There is a disturbing condition that continues to dominate the realm of our spoken conversations. It’s an alarming phenomenon – the words that we choose to communicate with are being consistently invaded with unnecessary discourse markers. They are called speech disfluencies, words that pepper our language unnecessarily, such as “um,” “basically,” and the most ubiquitous, “like.” They serve as filler, often abused by the less articulate who cannot successfully string together a full sentence without having to desperately stall for time.
Personally, I don’t like the word “like.” I might if it retained its correct purpose – to convey similarity or attraction, yet today it detracts from the fluidity of speech, is thrown around superfluously, and is constantly misused. This word is often sprinkled within dialogue among (although not limited to) young adults, and it is extremely difficult to find a conversation that doesn’t include the consistent usage of such meaningless verbal padding. I am no exception, but only recently has my prevalent abuse of “like” caused me to hate a word that, ironically, is often meant to communicate affection.
One can only imagine how aggravated I become when someone raises a hand in class to make a point, but cannot articulately convey an idea without the repeated usage of “um” and “like.” “So, like, does that mean that mitosis can occur with bacteria?” Verbiage like this can often make any serious question sound stupid.
This verbal tic, as well as other useless fillers, can constitute up to 20 percent of our everyday speech. Readers, this is disturbing – we are carelessly degrading our spoken rhetoric.
These words that muddy our language (and cause others to question our intelligence) detract from the overall quality of our conversations. Since we find it necessary to be constantly communicating rather than paying close attention to what we are actually saying, throwing in the word “like” serves the following purposes: We dodge a millisecond of potential silence, we manage to go on talking uninterrupted, and we retain a safety net of imprecision.
Perhaps rather than throwing in these words in order to circumvent any verbal interference, we should just hand over the spotlight and allow for interjection. Certainly throwing in such fillers doesn’t do much to hold our listeners’ attention anyway.
Upon hearing my friend tell me that she participates all the time in class, I register this as a truthful statement and am proud of her contributions. However, hearing, “I, like, participate all the time in class,” brings me to the conclusion that she probably participates occasionally, and with the same lack of confidence just conveyed.
In our reluctance to sound concrete in our ideas, we throw in fillers that allow us to be vague, thus communicating a concept without assurance. In the process, we forfeit our roles as assertive contributors to a spoken dialogue.
By peppering our language with such a useless word, not only are we stripping the word “like” of any actual meaning, we are doing a disservice to our roles as intelligent speakers. Adding in fillers in hopes that our listeners’ ability to interpret our ideas is better than our own ability to articulate is not a constructive form of communication.
So why are we passively allowing the value of well-articulated dialogue to decline? Isn’t it still important to be well spoken, especially within the context of academia? Okay, maybe in high school dumbing ourselves down was a bit more acceptable, but seriously, people, we’re in college – let’s attempt to be well-spoken. It’s time to be confident in what we’re saying, discard our verbal crutches, and learn how to form our sentences eloquently.
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