{"id":10875,"date":"2024-03-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10875"},"modified":"2024-03-05T20:25:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T01:25:30","slug":"like-literally-dude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10875","title":{"rendered":"Like, Literally, Dude!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ticked off by verbal tics? Language-expert Valerie Fridland has written an entertaining book about the origins and utility of what many people consider bad speaking habits. Like \u201clike,\u201d vocal fry<\/a>, and excessive intensification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of these speech habits she covers in Like Literally, Dude<\/a><\/em> are tiny, she says, like saying \u201cWhaaa?\u201d instead of \u201cWhat,\u201d but that dropped \u201ct\u201d is one of the many linguistic choices that help craft a person\u2019s social identity and offer great guidance for authors writing dialog. Your Gen Z college student can\u2019t sound like one of his professors!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Different versions of \u201cwhat\u201d have subtly different effects. \u201cWhat-hh,\u201d as she describes it, has a tiny puff of air after the strongly enunciated \u201ct.\u201d It\u2019s what you say when you\u2019re interrupted for the 43rd<\/sup> time while trying to write a tricky paragraph. \u201cWhat?\u201d is a normal, business-like query. But \u201cwhaaaa?\u201d is more casual or characteristic of certain population groups. To my ear, it indicates not an actual question, but conveys a sense of true wondering. It\u2019s what you\u2019d say if a spaceship landed in your back yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fridland\u2019s book delves into many such features that distinguish one person\u2019s speech from another\u2019s. And, speakers vary their speech, depending on what they are (mostly unconsciously) trying to convey. She says we use vocal tics \u201cto project different attitudes and stances toward what we talk about and who we talk with.\u201d A goldmine for dialog-writers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her observation that young people<\/a> and women generally lead the way in linguistic changes is especially interesting, as is the note that these are the very speech patterns that take the brunt of criticism, women\u2019s speech having been historically \u201cdisparaged as chatty, gossipy, and less topically important than men\u2019s.\u201d And women typically soften their presentation<\/a> so as to be non-threatening. When writing my novel Architect of Courage<\/a><\/em>, told from a man\u2019s point of view, I worked hard to reflect male speech patterns\u2014for example, excising \u201cI think\u201d and \u201cI want,\u201d and replacing them with flat statements and \u201cI need.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take \u201clike,\u201d like it or not. This much-maligned word serves a great many non-grammatical (versus ungrammatical) purposes in sentences. One of Fridland\u2019s examples is \u201cI exercised for, like, ten hours.\u201d Anyone hearing that understands the speaker did not, in fact, exercise for 600 minutes, but more that it felt<\/em> that excessive. Leave out the \u201clike,\u201d and the sentence says the same thing, but doesn\u2019t mean exactly the same. In this role, \u201clike\u201d becomes \u201ca way for a speaker to communicate a certain impreciseness or looseness of meaning.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDiscourse markers\u201d are features of speech that don\u2019t contribute to the actual meaning of a sentence (so, you know, actually, oh, um, uh), but convey a sense of the speaker\u2019s intentions. Although we think of these language quirks as being of recent vintage\u2014a deluge of undesirable flies landing in the ointment of perfect English expression\u2014their pedigree is lengthy. Fridland\u2019s example is, \u201cOh, I finally got a job!\u201d In that sentence, the \u201coh\u201d invites the hearer to share the surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tendency to start sentences, \u201cSoooo, . . .\u201d give the speaker a few seconds to gather her thoughts and signals the hearer to listen up. \u201cWell, . . .\u201d does the same. Such discourse markers appear in Shakespeare and date back more than a thousand years. So much for modern bad habits! \u201cLike\u201d used as a discourse marker can be found as early as 250 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if you like language and if you write dialog involving different ages and types of people, you may find this book, whose subtitle is \u201cArguing for the Good in Bad English\u201d helpful as well as entertaining!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ticked off by verbal tics? Language-expert Valerie Fridland has written an entertaining book about the origins and utility of what many people consider bad speaking habits. Like \u201clike,\u201d vocal fry, and excessive intensification. Many of these speech habits she covers … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Some of the verbal tics people love to hate have long histories. They have staying power because they're useful for more than just annoying the rest of us.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,185,29],"tags":[2164],"class_list":["post-10875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-language","category-writing","tag-speech-patterns"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Pp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10877,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10875\/revisions\/10877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}