as an entire sentence and we knew exactly what she meant, rarely something good.
Perversely, the inhabitants of Birmingham (UK) favour "issit" for that purpose.