Why, Like, It's Good to Use Words Like "Like"

0:00From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show in which entrepreneurs do what entrepreneurs do best, solve unexpected problems in their business. We were completely wrong. And I'm just like, it's not selling. It was like, we have to start from scratch. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine.

0:22You know what, like, you don't hear me, like, say a lot in this podcast. It's what you just heard there. Like, you hear it sometimes, but I try to avoid it. and I even edit some of it out after I record. And that's because I, like you, probably like most people, think that those little filler words, those expressions like, um, you know, are unprofessional, are maybe a sign of less polish, maybe even less intelligence. But what if we understood that those things have a purpose in our language, that they are actually incredibly useful, that they signal things, that they help us communicate? People can reconceptualize these negative attributes they associate with their speech and re-envision them as actually powerful, purposeful speech features.

1:23This is Valerie. And what she said there, that's like her goal. Hi, I'm Valerie Friedland. I'm a professor of sociolinguistics, and I am the author of the new book, Like Literally Dude, Arguing for the Good in Bad English. Valerie says she got into this subject because she would go out and give these talks for a general audience about big ideas about language, grand theories about how we communicate. And then afterwards, she'd always get the same kind of questions. People would come up and say, oh, that was really fascinating. Now, why do people say like all the time? Or I hate it. Usually it was, I hate it when people say like all the time.

2:03Or why do people say literally, non-literally? That drives me crazy. Or I feel really self-conscious about my vocal fry. Is that something bad about my speech? So she decided to write the book that answers these questions. To unpack how we talk and how it relates to these very large forces that have evolved over the centuries that drive English forward. And I think by doing that, people can reconceptualize these negative attributes they associate with their speech and re-envision them as actually powerful, purposeful speech features. As a guy who communicates for a living, I found this whole thing totally fascinating.

2:41I loved the book and actually we ran an excerpt of it in the May issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. So you can find that. The excerpt is all about like, why we like, say, like all the time. But today, you are going to hear Valerie dig into this and other subjects because I just, reading the book wasn't enough. I had to talk through some of this with her. So on this episode of Problem Solvers, it is why we talk the way we do and why we should not. You know what? I would have maybe retaken that exact moment. Usually I'll stumble on something and then I'll retake it. But I'm just keeping it in because isn't this kind of what we're talking about anyway, why we shouldn't be so ashamed about it.

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4:49I'm talking with Valerie Friedland, author of the new book, Like Literally Dude, arguing for the good in bad English. And let's just get into it. So let's start talking about what entrepreneurs might consider a problem. And the problem, as it relates to the work that you have here, the problem could show up in many ways. I'll give you a couple examples. The problem could be that I'm an entrepreneur and I know that my speech is littered with likes and ums and uhs and you knows. And I worry that when I go and try to make a presentation in front of important people, investors say, that I don't know how to scrub that from my speech and therefore I am afraid that people are going to think less of me.

5:34Or I could flip it and I could say, I'm interviewing candidates for a job. And when someone comes in and they uh, uh, uh their way through an interview, I think less of them. I think that they're less polished, maybe less intelligent. And what's very compelling about your book is that you give really concrete reasons why we do these things. And I want to dig into a couple of the specific examples, but why don't you take us just a level deeper right now before we get into those specifics and explain why our language and our speech is full of this stuff to begin with and why it's not as bad as we think.

6:17All right. That's a lot of different questions there. Yes. So let's start off with the idea of what we don't like about language. So what I really want to make sure people come away from the book with sort of just at a fundamental level is the idea of being disliked and the idea of being bad are two very different things. And dislikes are developed through cultural moments, through ideas we form based on beliefs we have about whatever is true in our society at that moment to us. It can be born of our perspective in life, who we are, where we come from, you know, our nationality, our ethnicity, our gender.

6:55All of those things will affect the beliefs that we have about how people should behave. And that includes language. And a lot of that is based on how we behave. So we've been trained from a very young age to do and say certain things in certain ways. And that might be different than our neighbors. And we judge people based on that. So that's disliked. Right. And that's a very socially governed behavior. Bad is something that has to do with there's a fundamental wrongness about it. There's a problem. There's something that's an error about it. And what's interesting is we often conflate those two when we get to language.

7:30So a lot of things like like or like umming and uhing are viewed as errors. Just like a lot of ethnic varieties are often viewed not as correct and separate systems, but as errors. And that is actually based on a fallacy that we have been taught since the 18th century about what grammar is. And so when you look at prescriptivism, that's only been around for about two centuries. And it was born out of a very different situation socially than we've come to associate it with today. So when we were in the 1800s, English had just emerged from being the vernacular language, the language of the people, not the language of government, not the language of literature, not the language of education or science or medicine.

8:18And so there was a big push in that. Because these were all, sorry, just to be clear, because these elite languages, so to speak, were happening in Latin because law was in law French. Is that what you mean? Right. So French, right, had been the language of government for hundreds of years in Britain. and it really didn't stop being used till about the 1400s. And at that time, English had been the language of the people. It was a vernacular language. Everybody spoke this really kind of what we would call vulgar English, which doesn't mean bad, it just means common, sort of just the people on the street.

8:59That was a conversation. But if you were in government or you were in literature or you were in any kind of finance or economic role, you would be speaking French. And then after this, during Shakespeare's era, was the first time that English had really come to the fore and it was being written in books. The printing press had come around. So all of these things revolutionized the way that we looked at English. It was starting to become a language that was not just for the people, but also for other learned places. And so we brought a lot more words in it from Latin and Greek, which we really held in high esteem at that time because they were the classic languages.

9:35They were the language of legal documents. They were the language of religion. They were the language that we held sort of higher than English. So we go jump ahead now from the early modern period, which was about 1500 to about 1800. And around 1800, what we have is the Industrial Revolution that's bringing massive influx into London, which had become a cultural center. Well, that's a problem because those people are middle class or lower class, and they're sort of swamping this elite city, this cultural capital where the aristocracy sort of liked their position and they had valued that and thought it was all through breeding that they would achieve this high status.

10:17But now all of a sudden these merchants and, you know, sort of riffraff were becoming very wealthy and they were joining the ranks of the upper class. A lot of codification happened because with this mixing, all of a sudden the middle class could finally have some class ability, some class mobility, and they wanted to aspire to the upper class. So one way to do that is become someone that talked like the upper class. So the upper class also wanted to guard their position and use language as sort of a gatekeeper, just like we do today to keep the riffraff out. So what's an ingenious solution? Codify your language, your norms, the speech that you use, the forms that you use, and vilify those that are sort of vernacular speech, which hadn't really never happened before.

11:06We didn't dismiss it in the way we do today. It was just dialect variation at that time. And we started seeing grammar books written. We started seeing famous dictionaries like that of Samuel Johnson start to become very, very popular. We started to see a lot of usage guides. So not only did the upper class get to name what was correct English based on their own norms just because they had the power to do it, but they also got to make a buck off of it. So it's really pretty ingenious. So, you know, this is the long history of why we view the speech we view as correct today. So that just a sort of socio-historical accident, which norms got put in place as the right norms, but there's really nothing linguistically correct about them.

11:48So there's nothing about those norms that makes them better inherently. They're all from the same grammar, when I mean grammar from a linguistic point, that all language has emerged from over the centuries. And in fact, many of the features that are typical of good speech today were bad speech in the 17th or 18th century. I mean, how often do you say, I shall do it? Do you ever say that? No. Not if you want friends, right? But in the 18th century, when you used a first person pronoun, you used shall. In fact, must. We don't even use must anymore. I mean, what's happened to us. We must bring it back.

12:26I find this fascinating because it means that when someone is feeling self-conscious about using the word like too much, what they are really doing is suffering under these notions that had been set in class distinctions of English centuries before. So So start to untangle them with a specific. Let's dive into like as a way, because what you lay out in the book is all the ways in which like actually performs a function in the way that we talk, which is really the opposite of how people think of it. I think people think of like as a thing people say because they are inarticulate. But what you offer is a way to understand how that word is actually serving a lot of very useful functions that we may not be doing consciously, but that are real and functional.

13:30Right. I mean, like is a great example because it has a much longer history than we tend to think. I mean, most of us think like is a Valley Girl feature from - Yeah, yeah. We think it all came out of Clueless in 1997 or something. Or what was that song, the Valley Girl song by Moon Unit Zappa? I think, you know, bag me with a spoon. It came along. She used like in that quite a bit. So, you know, I think a lot of people think of it as sort of Southern California speak from the 1980s and 1990s. And in fact, it has a much, much longer history, not only in the verbal use or the noun use or the adjectival use that we think of, but in like as a discourse marker, which is what people tend not to like.

14:10And see, you can't help using like. Like is everywhere. And one thing I think you said is really important is the idea that it's sort of verbal riffraff. You know, people dismiss it as having any meaning and therefore it makes you vacuous and kind of not able to be articulate. And I think that's a big mistake. If we allow ourselves to take that view, it's certainly an easy way to dismiss it, but it inhibits us from seeing the value and the purpose and the power behind these new speech features that develop that are taking over. So a really interesting study by a Canadian researcher named Sally Tagliamonte on a Toronto speech corpus with thousands and thousands of conversations.

14:52From 1990 to the year 2000, she analyzed the use of one other form of like that we'll talk about when I break down the uses of like, quotative like. And the use of that like from 1990 to 2000 increased almost 60 % in the corpus, meaning it is taking over all our linguistic nooks and crannies. So to dismiss it and pretend like we can just make it go away, that's not going to happen, first of all. And if you say, okay, I'm not going to listen to someone because they're using that and they don't know what they're talking about, that's vacuous, that's they're uncertain, you miss an opportunity to hear some really bright ideas from very bright people simply on your inherent bias based on cultural norms towards that person.

15:37I mean, language is one of the last bastions of discrimination that we allow and in fact encourage, but it is, it's really a discriminatory act when you do that because you're responding based on beliefs that you have about who you are and the perspective you were born into rather than understand that language is emergent from social identity. And the value of like, once I lay out the different ways it's used, is something that has really helped conversational connectivity. And actually, when we look at studies for people going into job interviews, do you want to use a lot of like? Probably not.

16:11But what we found is when people shift to using some like when they're in their sort of conversational parts of their interview rather than answering the question about what they're going to be doing, it actually shows a result where the person doing the interviewing finds them more approachable and feels like they have more connection. So it does have value even in the way we perceive it, even if we hate it just on the surface. I think we also don't realize how many people use like. When I listen to conversations and in fact, I listened to an interview you did with another expert. I think he was an entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur.

16:47I noticed he was using like quite a bit in a sort of sentence initial position, but it was subtle because he has said really important, interesting things. And so when When we feel someone is worth listening to, we ignore the likes that they use. When we see people young or female, we often tend to overhear it, which is something called the frequency illusion. So I think there's a lot to unpack in that question that you asked. And I'd be happy to go into the uses of like. Yeah, well, let's at least do a few of them. I mean, there are a lot of them. But just so people understand what you're talking about, when we talk about the function and the social function of like, can you explain a few ways in which it's used?

17:28Sure. I'd be happy to. So of course we have the traditional uses of like, which I won't sort of go over, but things like using them as a noun, that's a like I have, or using them as a verb, I like ice cream, which I do just in case anybody wants to send me some. Those are obviously traditional and long and have been around longer, but discourse marker like, which is like used to help give an idea or an evaluation from a speaker in terms of what they're about to say, that might be some sort of subjective evaluation of what they're going to say, or to connect what they're about to say with what they had just said, or something that had happened before in the previous conversation.

18:06They've been around actually since about the 1700s. We find them in British speech in the 1700s in documents from court trials, the old Bailey proceedings. So they are a lot older and they come from Britain. So they're definitely not as American as apple pie, despite our belief that they are. But what's interesting is they've developed several different usages. So the first one is adverbial approximation. And that's instead of the typical adverbial approximator about. Let me give an example. So he's about five, right? Would be one way we'd say that. Oh, he's like five. So can you see it's just a one-to-one switch?

18:42So we don't have problems with people saying about and think they don't know what they're talking about. But somehow when I just use a different word for that, I'm now stupid, right? I mean, that's the funny switch that we make, but it is a one-to-one switch for an adverbial approximator. And that makes it sound a lot smarter, of course, when you call it that. But what we find is people, people under 40 tend to use like instead of an approximating about in that context. So when they're estimating numbers or estimating ages or estimating, you know, pounds or something, a weight or something like that, they would use like instead of about.

19:16That's one form that's very, very common. Second form is a sentential adverbial. That's a fancy word for sticking like at the beginning of a sentence. And that's really an interesting evolution because what its purpose is to provide some sort of subjective estimation or evaluation over what's about to follow. And that is related to likes form of expressing similarity. So when you say she has eyes like the sky, what that like is telling you is that her eyes are similar to the color of the sky. They're not exactly the sky, but it's something like that. And what we find is when people use it as a sentential adverb, they're basically taking that estimate probability or similarity meaning and putting it from in front of the word that they were expressing similarity with, so like the sky, and putting it instead at the beginning of a sentence.

20:12Now, how would that happen. He's like a brother to me, right? That's where you have it used as a preposition expressing similarity. And then all of a sudden he's like a brother to me where it almost gets detached from being, he is like a brother where it's serving a prepositional form. And then he's like a brother to me where it's kind of becoming detached, where it's still expressing this connection, this similarity, but it's taking on this more subjective sense rather than being sort of a simile, it's being instead this subjective estimation of what I think this person is. And then all of a sudden you say, like, he's a brother to me.

20:47Do you see how now you've just taken that same impact of what you're saying and you've moved it to the beginning of the Senate? So we call that a sentential adverbial because now it's telling you how you feel about what you're about to say. And what you're marking there is your stance towards the statement that he's a So you're saying, he's not my brother. I want it to be clear that what I'm saying is it's something like he's a brother to me. So it's essentially saying something similar to he's a brother to me. That's sort of what you're marking there. And usually that would also connect it to what was said before.

21:21So I would say, I really like Frank, like he's a brother to me. And you can see how that's tying. It's a connector. And that's what discourse markers do. They help provide connectivity. They help us be sort of greasing our conversational wheels so that we feel like we're in the same conversation. And that's a really, really important interpersonal skill. And we find if we look at studies of who uses discourse markers, not just like, but other ones, it tends to be people that on psychological tests are more conscientious. So another really, really good thing comes from using like. And the final really important new way we're using like is as a quotative verb.

21:59And that means instead of the verb to say, I use he's like. So I could say he said, I don't like carrots. Or he was like, I don't like carrots. And what that indicates actually is a really interesting shift in our narrative style over the last 50 years in the United States, where we have gone from just stating facts or telling stories that are very sort of boom, boom, boom. Here's a fact. Here's a fact. Here's a fact in a chronological order to let me tell you how I was processing that information while I was in that experience. So it's a very subjective sensibility of story of how the story unfolded.

22:38And so I don't want to say he was quote, I'm quoting him. This is an exact replica of what he was saying. What I'm saying instead is he said something along the lines of or this is what I was thinking while I was doing this. And the verb to say doesn't allow for that. It allows for direct quotation, but it doesn't allow for subjective quotation. And that's how the verb to be like has emerged. And it's very similar to he goes or he was all. It's a colloquial form of expressing sensibility and expressing internal thoughts. So all three of these examples of using like have a function. They're purposeful.

23:18They're helpful. full. They've arisen because there was a void in our language and we needed to fill it. They're no different than the other ways we've traditionally done this. So I could say he's like, or he said, there's nothing vacuous about either of those that are one-to-one substitutions, just like like and about. Fascinating. And I think really helps, when you hear that, it really helps you understand what's happening when somebody is speaking and somebody is receiving those kinds of sentences, which is to say that it's not a person just peppering their thoughts with this word that doesn't mean anything, but rather that it has a function that you, even if you don't have all the fancy linguistic language that you do, you intuitively interpret, which is so cool.

24:17And I hope, and I think this is your goal here, liberates people to worry less about those little things that they're peppering their language with so that they can focus more on the things that they're actually meaning to say. I think that's exactly it. I love that way of summarizing it because I think that's very true. The problem is both in the perception that we have of ourselves and the perception that we might give off to others. There are two problems here. There's insecurity people, especially young people, have with their own speech. And I see this in my students who are brilliant kids.

24:54In fact, we study like every semester because I want them to know that what they're doing isn't bad. But they come in with a lot of insecurity because they've been told It's stupid. It's vacuous. It's young people talk, right? It's not something you should bring into adulthood with you. And so they're self-conscious and they want to eradicate it from their speech. And, you know, we're not that good at eradicating things completely from our speech, especially if it's serving a function, which this like is. But I also think the message is not just to the people that use it, but that's, of course, a valuable lesson.

25:24It's to the people that hear it and the people that dismiss it because what they're losing out on is not only connection with people because they're, you know, whenever you judge someone and you're sort of disaligning yourself with them, that doesn't come across very well. You're not going to make friends that way and you're not going to have great colleagues that way. And, you know, young people are the next generation of entrepreneurs and of clients. And if we treat them that way, they're not going to respond well. But also because you dismiss the value of what someone brings to the table because you get stuck at their language.

25:56And so what I'm hoping I give someone the tools to do that in that position that sort of has reacted badly to those forms in the past is to realize this isn't my thing. This is not my jam. I don't like like, but I understand it. And I understand that it's a me problem, not a you problem. And I'm going to listen to what you say. And then I'll decide if that has value rather than dismissing what you say before I even listen because I'm so turned off by this feature I think is useless. So if I can teach them that there is a use for it, and it may be not one that they identify with, and that this can make it a lot easier to communicate and connect across the generations and across the gender divide, I think I've done my work.

26:36So that's my goal, is that both sides will benefit. But Valerie, I want to ask you one other question, which is to give me advice. This is going to be as meta as possible to give me advice on how to produce this podcast, because here is something that I do. After an interview, I take the audio and I load it into a program called Descript, which does an AI transcription of the conversation. And then I can edit the conversation. And I just usually tighten things up if somebody went on a little tangent and it wasn't useful. But one of the things that I do is I go through and I identify a bunch of ums and uhs and things and I take them out.