she said like...

So I had an interesting experience that I thought I’d share and perhaps some of you will have some insight to give. I am calling it the “like phenomenon.”

Kat, Frank and I were having breakfast at Victoria’s Kitchen last week, totally enjoying our food and our stimulating conversation. (Although I can’t remember at the moment exactly what we were talking about so I’m not sure it was that important to the welfare of the state, but it was stimulating nonetheless.) We were there for about an hour, and I stayed longer stealing wireless from Cyberia. About a half hour after Frank and Kat left, an older woman came up and asked if she could talk to me. Basically, without going into all the details, she informed me that if I were a true friend to Frank, I would tell him that if he ever wanted to get a job somewhere he had better stop using the word ‘like’. While I was struggling to gather my thoughts and shut my mouth, which was wide open from the shock of the blatant rudeness and gall, she continued to tell me how listening to our conversation was VERY annoying and, in not so many words, was quite put out that we had forced her to eavesdrop and listen in. After all, she was sitting on the other side of the room and must have been straining very hard to hear us since none of us are loud talkers. (Though we did see her again yesterday and I noticed she had a hearing aid in. She must have had that baby cranked pretty high.)

Regardless of my dismay at the social filter that some people are prone to lose as they get older, (and hoping that I never lose mine), it did get me thinking about the word ‘like’ and how often we use it. How often I use it! Like all the time! How did this word come to be so prevalent in the way we speak? Why is it that those over 50 are the ones who are annoyed when they eavesdrop on other people’s conversations? Was it because of TV? But I didn’t watch TV when I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t become a “regular” TV watcher until I was 25 after I had the guys. So where did I pick it up from? And what are the situations in which I use it? (After paying attention to my own ‘like phenomenon’, I am sorry to admit that I really do use it often.)

A general consensus from those I have talked to about this is that it started off in the Valley Girl days. It was so exaggerated that people started using the word in order to make fun of it. But somehow, if this is true, the exaggeration was lost and suddenly most of us under 50 began to use it in every conversation.

How is this possible? How probable is it that a few people making fun of a particular subculture and their use of the word ‘like’ can infiltrate our very language to the point that most of us don’t even realize we are using the word? It’s crazy. I want the exact date of when this started. I want to know when it was that I started using this word in excess and come to an understanding of why I did so. Can language use actually be this devious?

I don’t know. But like, I think if I were into rhetorical studies I would be writing a dissertation on this ‘like phenomenon’.