Language: Like, Yikes!

A Misunderstood Word

Like is a word people like to hate: It angers English teachers and word-watchers who say it's just empty drivel used mostly by women and teens. The facts about like tell a different story, as discussed by University of Canterbury linguist Alexandra D'Arcy in an article in American Speech. Here are three debunkings:

Myth: Like is meaningless verbal filler that can go anywhere in a sentence.

Reality: Vernacular like—the type that tends to bug people—has four distinctive functions. Like separates phrases and thoughts much like I mean and keeps a conversation moving in the way you know does. Though these cases certainly feel like unnecessary filler to nonlinguists, they do have distinct communicative functions in speech. The other uses are equivalent to says (He was like, I'll have a bagel with lox) and about (She was like six feet tall). All four uses are constrained by rules.

Myth: Women use like more than men.

Reality: Women use the about and says types more, and men use the conversation-smoothing types more. The overall frequency is about the same.

Myth: It's a teen thing.

Reality: Teens do use like more than other age groups, but adults of any age use all four vernacular forms of like. "Like isn't restricted to younger speakers," D'Arcy says. "80- and 90-year-olds use it." Another reason not to trash the young: Like has been gaining in popularity for decades, and adolescents are always at the forefront of language change.

So, like, why are these myths so compelling? Stereotypes alter our perceptions, D'Arcy says. "Truth is what resonates. Women are gossipy chatterboxes. Teenagers are incoherent. Any language myth that agrees with these general ideologies therefore makes sense to us."