whatevs
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Y’know, back in the, like, mid-60s my parents were, like, trying get my sister and me to stop, y’know, using y’know and like as filler words, 'cause it, like, sounded, y’know, annoying.
“You know” and shorter versions were used much more often than “like”, but they were both common.
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Canadians, too, eh? But farther east, at least English-speakers I’ve known from Quebec, and the northern New Yorkers they’d infected across the border, did more of an uptalking thing?
If you’ve listened to #Selfie by the Chainsmokers you know this style of speech is very alive and well.
I like the style myself–it’s often so exaggerated the speaker is obviously goofing around, but when not done in an over the top manner, the upbeat, every-sentence-is-a-question cadence is engaging. At least I prefer it over a flat or morose or aggressive tone that some teenagers adopt. If one can get over the vapid stereotype, it’s usually a sign you’re talking to a fun, social, talkative person.
This is how I take it; I was reminded of an analysis of the trend I came across a few years ago, in which it was characterised as a submissive sort of trait, engendered by a lack of declarative things to say.
Given that IME, folks who speak like this tend to do it fairly constantly with little tonal variation going on, it sounds like a brain in neutral gear to me. ‘Can’t you hear how boring you sound?’ I invariably think to myself…
It is, it’s called AQI: Australian Question Intonation. People from around the Thames Valley area of the UK seem to have taken it up too. I really find it hard to converse with someone using it because it always forces a positive response from me on THEIR terms.
I’m still trying to make “shiny” happen.
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In my family, we were banned from saying “get”, “like”, “yebbut” and “nice”.
I’m a mid-80s kid too; and even then I remember being disconcerted by the escape-laden Valley speak.
That dress is completely within the norm for preppies of the age, though. Considering this is a Frank Zappa song and the lyrics are intoned by Moon Unit, I would have to say the choice was intentional.
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True. Doesn’t stop me picking up my nephews on it when they use “like” three times per sentence. “So it was like really good, but not actually good then?”
(As an aside, their father is one of the cleverest people I know but he still uses “literally” when he means “metaphorically”, and yes, I pick him up on that too.)
Not at all. That’s one use of it, but when used in the sentence “and he was like, whatever,” it assumes a different, quite interesting, role: the quotative like.
So what’s the deal with the quotative like? Is it just a lazier, slangier way of saying says? Linguists are like, No! The general consensus is that the quotative like encourages a speaker to embody the participants in a conversation. Thus, the speaker vocalizes the contents of participants’ utterances, but also her attitudes toward those utterances. She can dramatize multiple viewpoints, one after another, making it perfectly clear all the while which views she sympathizes with and which she does not.
Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/opinion/15iht-edoconnor.1.6661788.html?_r=0
In a way, it’s a more generalized “says,” allowing the speaker not only to quote their characters, but to dramatize the intent and attitude of them:
And the mom said ‘eat your food!’ And the baby was all like, No way!, and the mom was like [grrrr].
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Right, exactly, when that film hit and this song, and people started adopting these sayings and speech patterns, I felt fer sure that it was going to be done and gone by the next week. But now, watch a reality tv show where they do a “reveal” (like one of those home makeover shows) and note how many times someone will saying, “That’s awesome!”
The drinking game is in how many times ohmagahd is repeated. 
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And here I was expecting to read something about how the intonation pattern is making its way into different languages.
But no, it’s spread from LA all the way to Vancouver. That’s really global. As global as the World Series.
OK, so it might be in Australia, too. And maybe Britain. But, the fact that a handful of English-speaking nations are separated by quite a bit of ocean doesn’t make a phenomenon global.
However, that speech pattern becoming truly global might be only a matter of time, with American movies having such a global audience. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard German dubs of American movies where it was imitated in the translation as well.
And I’ll be sure to listen carefully next time I talk to an overexcited teenage girl in Austria.
Well, they’re supposed to be. Satire, ya know?
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Upspeak is especially bad in a professional environment. I really reduces credibility unfortunately. As does “vocal fry”.
The worst is “upfry”. Upspeak + vocal fry TOGETHERrrrrrrrr?
Dear world,
As a child of a Southern California beach city from the '70s, I’m truly sorry for whatever role I and my generational cohort may have played in inflicting this linguistic plague on the world.
(though, what seems totally normal to me [like people saying “dude”], has gotten me mocked in other parts of the country)
To be honest, I’m just really glad that the Northern CA trend of saying “Hella” (or if you’re uber Christian “Hecka”) never seemed to escape their little part of the world.
For some reason I’m like reminded of this, know what I’m sayin’?
Sadly, hella escaped as well.
Thanks, Obama.
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