I can't wait to, like, post my pet peeve

It's okay, we're all guilty of this one. It's highly contagious and hard to shake, and a lot of people don't even realize how they use the word 'like' as a vocalized pause until they hear a recording of their conversation played back to them. I think it's especially funny that searching for "the word like" on Google lands you on pages that discuss how to permanently remove this nasty one from your vocabulary for good.

I apologize in advance if this post causes you to start counting or focusing on how many times people you are listening to use 'like' in their sentences.

Many people, including myself, associate 'like,' when used as a vocal pause as a replacement for "uh", "um", and other weird things we say when we are pausing to think about what to say next, with teenager or childish methods of communication. Excessive use of this word has negative connotations that reach back to that of Shaggy on "Scooby Doo" or the Valley girls in the movie "Clueless." Luckily, it has not yet worked as well on paper as it does in contemporary conversation. Consider the following examples of this word abuse:

1) And then I was like, "no way!"

2) That's like near State Street.

Would you take an article seriously if they wrote their thoughts like this? In the first example, "was like" replaces "said" or "screamed" or some verb that would give this sentence meaning. It doesn't make any sense! How did you resemble "no way" in any shape or form? In the second example, we see that 'like' can be omitted without any consequence. It really has no place in the sentence at all.

So why is 'like' so popular? Why has it become such a habit? There are interesting theories that say that today's youth never like to express their thoughts concretely, preferring instead to soften their expressions using a "fuzzy" word such as 'like.' Personally, I tend to use the word in this way when I get excited about an event that occurred and try to explain it to a group of friends as quickly as possible. I have also been told that when I am consciously trying to not say 'like' I sometimes come across as too serious or even suspicious, which makes this pet peeve even more of a mystery, since most dignitaries or orators never seem to let the word seep into their language.

I guess the real question is: will the baby boomer who might be your future boss appreciate how well your conversation matches that of a Valley girl? Don't get me wrong, Shaggy is a pretty cool cat, but we all know that hippie never got a real job!



Enough said.

Don't Be "All About" Overusing Phrases

A phrase that I once enjoyed using was the phrase “all about” when talking about liking something. For example, A few years ago I was all about using that phrase. Then this past weekend I ran into someone who made the “all about” phrase a victim of terrible overkill.

A friend of a friend brought one of their friends over to my apartment at 3 in the morning while all of the people that I live with were watching a movie as the night was coming to an end. This friend was obviously feeling drunk and was incredibly obnoxious. He commenced to play a game of beer pong with my roommates and I. I never asked his name nor really cared because I noticed very quickly that every other sentence he said included the phrase all about. He tried to make awkward conversation such as, “Let’s play beer pong. I’m all about beer pong.” Then he went on to say that he is “all about making cups” when he plays beer pong (oddly enough the objective of the game). But then we started to stray from the game and tried to make friendly conversation with this guy. I am “all about” giving a person a second chance, even if they initially rub me the wrong way. At this point I had already noticed his bad habit, and I texted my roommates so that they could realize and enjoy his subconscious language addiction. In a ten minute conversation, he went on to tell me how he was “all about” the Ying Yang Twins, “all about” eggrolls, and “all about” Tommy Boy to name a few.

My roommates and I just burst out with laughter as he proceeded to say that he was “all about” everything under the sun over 20 times in ten minutes. He was a very interesting guy with plenty of good things to say, but I couldn’t help but to concentrate on what quickly became a pet peeve of mine. No matter how good a phrase is or you think it may be, don’t overuse it. Popular and trendy phrases are great to have in your syntactical arsenal, but make sure to use them in moderation.

Response to Cognitive Fluency Article

This was a thought provoking article for me. While reading it, I noticed that everything that the article is saying is relatively true. People easily remember things that flow better. It makes sense that big name firms would choose a name that has a ring to it because that way they stay in the customer's head, even if the customer doesn't know it. Something that was interesting to me was that people conducting studies found that even the font had an affect on people answering different questions. It was also interesting that although things that are more fluent are more familiar to us, they can also get boring. This raises some interesting questions as to how much fluency one should use in choosing a name.