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.
I believe you have really nailed the underlying cause of many linguistic pet peeves: overuse. I see this theme coming up in many in many of our classmates' posts on this subject.
ReplyDeleteAs A Civilian's post pointed out, the overabundant 'like' spills into places where it doesn't even make sense. Kels and fineagain over on MMR both mention punctuation overkill (we understood within the first six exclamation points), and MeganILS and Kels both agree that 'LOL' can be used so often, especially when it is probably not true, that it loses significance.
The problem is not that the meaning of the language is unclear, the problem is that, gramatically correct or not, we hear/see these little phrases far too often. At some point, we simply don't want to hear it again.
Yes, language evolves, but I think we can agree that certain inane phrases may be better left out. I appreciate the emergence of beautiful words such as 'jazz' and 'galaxy,' but I don't celebrate the explosion of 'LOL' into modern English.
We all do accept that language is changing, but could it please do so less obnoxiously?
KP: Thank you for an interesting and well-written post.