Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should Know. Another linguistic, fantastic, gigantic addition devisive. I guess
Speaker 2: really though, I mean, if you're standing up against the
Speaker 2: use or over use of the word like, just take
Speaker 2: your head out of the hole and look around and
Speaker 2: see other things that are really worth your time and
Speaker 2: effort and attention and energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've gotten the random email here and there, and
Speaker 1: like you said, we're talking about the word like, not
Speaker 1: as in, like you said, although we're going to cover
Speaker 1: all the you know, supposedly proper uses.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Also we're going to accidentally use like or unconsciously
Speaker 2: use it, and this is going to be a really
Speaker 2: confusing episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's how people talk for the most part,
Speaker 1: and it's not just young girls. As we'll see, that's
Speaker 1: sort of a sexist thing to think, in a misnomer.
Speaker 1: We all do it generally, unless you are one of
Speaker 1: those people who thinks that it debases the human language
Speaker 1: and speech and you have taken a real stand against it,
Speaker 1: you know, godspeed If that's the hell you want to
Speaker 1: die on. But like, it ain't mine.
Speaker 2: No, some people get so into it they throw cow's
Speaker 2: blood on people on the street when they use the word.
Speaker 2: Like So, Chuck, let's talk about the word like itself,
Speaker 2: because there is like plenty of oh my god, I
Speaker 2: just did it. There is plenty of good usage or
Speaker 2: accepted usage of it that's not controversial at all, which
Speaker 2: makes sense because it's been with us for a really
Speaker 2: long time. Apparently like goes all the way back to
Speaker 2: old English. That's some old English, right, eight ball eight hundred.
Speaker 2: There's a word called gel it geliched, and I looked
Speaker 2: it up. It is leitched, even though you'd think it
Speaker 2: was lytched l i t c h that's how it's pronounced,
Speaker 2: but it's spelled g e l i c jeelich and
Speaker 2: basically yeah, and basically it meant with the body. Leich
Speaker 2: meant body. Really it meant corpse. So that was the
Speaker 2: like literal meaning of gel it jeeliched jelich.
Speaker 1: So uh, practically speaking, geeliched meant uh with the body
Speaker 1: of and then eventually kind of similar to and then
Speaker 1: over time, because language changes, thank goodness, we don't speak
Speaker 1: called English anymore geliched that's even hard to say on
Speaker 1: its own.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: That was shortened to just l I C, which I
Speaker 1: guess would just be leich, And by then it had
Speaker 1: lost the connection to corpse and body and became the
Speaker 1: root of the word, as in similar to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't that fascinating? It originally meant corpse, and it
Speaker 2: meant related to the corpse, then it meant to with
Speaker 2: the body over similar to, and then just similar boom
Speaker 2: bam bomb.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: And for a long long time it was used in
Speaker 1: Old English like as a suffix, and then that carried
Speaker 1: over like f O l C l i C would
Speaker 1: have been I guess folk Folkleisch sounds German like folk
Speaker 1: like in other words, folks see. But then, you know,
Speaker 1: Americans started using it like, you know, Josh looks angry
Speaker 1: like or that person is saint like, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: still use it like that, but in general we came
Speaker 1: up with l y to stick on the end of
Speaker 1: a word, to make it an adverb, and so we
Speaker 1: got words like slowly and saintly instead of saint like
Speaker 1: and slow like.
Speaker 2: Yes, so lee l y seems to be have a
Speaker 2: ball into an abbreviation for like. It still means the
Speaker 2: same thing, we just say it differently. It's abbreviated the
Speaker 2: verb two like means like to be pleasing or sufficient.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Sure, originally it operated and reversed. D've helped us with this,
Speaker 2: by the way, great job, Dave. But if you liked something,
Speaker 2: it wasn't expressed as you like it. It was that
Speaker 2: the thing you like likes you. There's an example from
Speaker 2: the Two Gentlemen of Verona Shakespeare play, where one says
Speaker 2: to the One character says to another, the music likes
Speaker 2: you not, which means you don't like the music. And
Speaker 2: then eventually everybody was like, we sound insane talking like this,
Speaker 2: and made it the way that it should be, which
Speaker 2: is how we say it today, which would just be
Speaker 2: you don't like the music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was other weird usages back then that that
Speaker 1: have all since sort of gone away. Things earlier, I guess,
Speaker 1: up through the seventeenth century, you could say like her
Speaker 1: or like us, light could use almost or nearly as
Speaker 1: in like that play was so boring. I like to
Speaker 1: fell asleep, like I almost fell asleep.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: And then I believe in about the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: which was a pretty late on the scene, usage was
Speaker 1: feel like like I feel like going bowling, as in
Speaker 1: I'm in the mood to go bowling. I should have
Speaker 1: said that likes me, right, bowling likes you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, since this has been around, what does for
Speaker 2: probably close through a thousand years maybe more Old English
Speaker 2: is around for a while, it's it's like has evolved,
Speaker 2: but as far as words go, it's really really evolved,
Speaker 2: and it's still evolving before our very eyes. But over
Speaker 2: the years in modern English, some widely accepted grammatically correct
Speaker 2: uses of like have come about. Only five don't even
Speaker 2: try to go beyond that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are supposedly only five as a verb, obviously
Speaker 1: meaning to enjoy. I don't think we have to explain
Speaker 1: that as a noun. Like here is a list of
Speaker 1: my likes, right, yeah, okay, my turn similar to which
Speaker 1: is kind of like of the body.
Speaker 2: The original version of like that's a preposition, so like
Speaker 2: you smell like a wet dog, or there is an
Speaker 2: example in here that looks like your spatula. What situation
Speaker 2: would that arise in.
Speaker 1: A chef cooking competition?
Speaker 2: I guess so where it was stolen by the evil
Speaker 2: chef and the friend like the wingman friend chef is like.
Speaker 1: That looks like your spatula. Yeah, yeah, okay, we figured
Speaker 1: it that.
Speaker 2: I feel better.
Speaker 3: Now we figured it out.
Speaker 1: What else conjunction replacing as you know, like my dad
Speaker 1: always said, don't bother me for advice.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry, I was getting personal.
Speaker 2: Like Josh always said, never trust family.
Speaker 1: Right exactly the quote.
Speaker 2: Okay, so those are those are the ones? Oh, there's
Speaker 2: one more as a suffix, like remember we said Saint
Speaker 2: Lye or something like that, like still hangs around in
Speaker 2: some cases, like you wouldn't say that that guy's innocent
Speaker 2: approach to nature is very childly. It's childlike. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but isn't that interesting that? I mean, the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: But you could use one for in one instance but
Speaker 2: not in another. They're not just interchangeable. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and childlike is not childish. Two different things there exactly.
Speaker 1: But there's no such thing as childly, I think, is
Speaker 1: my larger point. That's pretty much the point of the
Speaker 1: entire podcast, really, and my point is childlike is wonderful
Speaker 1: and childish is awful.
Speaker 3: True out, we should.
Speaker 1: Do one on ish that's a good one.
Speaker 2: I looked it up. I wondered if that came from
Speaker 2: lych or Leitch, and it doesn't. It's a it's an
Speaker 2: even older word. I think that means from the country
Speaker 2: over the origin of so you would be georgeish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now people, even my own daughter the other
Speaker 1: day I asked her something and she went.
Speaker 2: Ish, yeah, I'd be worth one for sure down the road.
Speaker 1: Maybe a shorty okay, shortish?
Speaker 3: A short like episode.
Speaker 2: Should be a shortly episode? Should we take a breakley?
Speaker 1: Uh, surely, okay, let's do that now.
Speaker 3: Very interesting.
Speaker 1: I just got to say, this is getting pretty fun.
Speaker 2: You knew it was gonna be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know. Sure, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I figured we'd be slinging, slinging the slang and that's
Speaker 1: where we come to now. Actually, good set up me.
Speaker 1: The slang of like is where people people Some people
Speaker 1: tend to get upset. It's interesting. Dave here says most
Speaker 1: people believe that any use of like outside those acceptable
Speaker 1: ways is meaningless. I would say some people. I don't
Speaker 1: think most people believe that at all.
Speaker 2: Right, I thought that was an odd, odd word to
Speaker 2: use too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, Dave, I can't tell you the last.
Speaker 2: Time I ran into anybody who really had an issue
Speaker 2: with it. We haven't gotten an email on it for
Speaker 2: a while, but every once in a while some of
Speaker 2: them write in and you could tell her just like
Speaker 2: bleeding from their eyeballs, like they hate us so much
Speaker 2: because we use the word like yeah, and it's just
Speaker 2: like I can't do anything for you, man, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna stop talking the way I talk for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry, the way it is, uh nothing personally.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course the slang that we're talking about though, that
Speaker 1: people have a problem with, and these people are generally like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's biller. Uh, it's not even a word.
Speaker 1: It's basically your um or you're uh, you're abusing it,
Speaker 1: you're over using it. And some people even go so
Speaker 1: far as to say it, like I mentioned earlier, like
Speaker 1: you're you're destroying the English language.
Speaker 2: Okay, So those people just, I guess, buckle up because
Speaker 2: this is the part we're going into now, because it
Speaker 2: turns out if you if you hang out with the
Speaker 2: hip linguists, they will tell you man like like really
Speaker 2: performs a lot of like really important functions. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: like exactly what they would say to you PhDs exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So Dave wrote up a little script. Do you want
Speaker 1: to play Guy number one or Guy number two?
Speaker 2: I would like to be Guy two.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny is this sounds like a conversation.
Speaker 3: We would have it.
Speaker 1: Totally does backstage at the mall. Yeah, all right, here
Speaker 1: we go Guy number one.
Speaker 3: That's me.
Speaker 1: Okay, Hey, Josh, have you seen what they're charging for
Speaker 1: the new Jordans.
Speaker 2: I know they're like a million dollars, Like, who could
Speaker 2: afford this stuff?
Speaker 1: I think they're like two fifty at foot locker, which
Speaker 1: is still crazy.
Speaker 2: Like I get that they're cool and everything, but if
Speaker 2: I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for shoes, you
Speaker 2: may would be like, we're getting a divorce and and scene.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna break this down, and I thought this
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way for Day to go about this.
Speaker 1: So hats off to Dave. But we're gonna break this
Speaker 1: down because every single use of the word, like in
Speaker 1: that dramatic scene that we just portrayed for everyone when
Speaker 1: do our TV show got canceled, they all have a use.
Speaker 1: They all have a function, and those functions even have names.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true, And it's not like they made up
Speaker 2: these names for like they said, these these terms, these
Speaker 2: different kinds of grammatical usage that that make up a
Speaker 2: lot of slang, especially in American spoken English. That's very important.
Speaker 2: We're talking almost exclusively here about spoken English. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: that like fills some of those those already established compartments.
Speaker 3: All right, So what's first?
Speaker 2: The first is the way that I think most people
Speaker 2: who like deride like what they focus on the most,
Speaker 2: which is called the quotative, technically a quotative complementizer, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which basically what you're saying that you're it sets up
Speaker 2: an impression, a paraphrase of what another person had said.
Speaker 2: Wood said might say, like like when I said Umi
Speaker 2: would be like, we're getting a divorce. I'm not expecting
Speaker 2: you to believe in that conversation that Umi told me
Speaker 2: that she's going to divorce me if I spend two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty dollars on some air Jordan's, but you
Speaker 2: know that the sentiment is generally true, maybe if a
Speaker 2: little exaggerated. So what that like is doing right there
Speaker 2: is signaling to you in conversation, Hey, I take what
Speaker 2: I'm saying with the grain assaut. Here, I'm fudging a
Speaker 2: little bit, but I'm still just trying to get a
Speaker 2: general point across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also Day points out it can also be
Speaker 1: used to set up like a mimic or a like
Speaker 1: an impression of the speaker. You didn't do it there
Speaker 1: because you're respectful for U me right, But another gentleman
Speaker 1: might say, you know, my wife would be like where
Speaker 1: adding a device or something like that. It is used
Speaker 1: a lot of times to set up or like, you know,
Speaker 1: let's say it was Sammy Davis Junior, Okay, Sammy would
Speaker 1: Sammy would be like, I'm going to file tomorrow.
Speaker 3: For divorce.
Speaker 2: That was lovely. That was love like.
Speaker 1: So the next thing we can talk about is the
Speaker 1: approximate adverb usage in this scene. That is when it's
Speaker 1: used and this is very very common. This is when
Speaker 1: it's used to mean, you know, around pretty much more
Speaker 1: or less just about. Like when I said I think
Speaker 1: they're like two hundred and fifty dollars at foot locker.
Speaker 1: That means, you know, there were two or three hundred
Speaker 1: people there. There were like two or three hundred people there.
Speaker 1: The bill was like seventy bucks or something. That means
Speaker 1: you're rounding up or you're approximating something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again in this sense, too like signals to
Speaker 2: the listen and they're like, hey, don't fully take what
Speaker 2: I'm saying as fact. I'm not trying to be one
Speaker 2: hundred percent accurate here, I'm trying to get a general
Speaker 2: idea across that this is really expensive. I saw a
Speaker 2: paper in the journal Autism and Developmental Language Impairments by
Speaker 2: Jones Zaane Engrossman, twenty twenty two, red Hot still off
Speaker 2: the presses, and they use this example of saying somebody
Speaker 2: saying like, I have like one hundred pair of shoes, right,
Speaker 2: you could have forty pairs of shoes. And because you
Speaker 2: use the word like, that still gets the point across,
Speaker 2: and you're speaking, you're communicating in like a still essentially
Speaker 2: an accurate way. What you're saying is I have a
Speaker 2: lot of shoes. Now it's actually sixty less than the
Speaker 2: number I just threw up, but it doesn't matter because
Speaker 2: forty is still a pretty big number. What Alike is
Speaker 2: doing here is standing in for approximately, and in this case,
Speaker 2: approximately wouldn't work because if you said I have approximately
Speaker 2: one hundred shoes and you actually have forty, that number
Speaker 2: is so way off that you're essentially either lying or
Speaker 2: totally incorrect. Like scuttles all that and says, yeah, hey,
Speaker 2: just just go with me here a little bit. I'm
Speaker 2: just saying I have a bunch of shoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really covers your bases.
Speaker 2: That's a legitimate function of conversation.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely, I do want to poke Dave here just once,
Speaker 1: because one example he used was the movie starts at
Speaker 1: like two or three.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the case, very important. You should be pretty specific.
Speaker 1: Dave's always late, all right, what's next? We have the
Speaker 1: discourse marker.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this is pretty important too.
Speaker 1: Right, So this is probably something that you didn't know
Speaker 1: that it was called this, but we all use discourse
Speaker 1: markers all the time. He found another linguist name and Kurzan,
Speaker 1: who has this analogy where it's like traffic discourse marker
Speaker 1: is like a traffic signal or road sign that helps
Speaker 1: you navigate spoken English, and like is very versatile in
Speaker 1: this function because it can mean a bunch of different
Speaker 1: things as a discourse marker, the first of which, like
Speaker 1: you said, it could be exaggeration. In this case of
Speaker 1: our scene, I know, these Jordans are like a million dollars.
Speaker 1: You know, it's obviously not a million dollars, but it
Speaker 1: sets it up as I'm clearly exaggerating.
Speaker 2: It's similar to the pair of shoes thing too, where
Speaker 2: if I said I know there are a million dollars,
Speaker 2: you'd be like, no, I do not. It's a little high.
Speaker 1: I am from Russia, in Mother Russia.
Speaker 2: Air Jordan's by you in.
Speaker 3: Russia music like you not.
Speaker 1: It can use it can be used as a discourse
Speaker 1: marker for emphasis in our scene. Have you seen have
Speaker 1: you seen what they're charging for these new air Jordans,
Speaker 1: So like just to emphasizes scene, and it just sort
Speaker 1: of pumps up that like, hey, it's something outrageous is
Speaker 1: about to come your way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Another one is like let me elaborate. So when
Speaker 2: I think I said, like who can afford this stuff,
Speaker 2: I'm actually elaborating on a previous sentence about how expensive
Speaker 2: they are. So they're really expensive. Let me elaborate who
Speaker 2: out there could afford this stuff? That's how expensive they are.
Speaker 2: Just adding like right there cuts down on all that
Speaker 2: extra fat, trims it like a packer in nineteen oh
Speaker 2: six in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know there are probably people out there
Speaker 1: that are saying, Well, you could drop the word like
Speaker 1: in a lot of these instances, maybe not the million
Speaker 1: dollars when and stuff like that, but you could say
Speaker 1: in that sentence, who can afford this stuff? And I
Speaker 1: get that, But that doesn't mean that putting like in
Speaker 1: is bad necessarily right?
Speaker 2: And who wants to sound like Larry David all the time?
Speaker 2: Noboddy Larry David?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess what else?
Speaker 3: What's surprise?
Speaker 2: It's funny. It gets across surprise, but you have to
Speaker 2: use it in a really unsurprised tone, yea for it
Speaker 2: to be effective. So, for example, if if somebody you
Speaker 2: would not expect showed up at a party and you went,
Speaker 2: she's here, you can kind of get that across, like
Speaker 2: like I'm really surprised that she's here, maybe a little
Speaker 2: chill that she's here, she should not be here, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. But if you say she's like here,
Speaker 2: that really gets it across, gets it across a little better.
Speaker 2: And but you have to you can't be like, she's
Speaker 2: like here. That doesn't work. You have to tone it
Speaker 2: down and do the opposite. And it's then it canvey surprise.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, it's amazing that that this is how we
Speaker 2: talk and nobody's writing this stuff down. The linguists are
Speaker 2: writing this stuff down from studying what people are doing
Speaker 2: in real time and conversation. This is not part of
Speaker 2: like the modern language associations like handbook.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: The last one we're going to talk about is as
Speaker 1: a discourse particle. And this is the one. This is
Speaker 1: this is the real bad guy as far as like
Speaker 1: haters go, don't you think probably?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is I mean, this is the.
Speaker 1: One that that that people will say is clearly just
Speaker 1: inserted in there as biller. It is the one that
Speaker 1: is infecting our language. Is this discourse particle use?
Speaker 3: And that is.
Speaker 1: I believe the woman who wrote the book, Alexandra Darcy,
Speaker 1: she's a linguist, said, I believe a PhD. I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: said that using it as a discourse particle doesn't doesn't
Speaker 1: change the meaning of a sentence necessarily, but it does
Speaker 1: set a tone and operates in the interpersonal.
Speaker 2: Realm exactly right. So, for example, if you are talking
Speaker 2: about somebody who you just like they've made some bad
Speaker 2: life choices or whatever, and you're expressing this to somebody else,
Speaker 2: but you don't want to make it sound like you
Speaker 2: don't like that person, Like you want to express that
Speaker 2: you still like that person, but they've made some bad
Speaker 2: life choices and you're a little disappointed in that. You
Speaker 2: could say two things. You could say, I love her,
Speaker 2: but she's dumb. Right if you like you sound kind
Speaker 2: of like a jerk. So what you can do is
Speaker 2: use like you can pepper sentences, would like to kind
Speaker 2: of pat it. For example, you would say like, I
Speaker 2: love her, but she's like dumb. That it gets across
Speaker 2: to the listener like, hey, I still care about this person.
Speaker 2: I'm not really putting them down. I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: get across some stuff that I'm just getting something off
Speaker 2: my chest here between you and me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's sort of It works as a softener
Speaker 1: like this example too. If someone asks you to go
Speaker 1: do something like hey, Josh, you want to go to
Speaker 1: dinner and you said sorry, I'm tired, that's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Josh clearly doesn't want to have dinner with me. But
Speaker 1: if you said sorry, I'm just like really tired, then
Speaker 1: that just softens things. Like the interpretation is I would
Speaker 1: really love to go to dinner with you. But I'm tired, correct,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to say all that other stuff.
Speaker 2: No, No, it's so it's a softener. That's a really
Speaker 2: great way to put it. I think that's how John
Speaker 2: McCord put it the Linguist. And it also works in
Speaker 2: reverse too, because it acts as as shielding, right, you're
Speaker 2: shielding the other person's feelings. By adding those likes, you're saying, like,
Speaker 2: I don't dislike you. I'm not trying to be mean here,
Speaker 2: I just I know you're probably going to be disappointed,
Speaker 2: so I want to just kind of get this information
Speaker 2: across as gently as possible, and peppering it with likes
Speaker 2: does that. But like I said, it works in reverse.
Speaker 2: It shields the speaker too. In some cases, it acts
Speaker 2: as a hedge to where you are saying, you're giving
Speaker 2: yourself plausible deniability. You're not saying I'm one hundred percent
Speaker 2: confident in what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure. But because
Speaker 2: I'm adding like, it's hedging it so that if I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: it's not the end of the world. It's not that
Speaker 2: much egg on my face. So if you were asking,
Speaker 2: if somebody asked what you were or what you did
Speaker 2: for a living and I didn't know I could say
Speaker 2: I think like he's a podcaster, or I think he's
Speaker 2: like a podcaster. That's like it just hedges it a
Speaker 2: little bit, and and yeah, it protects the speaker in
Speaker 2: this case rather than protects the receiver. But it's the
Speaker 2: same function essentially.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we do that all the time when we're
Speaker 1: just pulling something off the dum we're not sure about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but people still email in and tell me how wrong, wrong, wrong?
Speaker 3: I am. Well.
Speaker 1: Alexandria Darcy would say that if you use like as
Speaker 1: a discourse particle, then that means that you are emotionally intelligent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that means you have very much an awareness of who
Speaker 1: you're speaking to and how your words are being received.
Speaker 1: And there have been studies that have shown that when
Speaker 1: people hear speech that do not have like or other
Speaker 1: discourse particles, that and you know, as another one, you
Speaker 1: know that people sound robotic and unfriendly and unnatural, and
Speaker 1: that these discourse particles conversationally make people feel at ease.
Speaker 2: It's almost like hard water and the likes are water softeners. Right,
Speaker 2: It's the best I can come up with.
Speaker 3: Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: All right? We will be right back.
Speaker 2: So Chuck. If you ask people, even people use the
Speaker 2: word like, like, where did the use of like come from?
Speaker 2: When did we start using like in English? Spoke in English?
Speaker 2: Most people would give them the chance to think about it,
Speaker 2: say Valley Girls. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Valley Girls.
Speaker 2: Valley Girls are Teletubbies one of the two, and you'd
Speaker 2: be like, it wasn't Teletubbies. But also it wasn't Valley Girls.
Speaker 2: Valley Girls popularized it, but we were using like way before.
Speaker 2: But one of the reasons why people think Valley Girls
Speaker 2: is in part because of a nineteen eighty two song
Speaker 2: by Frank Zappa that introduced Valley Girls to the United States. Like,
Speaker 2: they were pretty much confined to the San Fernando Valley
Speaker 2: until that Frank Zappa song came along.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and this is, you know, part of
Speaker 1: greater Los Angeles if you're not familiar. But in eighty
Speaker 1: two he put up a song Valley Girl with his
Speaker 1: daughter Moon Zappa, and it really, you know, sort of
Speaker 1: mocked that way of speaking. The movie Valley Girl was
Speaker 1: it was not for the movie. The movie came out
Speaker 1: a year later, and that obviously made it even more
Speaker 1: popular other movies like Fast Times Origemont High, and then
Speaker 1: later in the nineties with Clueless, which brought other terms
Speaker 1: that a lot of people hate, like whatever and as if.
Speaker 1: But like you said, these things really popularize it. It
Speaker 1: didn't invent it. And we know it because there's actual
Speaker 1: proof if you go back even just a little while
Speaker 1: and look at history of in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties with the beats and the heptalk or jive talk, bebop.
Speaker 1: They were saying like crazy and writing it in their books.
Speaker 1: It was all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Dave gives some examples of bop talk or
Speaker 2: jive talk or jazz talk. Crazy was one. We used
Speaker 2: that a lot cool the top. That's reminds me of
Speaker 2: Meltormet gone as in gone Girl, dig hip. And then
Speaker 2: he includes et cetera, which I didn't realize was bop talk.
Speaker 2: I thought that was Latin.
Speaker 3: That's funny. You almost got me.
Speaker 1: But they would use the word like a lot, like
Speaker 1: you know that cat is like crazy, or you know,
Speaker 1: like he is so square, or like I was really grooven.
Speaker 1: You know, they used it basically in the exact same way.
Speaker 1: Approximate adverbs, discourse markers, and discourse particles, right.
Speaker 3: The same way.
Speaker 1: Valley Girls in the eighties used it in the same
Speaker 1: way people of all stripes use it today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you were into jazz at the time,
Speaker 2: you were probably somewhat familiar of bop talk. But it
Speaker 2: filtered into the Beats, who kind of introduced it to
Speaker 2: an even wider audience in the United States. Likes it
Speaker 2: pops up here there and on the road from Jack Kerouac.
Speaker 2: So we know, at least as far back as the Beats,
Speaker 2: and probably before that with jazz musicians in the forties,
Speaker 2: like was used in the same slangy way that we
Speaker 2: use it now, multiple ways we use it now, but
Speaker 2: that the Valley Girls are the ones that seem to
Speaker 2: have introduced or at least popularized that the latest version
Speaker 2: or use of like, which is that quotative version where
Speaker 2: it sets up a paraphrase quote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think they did not find and you know,
Speaker 1: they dug around. I believe that Darcy and her book
Speaker 1: found uses in England in the nineteenth century where they
Speaker 1: would use the word like in several different ways that
Speaker 1: we use it now, But that one the what.
Speaker 3: Was it called again?
Speaker 2: What the quotative use.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the quotative, that's the one that seems to
Speaker 1: have really been truly born in the eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's probable or possible that Valley Girls did
Speaker 2: not make that up, but it became part of valley
Speaker 2: girl val speak, along with like gag me with the
Speaker 2: spoon and totally tubular.
Speaker 1: And all teenagers talk like that back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but apparently ground zero for it was the valley
Speaker 2: that That's where it emerged from, at the very least,
Speaker 2: that's where people thought that it emerged from. Like kids,
Speaker 2: I think it's that kids in Ohio weren't necessarily talking
Speaker 2: like that. I know my sisters didn't talk like that
Speaker 2: until those movies came out.
Speaker 3: M I heard stuff like that. I think it.
Speaker 1: I think it popularized it, but I think teenagers were
Speaker 1: I mean maybe not some of the particular phrases, but
Speaker 1: the use of like you know was definitely around before
Speaker 1: that movie. Okay, no, no, no, for sure, I mean popularly.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, but most people point to or were exposed
Speaker 2: to it from Valley Girls, not the movie. I'm saying,
Speaker 2: like the concept, the social trend Valley.
Speaker 1: Girls, right because of the movie.
Speaker 2: Right, So, that's the one that most people associate with
Speaker 2: Valley girls for a reason. They're the ones who popularize it.
Speaker 2: But people blame valley girls for the whole use of
Speaker 2: like in a lot of ways, and it's kind of
Speaker 2: translated since the early eighties into young girls. You don't
Speaker 2: have to be valley girls. Like the idea is just
Speaker 2: young girls talk like that. They're the ones who use
Speaker 2: like all the time if they are infecting the language.
Speaker 2: That's what some people think, and that apparently is not
Speaker 2: just incorrect. Factually, it's pretty sexists in the way that
Speaker 2: Disco Demolition Night riot where people were just going crazy
Speaker 2: on disco records in Chicago was homophobic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and racists, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, there's a history of that still
Speaker 1: goes on today of sort of thinly veiled coded like
Speaker 1: it's okay to like, it's not okay to to make
Speaker 1: fun of someone because of you know, their age, or
Speaker 1: because of their gender identity or their ethnicity or something,
Speaker 1: but it's still generally okay to make fun of the
Speaker 1: way someone might talk, and that oftentimes is coded in
Speaker 1: this case for young women.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because kind of as a rule, the contributions the
Speaker 2: intellectual contributions of young women in the United States are
Speaker 2: not there's not a huge high emphasis on them. Traditionally
Speaker 2: there hasn't been, especially among older men. They're very much
Speaker 2: looked down upon. But again, you can't just be like
Speaker 2: you're stupid because you're a twenty year old girl. But
Speaker 2: you could say like, you sound really immature because you
Speaker 2: use like a lot. It's still the same thing. You've
Speaker 2: just found a different entree into devaluing that person's contributions
Speaker 2: or that group's contributions.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you need not look any further than
Speaker 1: someone like Greta Thurnberg, you know, use like a lot. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about when she first came on the
Speaker 1: scene sort of all you heard about was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know this young girl, this young girl.
Speaker 2: She's a rabble rouser.
Speaker 1: I think it's said, you know, generally derisively by a
Speaker 1: lot of people, generally older, older men in politics.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah, no, that's a great example of it. So
Speaker 2: I said, factually, that doesn't make it's not accurate. And
Speaker 2: our linguist heroes Darcy and Catherine Kinsler and others have
Speaker 2: studied this. They actually do studies to find out who
Speaker 2: actually uses like and they found that in general, just
Speaker 2: using like, men and women use it with about the
Speaker 2: same frequency. But when you dig down a little further,
Speaker 2: you drill down into it to get into the real
Speaker 2: granular meat of the whole subject, kind of like a
Speaker 2: nineteen oh six packer in Chicago with a really sharp
Speaker 2: knife and tuberculosis. You find that there are distinctions between
Speaker 2: age and gender that the use of like in different ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So what they found was for the approximate adverb form
Speaker 1: meaning you know, almost or just about, men and women
Speaker 1: use it equally, the discourse particle like the softener or
Speaker 1: the interpersonal like, men actually use it more frequently than women.
Speaker 1: The discourse particle form like what's a good example there.
Speaker 2: The discourse marker would be like emphasis, like have you seen.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, Yeah, that one. They found that women do
Speaker 1: use it more frequently. The big one was the new
Speaker 1: kid on the block in the eighties, a quotative complementizer.
Speaker 1: It's such a stupid word, it really is. That's the
Speaker 1: one that is significantly used more frequently by women than men.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, And also there's this idea that it's
Speaker 2: just young the younger generations that use it in the
Speaker 2: younger generations definitely use it more frequently and in more
Speaker 2: interesting and diverse ways, but it still filters to other
Speaker 2: age groups. And there's apparently Darcy included some quotes from
Speaker 2: Brits in their seventies to nineties who were using like
Speaker 2: in ways that we recognize as the slang uses of like.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 2: One of them says a seventy five year old respondent
Speaker 2: said they were just like sitting waiting to die. Can
Speaker 2: you do a seventy five year old British woman impression?
Speaker 1: I don't think so, Okay, Yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: clear examples of people of a certain age using the
Speaker 1: word like. The one again, the one big exception is
Speaker 1: a quotative like, which is supposedly women use or not supposedly.
Speaker 1: I guess they found in their study use more than men.
Speaker 1: And it's also almost exclusively used by younger people. But again,
Speaker 1: younger people are always the ones that are changing language
Speaker 1: and thinking up new words and trying out new usages
Speaker 1: since the beginning of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's a larger question that we still haven't
Speaker 2: fully answered, and that is, like, do the people who
Speaker 2: hate like and say it's infecting the language they have
Speaker 2: a point and turns out the answers no, not really,
Speaker 2: they have some sort of weird personal vendetta which may
Speaker 2: or may not be sexist in nature or agists at
Speaker 2: least that if you look at how the word like
Speaker 2: is used, it provides all sorts of unique functions that
Speaker 2: other words don't necessarily fill. Like Remember I said approximately
Speaker 2: would work in some cases, but not in other cases,
Speaker 2: like has carved, or we've used like to carve out
Speaker 2: or fill voids that no other words had filled before
Speaker 2: in spoken English language. And yes, it looks weird on paper,
Speaker 2: but we're not talking about on paper. We're talking about
Speaker 2: in a conversation. And like is a way people make
Speaker 2: sure that you're with them still when they're talking to you,
Speaker 2: that you feel included, that your feelings are being acknowledged.
Speaker 2: It provides all sorts of really interesting functions it does.
Speaker 1: And in short, it's just the way people talk generally.
Speaker 2: Yes, for sure, all right, Well, if you want to
Speaker 2: know more about like, to start listening, and you will
Speaker 2: drive yourself mad. And if you don't feel like doing that,
Speaker 2: just read some linguistic papers on it. There's some interesting
Speaker 2: stuff out there. And since I said that, it's time
Speaker 2: for listener man, I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Call this Simpson's Clue.
Speaker 3: Okay board game.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, just finished to the episode on Clue. I
Speaker 1: am so excited to tell you this about the Simpsons
Speaker 1: Clue board game. Maybe you sawt in your research, but
Speaker 1: it is so on brand for you too. How to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're aware of its existence? In the game,
Speaker 1: mister Burns is murdered and the characters are March as
Speaker 1: Missus Peacock, Homer as mister Green, Lisa as Miss Scarlett,
Speaker 1: Bart as Professor Plum, Krusty as Colonel Mustard, and Smithers
Speaker 1: as Missus White. Apparently this was later changed. The weapons
Speaker 1: included Lisa's saxophone, plutonium, Rod Bart's slingshot, Lisa's necklace, extendo glove,
Speaker 1: and a poisoned doughnut. The locations are obviously all around Springfield.
Speaker 1: You got Mo's, the Retirement Castle, the Simpson's house, mister
Speaker 1: Burns's office, and the Quickie Mart, and of course there
Speaker 1: are lots of Easter eggs.
Speaker 3: It's just so perfect.
Speaker 1: As a kid that religiously watched The Simpsons reruns every night,
Speaker 1: getting Simpson's Clue was the best birthday present I could
Speaker 1: think of, and the only version I have ever had.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the hours of entertainment and third
Speaker 1: wheeling to your conversations or I guess fourth wheeling with Jerry.
Speaker 3: I love you, guys. That is from Margaret Nihawk.
Speaker 2: Thanks Margaret, that was a great email. I really feel
Speaker 2: the urge to go out and buy.
Speaker 3: The Simpsons Clue totally.
Speaker 2: If you want to subliminally act upon us in some
Speaker 2: sort of way that hopefully is helpful, like getting us
Speaker 2: to want to buy a really great board game like
Speaker 2: Margaret did, you can get in touch with us too,
Speaker 2: send us a very nice email to stuff podcast at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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