Professor D’Arcy on like a contemporary vernacular

“The selective attention paid to the language of adolescents has led to the enduring belief that young people are ruining the language and that, as a consequence, the language is degenerating. One feature of contemporary vernaculars that is often held up as exemplification of these ideological principles is like, the ‘much-deplored interjection… that peppers the […]

“Like” a linguistics study

“Discourse marker like (DML) is recognized as a highly stigmatized feature of American English, one with strong ideological ties to inarticulate, ‘Valley Girl’ speech. Previous work suggests that individual listeners form impressions that both reference and perpetuate DML’s status, as DML- containing speech is judged as friendlier and less intelligent than controls.” But what about […]