00:06:17.200So it's things like like use that's used non-traditionally, literally used non-literally,
00:06:22.620singular they which irks a lot of people things like saying dude and bro you know those little
00:06:29.940things that we often hear people call each other all those features every one is a chapter and I
00:06:35.720go into the history its evolution its purpose and the research behind it in terms of whether it's
00:06:40.660actually good for us or not and when I first contacted you about coming on the podcast you
00:06:46.060had mentioned I think it was a TED talk that somebody afterwards was talking to you about how
00:06:50.520about your voice or I forget which, what was it use of like, or, um, can you share that story?
00:06:56.020Yes. Well, I, it wasn't a Ted talk. I have, I go to these conferences where it's sort of like
00:06:59.960Ted talks. It's, um, kind of, they bring together thought leaders and then they ask you to give
00:07:04.480talks. And so I gave this talk and probably about 200 people. And I had given this talk about sort
00:07:11.160of how we should be compassionate about language. And I gave some evolutionary history to what
00:07:15.920language does over time and why language change is part of our natural evolution and who the
00:07:21.280leaders of linguistic change always are throughout history and why we should embrace it and not
00:07:25.680dismiss it. But I did it in terms of vowel movements. And that's with an M just in case
00:07:30.780vowel movements. I mean, sorry, with a V, not a B. And I talked all about how these changes
00:07:40.840represent evolution. And then I realized, you know, when someone came up to me afterwards and
00:07:44.680said, Oh my gosh, that was a fascinating talk. But can you tell people not to say like all the
00:07:48.540time? I thought, have I not said anything up here that made sense to you? I mean, you just didn't
00:07:53.760listen, did you? But then I realized that actually I wasn't being fair because as humans, we like to
00:07:59.040compartmentalize things and people might see vowels as naturally evolutionary and they might
00:08:04.660understand, okay, well, you know, we obviously don't sound like we did when you listen to old
00:08:08.340movies. So, okay, I can accept our vowels change and that's natural and okay. But when we see these
00:08:13.640features like like or literally or so at the beginning of sentences that annoy us,
00:08:20.760we see those as individual isolated cases that are errors or mistakes or bad English. And so we
00:08:28.040don't understand that that's actually the same thing as what I was talking about. So I decided,
00:08:32.320well, let me give someone, everyone, not just this person, the tools to see the relatedness
00:08:37.980between these larger forces I'm talking about in these talks that I was giving and those little
00:08:42.540things you hate every day in your speech, because they're actually the same things. They're the same
00:08:47.100processes. They're the same articulatory and psychological pressures that make us do them.
00:08:53.280They're the same social forces that drive us to them. And they're the same sort of value added
00:08:59.740to our speech as the reasons that we change our vowels over the time, or the reasons we don't say
00:09:05.500connect anymore for the word night, because over time we've lost certain sounds. You know,
00:09:11.020I think people are accepting of that happening, but they're not accepting of other types of
00:09:14.760change. And I realized I hadn't sort of explicitly explained that in my talk. And so I could
00:09:20.060understand why people didn't maybe understand how what I was saying related to what they were
00:09:26.080thinking. And that really inspired me to write this book, that one man who asked me why I couldn't
00:09:31.300stop people from saying like. Now, of course, the other thing is, if I only had the power to
00:09:35.400halt language in its tracks, you know, that would be a whole different conversation. But
00:09:40.460But what I would suggest, and I'm saying this very much tongue in cheek, but also not, is there is sort of like an unofficial militia of people who are policing the use of the word like, and they come into places like comments on podcasts, reviews on podcasts, just as though someone like me doesn't know that that's, it's like, oh, did you know that you're not supposed to do that?
00:10:07.700It's like, there's, it's this weird policing. And I see it not just like in your book, you
00:10:12.600so many examples, you know, like news anchors and NPR and all this stuff. Like there's people
00:10:16.720who just feel like it's their role in society to just, especially for women. Like that's very
00:10:21.280much what I want to talk to you about. But the people who just step up to be like, like I gave
00:10:25.440a talk ages ago and afterwards this woman came up and she's like, Oh, that was so interesting
00:10:30.160what you said. But you know, you, you do this up talk at the end of sentences, your voice goes up.
00:10:34.740And if you keep doing that, you know, people aren't going to take you seriously.
00:12:21.760And it's simply a matter of cultural moments that make us think our speech is better and class bias and race bias and gender bias.
00:12:32.140I mean, those are the reasons that we police people's speech.
00:12:35.500And it's not compassionate. It's not seeking communicative efficiency or connection.
00:12:41.420There's nothing beneficial about it except to try to make you feel better about your own self by criticizing someone else, which I think all of us can recognize is not a positive way to live.
00:12:51.020but yes, it irks me. I have heard so many stories about that, especially people, women in professional
00:12:56.240setting. It's so, it just, it's stuck with me this, like, and other people have said other
00:13:00.300things, but this one woman, like she was coming up and it was so seemingly well-intentioned.
00:13:06.340And it's like, she was concerned for me. It was like, she was concerned. Don't you know,
00:13:09.900people won't take you seriously if you don't change the way you talk. And I thought, well,
00:13:14.600I was invited to give this talk. So obviously people did. No, and I think actually, you know,
00:13:21.340I'm not trying to paint people that do this as these evil monsters. Honestly, most of us do it.
00:13:27.580Most of us have these beliefs about language, and it may be something entirely different that we
00:13:32.640react to and criticize someone for. I do think a lot of people, especially women, have been trained
00:13:38.480to act a certain way, both behaviorally and vocally. And we do think we're helping someone
00:13:45.040else when we call out things they do with their speech. And I don't think people are bad-intentioned
00:13:50.480most of the time when they do this, but the reality is it has a bad result. And it's not
00:13:55.320based on historical, anything that's historically valid. And I think what they don't step back to
00:14:01.100see is the idea that somehow you come across as less certain or hesitant or powerless in your
00:14:07.580speech, which is sort of the assumption she was making, is based on the fact of who's been speaking
00:14:12.520in those positions for centuries, rather than there being any type of inherent hesitancy or
00:14:18.640uncertainty in any kind of speech feature, which there isn't. We come to language with different
00:14:24.240views about what it does for us, and every feature can be interpreted in different ways.
00:14:30.140So, you know, young people like, like a lot. It's used a lot in their speech, and most young people
00:14:35.560don't see something wrong with it in terms of how they communicate every day to each other.
00:14:39.880Older speakers tend to really dislike that feature, but they don't understand the usage
00:14:44.660that young people use it for. There are actually three very specific purposes like is put toward.
00:14:49.440It helps with communicative efficiency. It sort of allows a subjective sensibility and a stance
00:14:57.300that would be absent if it weren't included. It's not meaningless in any way, but if you don't
00:15:02.100understand how to use it yourself, you may not read it that way. But if you use it that way,
00:15:08.000you are reading it that way. So what we have is actually a mismatch in perception and use
00:15:13.060rather than either side doing something wrong. We're just born of a certain time and place and
00:15:20.120position and we see the world through that lens. But sometimes we need to be a little more sensitive
00:15:25.120about the fact that maybe everybody doesn't use the same lens we do and we shouldn't judge their
00:15:29.920speech according to it. Well, I felt like there's so much interesting stuff in your book. I loved
00:15:34.540reading it. You gave me an early copy of it. So I was really excited to read it. And one of the
00:15:38.140things, well, I was especially interested in the chapter about like, because I think I told you
00:15:42.120that it's just, it's really weird to me and it's not upsetting or distressing. It's just constantly
00:15:48.620strange to me when people say, you say like too much. And I thought, well, then don't listen to
00:15:53.080my podcast. Why are you telling me to change when you could just not listen to my podcast? Like the
00:15:58.960fact that people feel so strongly about it but in your book you talk about use of the word like
00:16:02.940and it's going back to it's not a thing that people just started doing now I'm like I'm a
00:16:07.800child of the 80s and 90s people people were doing it then you talk about valley girl and things like
00:16:11.720that but even if you look at the 70s like scooby-doo shaggy is always saying like you go
00:16:16.540back to the beatniks like the 50s they were saying it's not so people now who think oh young people
00:16:22.160are saying like too much they've been saying like in these ways for what 75 years so why is it more
00:16:29.200than that centuries centuries why is it why is it still okay explain why is it why do people think
00:16:35.300it's a new phenomenon you know i one of it is one of the factors that goes into the way we notice
00:16:40.820language is the amount it's being used and something called the recency illusion or the
00:16:46.260recency bias, which is when all of a sudden you start noticing something, you notice it seemingly
00:16:52.240everywhere. And that both of those things, this uptick in use, it's become more popular as a
00:16:58.200feature in American English, particularly. And we've noticed it more because people have called
00:17:03.420our attention to it. Those have contributed to this sort of idea that like is this new feature,
00:17:09.300this new epidemic that's coming into our language. But if you look back in history,
00:17:13.680like used as a discourse marker, which is where it goes either at the beginning of a sentence or
00:17:18.220sometimes in the middle of a sentence, has actually existed in English well before American
00:17:23.200speech really was a thing. It has been found in documents as far back as the 1700s, used in
00:17:29.560exactly the same way. Like as a word, so like as a verb, it has existed in English since about 1200.
00:17:37.200and then it morphed from a verb to also having an adjectival purpose so swan like ape like that
00:17:46.100kind of thing and then it morphed to having a prepositional and conjunctive use and that seems
00:17:51.360to really have been where the like use as a discourse marker stems from so if you say something
00:17:56.060like she's like a sister to me that's used as a preposition that like but if you say she's like
00:18:03.660a sister to me you can sense that you're using it there in the same place it would have been
00:18:08.560used as a preposition but it's becoming slightly detached from the syntax in that emphatic tone
00:18:14.140so you can see how it certainly starts to morph as being something a little separate from
00:18:18.860that sentence and then what if you say like she's a sister to me where that same meaning of sort of
00:18:24.640this subjective similarity gets picked up and moved to the beginning of the senate so if you
00:18:30.380don't hate prepositions, you shouldn't hate like because it's basically doing the same work. We've
00:18:36.800just detached it from its original position and moved it for the same purpose of a similarity,
00:18:43.400a comparison, an approximation, which is exactly the same thing. So that has existed for even
00:18:49.100longer than the 1700s, that type of use where it's used for similarity. And then we see it in
00:18:55.340recordings done in the early 20th century of British speakers that were octogenarians and
00:19:01.720of New Zealanders that were in their 90s. So that means they were born in the middle of the 1800s
00:19:07.820that used like all the time in their speech as a Senate starter, as a discourse particle,
00:19:14.520just like you hear valley girl speech using like. And that suggests to us that it's very,
00:19:20.860it's British, and it followed the British wherever they colonized. And so this idea that like is new
00:19:26.980is a figment of our imagination. It's simply that we notice it now, probably because it caught on.
00:19:33.220And a lot of times we see these really low level features in our speech that have been there for
00:19:37.160centuries, used just in the way that we're using them now. But all of a sudden, somebody imbues
00:19:43.520that feature with a quality that is enviable to others. And I think that's what happened in the
00:19:48.960Southern California use of like around the eighties and nineties, it became imbued with this
00:19:54.700sort of SoCal coastal hip, cool lifestyle. And that's what then made it something appealing to
00:20:02.400others to pick up. And that's when we started seeing it everywhere. And then we get this
00:20:06.140recency illusion, which is like, Oh my God, it's everywhere. It just came into being.
00:20:10.480So it's a pretty cool evolution in, in the use of like, and it's also not just women that use it,
00:20:16.380even though we strongly believe that that's true.
00:20:19.040I don't know if you've seen the movie,
00:20:45.260and I was I told the person I was watching it with him like do you think do you think people
00:20:49.520are reviews of this movie and say they say like too much the way they do for my podcast it's of
00:20:53.240course they don't because it's a movie about men yeah I thought the same thing I brought that up
00:20:59.120to several people it's so funny and everybody else was like no I didn't know I'm like oh my god how
00:21:02.980could you not notice they say it all the time and they say it exactly sort of a usually for them it's
00:21:08.080a and this is probably the evolution of our like is from these sort of little beginning and following
00:21:13.760sentence markers. So when we look at early British speech, the octogenarians that we studied, we see
00:21:19.320that they mainly use like at the beginning of a sentence. And then we see Irish English, they use
00:21:24.440it a lot at the end of a sentence, sort of as an emphatic marker. So something like he was uneasy
00:21:29.100like. And in fact, one of the earliest, I think it was the earliest literary use of the word like
00:21:34.960was in a woman's book. Frances Burney was the author. The History of Emily Montague was the
00:21:41.000name of the text. And it, she says, father was uneasy, like for fear of his lordship taking
00:21:47.140offense. And that is actually a very similar use to what we heard in the Banshees of Incheron,
00:21:52.960that sort of mid-sentence or end of sentence emphatic marker or adjectival sort of ending.
00:21:59.140And it probably gets analyzed differently by different speakers, which is how it becomes
00:22:03.120detached from the syntax. But you're absolutely right. Where are the articles in the newspaper
00:22:09.440saying, oh my gosh, this movie was great, but the like was so distracting. You don't see it.
00:22:16.200It's so funny. I noticed the exact same thing. I love it that you did.
00:22:19.420Oh, I love that you did too. Cause yeah, it was, it was on my mind. And I, anyway, I'm just,
00:22:24.100it was such a good example to me of what gets criticized and what doesn't. Yeah.
00:22:28.840Absolutely. And you talk in your, so in, in your book, there's so many, I've, I'm just looking at,
00:22:34.360I've got various like screenshots of like sentences that really just like resonated with me,
00:22:38.100But one of them, so I'm just looking at one that talks about women's speech has historically been disparaged as chatty, gossipy, and less topically important than men's, something many contemporary researchers in the field of language and gender studies have interrogated.
00:22:51.080So there's something, so I want to kind of like dive into that a bit because people in general, in society, in our society, don't like hearing women talk.
00:23:03.200and so if you so i think it's like low-hanging fruit so again like my podcast if somebody says
00:23:11.640oh she says like too much if i fixed that quote unquote if i stopped doing that someone would say
00:23:15.860oh she has vocal fry and if i change that they'd say she talks too fast like there's always going1.00
00:23:21.500to be something to criticize about a woman talking can you talk about that yes i mean if we look1.00
00:23:28.460through history, back to antiquity, we find ancient philosophy texts that talk about women's1.00
00:23:35.300voices not being appropriate for the public sphere, and that the best kind of woman was the one that
00:23:41.660was silent. In fact, Aristotle even has a statement, silence begets women, or something0.98
00:23:46.980like that. I can't remember the exact quote. But even back in thousands of years ago, back in
00:23:54.920earlier days, we didn't have women in public positions. We didn't have women in political1.00
00:24:00.440positions. We didn't have women anywhere but the domestic sphere, which was where they were1.00
00:24:04.940relegated. And so their conversations were not important to those of men. So talking about
00:24:10.720family, talking about life and health and the things that women in the domestic sphere were
00:24:15.920associated with, those things were not important to men who were, you know, in the political and
00:24:21.100economic positions of running the country or running the family household or whatever.
00:24:26.220And so we see how that dismissiveness starts. But then we get into the Middle Ages and we find
00:24:31.440not only are women's voices unwelcomed in public spheres, but they start to be criminalized
00:24:36.120because women's voices can be very dangerous. We have something called intimate diversification0.98
00:24:42.060with women, which is where we have women that are different than men, right? Men and women are0.94
00:24:46.460considered different entities, different sort of physical and emotional bodies. But they live side
00:24:53.180by side with their opposites, which is why it's called intimate diversification, which is unlike
00:24:58.200segregation in other ways. So when we have ethnic differences, usually ethnic groups don't live
00:25:02.820together in this intimate relationship. And even age groups, other than when you're with your
00:25:08.440children, you don't really associate, you know, in my age group, I'm not going to say what it is,
00:25:15.040but it's an older age group. I'm not going to hang out with a bunch of 20 year olds. We just
00:25:18.160don't tend to do this kind of intimacy, but men and women do. And so women's voices are actually
00:25:23.660quite powerful because they have the ear of men in the domestic sphere. And those are actually0.78
00:25:28.760pretty powerful voices that gets noticed as being dangerous and subversive in the middle ages. And
00:25:35.380so in the late medieval period, we find that women were charged with 80 to 90% of the cases
00:25:41.940of sins of the tongue, which was basically spreading gossip or malicious conversation.
00:25:49.000Anybody who talked out of turn, outside of the domestic sphere, so in the spinning circles,
00:25:54.000at the water corners, in the public squares, when women's voices were heard there, that's
00:25:59.300when they were most likely to be charged with these criminalized speech acts.0.99
00:26:03.320And they were actually physically sort of stopped from speaking by these things called0.59
00:26:08.580scolds bridles, which they would put in women's mouths, and it held their tongue down so they0.85
00:26:13.560actually couldn't speak. And all you have to do is look at these, you know, sort of sayings from0.85
00:26:18.300hundreds of years ago to today that talk about women's tongues, right? They wag, they are0.83
00:26:24.000dangerous, they're their devil's tongues. You hardly ever hear, well, what delightful things
00:26:27.760women's tongues are. It just doesn't exist that kind of discussion. So we see this idea that women1.00
00:26:33.100don't belong in public places or in professional spaces for thousands of years. So it's not0.97
00:26:40.380surprising that whatever is in those spaces then gets valorized as appropriate to that spot as
00:26:47.680strong as powerful, because those are usually the places of power of strength. And that doesn't mean
00:26:54.080there's some internal strength or power to it. But that means that's the external strength and
00:26:58.140power we put on it. And that's where we get mixed up. There's nothing, there's no such speech
00:27:02.980feature that is strong. There's no such speech feature that's uncertain. There's our belief in
00:27:09.220what those features do that embodies strength or weakness. And when we get used to certain people
00:27:16.660talking in certain positions, then the sound of someone else's voice, whether that's the sound of
00:27:22.080a woman or an ethnic group or a foreign accent don't belong. They don't fit in. And we consider0.90
00:27:29.600them powerless, weak, and unwelcomed, even though that's not a conscious thought we put on it.1.00
00:27:34.180We perceive that as too much, which is one of the reasons why we look at women's voices as being1.00
00:27:40.200omnipresent and everywhere, right? If you ask someone in a meeting or in a school room who1.00
00:27:45.680does the most talking, nine times out of 10, they'll tell you it's a woman. But when you look0.93
00:27:50.280at studies that actually look at who does most of the talking in those contexts, it is never a woman.
00:27:55.880Women might talk more in our social environments, although I think that's hard to establish that
00:28:01.500that's in fact true, but that may be more true of our experience. But when you measure speech0.64
00:28:07.740in professional contexts or in school rooms, most of the research suggests that it's actually boys
00:28:12.400that talk more in school rooms and men that talk more in professional contexts. But yet,
00:28:18.480if you ask people in those same contexts, who's doing more talking, it's women because we know0.95
00:28:22.920they stand out, right? We notice the exceptions. We don't notice the norm and women are exceptional1.00
00:28:28.060in professional and educational and other sort of public spaces. And that's why we notice what1.00
00:28:34.180they do. The other side of this is not only do we notice those voices more because they're not
00:28:39.500usually there and we've historically not wanted them there. We also noticed them more because
00:28:44.740women have for centuries been on the forefront of linguistic change. In almost every major change
00:28:51.220that has happened to our language over time, it seems that women are the stylistic leaders that0.96
00:28:55.840move it forward, which means that women are usually at least a generation ahead of young
00:29:00.780men, young women are, in whatever linguistic change is coming up, which is why we find this
00:29:06.180pattern of associated novelties in speech with women. It's not because they're flighty and
00:29:11.460vacuous, which is why they're usually assumed to be saying those things. It's because they're
00:29:15.840linguistic leaders and they're a generation or two ahead of men. So in 30 years, we won't notice
00:29:21.380that, right? We'll say, okay, this is just what everybody does because by then men have caught up
00:29:25.420and it's not noticeable anymore. But when women are doing it more, which we find with things like0.94
00:29:29.900literally non-literally using like vocal fry, then we call it out because we already don't1.00
00:29:36.780like women's voices in those areas. And then they're doing these new things. We also don't1.00
00:29:41.240like because they're new. So it's a kind of double whammy for women. Yeah. And you talk about vocal1.00
00:29:45.820fry in your book as well, which I found really, I find that really interesting as well, because
00:29:51.180you mentioned like Margaret Thatcher or Elizabeth Holmes, women who consciously lowered their voice
00:29:57.040to be taken more seriously. And now, and the result of that, if anyone who speaks in a low
00:30:02.220voice, there's going to be that rumbling sort of crackly sound and men have it too, but it's just1.00
00:30:08.180when women, so that's another way where it's like, oh, I don't like women that their voices are so1.00
00:30:12.000high pitched. Then a woman talks in a low voice. It's like, oh, I don't like that. She's talking1.00
00:30:15.080in a low voice. It's like, okay, you just don't like women talking. That's what's happening.1.00
00:30:19.540Exactly. Right. That's exactly right. And it's not even that conscious, you know, I think I'm
00:30:23.400not trying to make people out and I don't think you are as these sort of conscious haters of
00:30:28.340women's. No, it's all so subconscious. Yeah. Subconscious. And it's just our reaction. But
00:30:34.600what we don't realize is we're reacting that way because of these low-level historical and social
00:30:40.260pressures and norms that we have had operating on us all our lives. And we're socialized into
00:30:46.020these ideas that then are so pervasive that we misconstrue them as ideas of right and wrong.
00:30:53.200And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.
00:30:56.680the war is over and both sides lost kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered
00:31:05.440like bones in the dust now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world praying the
00:31:12.600darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old
00:31:20.040school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies
00:31:26.240something else rises to finish the job.
00:31:28.640This is a brutal rules-light nightmare
00:55:28.340well, like if there's a French speaker in the home,
00:55:29.720then you would pick up the way that it works, the rules of the grammar versus the real rules.
00:55:34.400Yes. Yeah. If you just listen to like rap songs or something, you just be like, okay,
00:55:38.380yeah, I got it. Or it's like, no, you're using it wrong. Like there's something inherent.
00:55:42.100If you're not actually interacting with the speaker, you just wouldn't get those like
00:55:45.680unspoken rules, right? The small, subtle differences that actually define a real
00:55:51.080dialect. That's absolutely true. I mean, children are incredibly good at picking up0.58
00:55:56.140distributions of and feature patterns in language and learning those, which is why we find that
00:56:02.460languages with small numbers of speakers like indigenous languages that have really tight-knit
00:56:06.760speaker groups and the transmission is always from parent to child, not adult to adult, they tend to
00:56:12.520have much more complexity than languages like English that are spoken by millions of speakers
00:56:17.480because the transmission of these really complex rules has to be done by parent to child. That
00:56:24.880seems to be required because those children can do that really complex statistical and
00:56:30.700distributional analysis as babies, as young people. We don't do that anymore as adults.
00:56:35.940And when you're just exposed to limited amounts of data from another adult speaker,
00:56:39.900you absolutely can't do it. What you can do is pick up on the salient things that you might
00:56:44.520notice, which is why a lot of non-Southerners, for example, say, y'all. And if you've noticed
00:56:50.940anybody who puts on a Southern accent. They're not authentic, but they do get traits that we
00:56:56.640all recognize. So drawing, for example, longer duration of vowels is true of the South and
00:57:02.000using things like y'all, merging words like pin and pen. But I might be able to say, yeah,
00:57:07.600can you hand me that PN in one context? But I probably don't understand that actually it's
00:57:12.900not just in pin and pen. It's in any words where a I or an E vowel precede a nasal. So the word
00:57:20.720like since and the word sense for a southerner would be merged but someone putting on that accent
00:57:27.160wouldn't know that because they don't know the rule and the rule is what does it for a southern
00:57:31.300speaker the individual item that's been memorized is what does it for someone putting on that accent
00:57:36.700so that's why we can notice the difference between someone who's authentic and someone who's
00:57:40.860inauthentic and well that's just like you know actors who put on and it's various success like
00:57:45.240actors putting on an accent for a film people who are from that place sometimes like whoa that was
00:57:49.300like, I wouldn't have known she wasn't from there versus like, oh, that's, that's not it.
00:57:53.760Yeah. Yeah. Some people are better at it than others. And what I think people often forget
00:57:58.020about actors is their acting. That's not their natural voice. And if they were just to use those
00:58:03.800speech features in everyday speech, it would be too hard cognitively for them to constantly
00:58:08.780monitor their speech to change it in the right way. When you're acting, you're actually in front
00:58:13.780of a camera and you get to take it 50 million times. So you're really consciously altering
00:58:18.720your voice every moment that you're speaking that's untenable that's untenable in daily life
00:58:24.740which is why it sets us up for failure when we're telling people to talk a certain way
00:58:28.760because in your daily life you can't do it and if you use a tv actor or movie actor as a model for
00:58:35.400that well you don't get 50 takes to get it right in your everyday talking voice and when you see
00:58:41.640those same actors on a late night show or something they're never talking in that accent they're using
00:58:46.060their authentic voice because that's what they have to do when they're talking spontaneously
00:58:49.880because otherwise the conscious monitoring and certainly some people are better at altering
00:58:54.680their voice in certain directions than others and so that's why you have really good examples of
00:58:59.620actors copying a different kind of accent and really bad examples. Well and I think the good
00:59:04.720examples too often are people who have a family member or somebody who they know who actually
00:59:09.500speaks like that and they're able to emulate them because then they would have that inherent
00:59:13.320understanding of it that you can't learn. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. If you have
00:59:18.480that model, it helps you out greatly. Related to that and getting back to just the,
00:59:23.320cause we are going to wrap this up as much as I love to talk to you for hours, getting back to
00:59:27.000the like of it all. What I also, it's similar to what you were just saying is some, some of the
00:59:32.480comments that I see, not just on, on my stuff, but other people's stuff that if someone's
00:59:36.760criticizing that someone says like too much, they try to be funny in the sentence they put,
00:59:41.160for instance, she likes as like, like a lot, like, and that's not how I use it. That's not
00:59:48.320how anyone is. It's somebody who doesn't understand how it's supposed to be used,
00:59:51.240who doesn't understand how I'm using it. Right. And they're mocking you kind of,
00:59:55.420it's more of a mockery than an actual legitimate use. And, you know, I've actually had people on
01:00:00.300interviews play for me segments of young women's speech where they're saying like a lot. And I'm
01:00:07.260not arguing that every use of like is fabulous that we love someone who really uses a lot of
01:00:12.280the feature but you know it's the same with any word if I oh if I use any word constantly it's
01:00:16.780going to be noticed and so a lot of people use things like um and uh a lot and they're just
01:00:22.880heavier ummers and uhers than others and so sometimes people that don't use it to that level
01:00:28.180find that distracting and that may be true it might be distracting I'm not saying that no one
01:00:32.820ever uses like in a way that's not distracting. Because I found sometimes people dismiss the
01:00:37.860reality of like, because they point to people that are extreme users of it. But that's not
01:00:41.900the majority of people. Most of us use like in a very pattern, moderate way. And we there are
01:00:48.480three main patterns that you use like when you're using it as a discourse marker or quotative that
01:00:53.260are the ones that are sort of less traditional. And that's either as an approximator, where you're
01:00:58.140using it in a one-to-one substitution for about, or it's, so that would be something such as he's
01:01:05.100like 10 years old, right? And there's nothing useless about that. It's simply that you're
01:01:10.500using it one-to-one for where I, as an older speaker might use about. So it's funny that we
01:01:15.480say it's useless because it's not as useful as about. The other example is as a discourse
01:01:21.440particle or a discourse marker. And that's where you hear it at the beginning of a sentence or in
01:01:26.180the middle of the sentence. And that's usually used for emphasis or to convey there's my boxer
01:01:31.580is crying. Come here. Come here. You can come talk to me. Come here. You can talk to me. But
01:01:35.620you're using it as a subjective sort of particle to tell people this is not exact. There's an
01:01:41.440inexactness in what I'm telling you to the actual moment I'm describing. And I want to point that
01:01:47.740out by using like. So it's sort of an indicator of subjective sensibility. And then in its
01:01:52.820quotative use, which is where it's used instead of the verb to say. Again, it's a one-to-one
01:01:56.700substitution for the verb say. So, all right, come here, boxer. It's a one-to-one substitution. So
01:02:03.900you might use it instead to say, I'm not verbatim saying this, but I'm giving you the gist. Again,
01:02:09.780it's also subjective sensibility. So I don't know why people say it's useless and it doesn't have
01:02:14.760a meaning because in two of the cases, it is an exact substitution for a word that American English
01:02:19.880speakers would say does have a meaning. So what you're really reacting to in those cases is who's
01:02:24.960using it and that you don't like it. You're not reacting to it's truly being meaningless or
01:02:30.120uncertain because is like, I mean, sorry, is about meaningless and uncertain. Is the verb to say
01:02:35.960meaningless and uncertain? And if those are not, then it's illogical to claim that like is when
01:02:41.020it's used as a one-to-one substitution for those exact same words. And it's just a funny thing that
01:02:46.460we pay attention to only certain aspects of like and ignore all the others that might argue something
01:02:51.620different. And we very much focused on on like just because that was something honestly, like
01:02:57.660I wanted to talk to you when I heard about your book when I read your book. And then also I want
01:03:01.900to just have this link. So when somebody sends me a comment, I can just send them a link to this
01:03:05.840conversation and be like, here, educate yourself. Here you go. I'd love to start that purpose for
01:03:13.180you. But your book, I want to mention like your, so your book has different chapters and each one
01:03:18.480is a different sort of, is it a tick you call it? So, well, I don't call it a tick, but people call
01:03:22.800them ticks. Yes. So you have a chapter about like, you have a chapter about, um, you have a chapter
01:03:27.580about dude. What are the other ones? You have they, which is a, that's a whole other conversation.
01:03:32.140They is a pronoun. Yeah. Whole other conversation. Right. I talk about the history of they and why
01:03:36.900it bothers us so much. And then one that I think is unexpected, but I love telling people about it
01:03:41.920because it's so different than what people expect is past verbal participles. So progressive ING,
01:03:47.820like walking and talking that we think of as dropping a G. It's a fascinating history. And
01:03:53.680in fact, what you learn in that chapter is sort of the big twist is that the ING that we think
01:04:00.700of as correct is actually historically incorrect. And there are a lot of false beliefs we have about
01:04:06.980that marker. And when we say people are careless or lazy, if we actually look back at the history
01:04:11.540of how we evolve that ing progressive marker it is completely the opposite of what people think
01:04:17.460and i love i love that you're coming in here like in your book and on this podcast just with the
01:04:21.920facts because people who just inherently feel this is the rule of grammar that person is breaking it
01:04:27.380i must correct them and your book really just explains that kind of there there are sort of
01:04:32.900socially acceptable understood rules but there's not there's not a book that says here is how
01:04:38.000speech should be. And yeah, it changes over time. Yeah, it does. And I think, you know,
01:04:44.980I'm not telling people they shouldn't have beliefs about grammar. You know, I'm not saying
01:04:49.320prescriptivism is never appropriate for people and in their lives and their workplaces. That's
01:04:54.740not my argument here. My argument is prescriptivism is one view, and it's a very recent view. People
01:05:01.600don't realize that prescriptivism is really only dating back to about the 18th century.
01:05:06.200These beliefs, these rules that we so firmly believe in, like don't end the sentence with a preposition, don't split your infinitives, those are actually rules that were created by people in the 18th century on the basis of Latin.
01:05:19.340And they weren't considered even then steadfast rules of English.
01:05:23.080They were just guidelines of what made more elegant speech to the speakers of that day.
01:05:27.980So really what I'm trying to argue is if we look at the real linguistic rules, if we understand the cognitive processes and the articulatory forces that really drive language, that created language, that allow language to exist and change and become what we think of as American English or British English or whatever language you're speaking,
01:05:46.740we will come to understand that the things that we believe so firmly today are really just
01:05:53.000sort of figments of our standard prescriptivist imagination. And while we can embrace them as
01:06:00.100social norms, we can embrace them as preferences. We shouldn't be embracing them as good and bad
01:06:06.020rules because that is just a fallacy. And so by breaking down the history of all these things,
01:06:11.080I'm hoping that people will see the science and the history tells us something different than what
01:06:16.120we often believe based on the things we learn in school. And what I would add to that is that
01:06:20.740of course, like you can, everyone has pet peeves. There's things that bother you. And if something
01:06:25.380bothers you about the way a podcast host talks, then maybe don't leave a bad review. Maybe just
01:06:31.320stop listening to that podcast. That'd be my advice. I think that's very good advice.
01:06:38.640Thank you so, so much. I was, I'm, I was so excited to talk to you and thank you for,
01:06:43.640for just blowing my mind with your book and with this conversation. It's all so fascinating.
01:06:47.200Oh, absolutely. And thank you for reading it. That means a lot.
01:06:52.000Okay. I feel so justified in, in the way I talk and how it's okay. And, you know,
01:06:58.960I feel compassion for the, for the haters a bit, maybe, but I was, what a conversation.
01:07:05.160I had such a, such a fun time talking with her and learning from her. I'm definitely
01:07:09.460going to follow along her blog now, which she does on psychology today. So yeah, Valerie Friedland,
01:07:14.840her book is called Like Literally Dude, Arguing for the Good in Bad English. And she is a professor
01:07:20.820of linguistics at the English department at the University of Nevada, Reno. And she also did that
01:07:24.820Great Courses series. So you should, you should watch that too, if you use the Great Courses.
01:07:29.080And this is Vulgar History. And you can keep up with me and this podcast. If you want to send me
01:07:35.040compliments or hate, you can do that. I'm on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod. I'm on TikTok
01:07:40.700at vulgarhistory, which is I've just been using TikTok for a couple months now and I'm leaning
01:07:45.660into it and I'm enjoying it and found a nice community and it's all good vibes. But every
01:07:49.660now and then, I guess when my TikTok shows up on somebody's For You page who is just
01:07:53.660horrified because I talk on my TikTok like I talk on this show, like me. And some people
01:08:00.760criticize the way I talk on there as well. But whatever, it bounces off me. She says after
01:08:06.560having done an hour long defensive podcast about how I'm fine. I don't know. It's just interesting
01:08:12.160to me that this is such a consistent thing that so clearly really bothers some people. Use of the
01:08:17.460word like, use of the word um. And you should read this book. So you can also keep up with me.
01:08:22.620My website is wilgherstie.com. And we're just getting towards the end of April. And I've been
01:08:27.760doing this fundraiser all month where we're raising money for the Trevor Project. And we're
01:08:33.320also, I'm selling merch to raise money for Point of Pride. And if you want to help out with this
01:08:38.860tits out for trans rights fundraiser, go to vulgarhistory.com slash donate. And all the0.65
01:08:44.140links are there. There's also a little form there. So if you happen to have donated money this month
01:08:48.000to a trans affirming organization, you can fill out that form. And then I can include you when I
01:08:52.920do like a tally at the end of the month and and shout outs to all the people who who've donated
01:08:57.860so far it's really it's really great to see and it makes me glad to see the tits out brigade being
01:09:03.960the people who I thought you were which is awesome people who care about trans rights and also this
01:09:08.820past week or this past Monday I was a guest on the worst bestsellers podcast which was a dream
01:09:15.520I manifested a while ago I didn't ask me anything on Instagram and somebody asked what would be your
01:09:20.380Dream Podcast collab. And I said, worst bestsellers. And they saw that and they invited
01:09:24.980me on. And we talk about The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. And it's a really good,
01:09:30.060fun conversation. If you don't listen to their podcast, I really enjoy it. They also say like
01:09:33.800a normal amount. The two hosts, Renata and Kate. Anyway, so if you want to hear more of me,
01:09:38.240listen to the worst bestsellers podcast because I was a guest. And I think that's all my
01:09:43.060announcements. Oh, I have the merch store, vulgarhistory.store. And if you use Tits Out,
01:09:48.160you get free u.s shipping titso 10 you get 10 off and that's also you can find the merch that
01:09:53.040we're selling to raise money for point of pride it has the chevalier day on on it it's incredible
01:09:57.940merch it was designed by a non-binary artist named jan yupiter and it's beyond my expectations it's
01:10:04.880such a beautiful design it says we were always here it shows the chevalier mid fencing battle
01:10:10.240it looks amazing i have a patreon patreon.com slash ann foster writer so that's where you can
01:10:15.680at bonus episodes, etc. Very recently, I just did an emergency bonus episode with Alison Epstein
01:10:22.720because I was learning about Australian bush rangers, which is a whole thing that anyway,
01:10:31.220so if you can hear that it's on Patreon now that particular episode, eventually it'll be on the
01:10:35.680main feed. But if you can't wait to hear, like I have not freaked out about a person in history
01:10:40.600who came into my life completely randomly since maybe Lola Montez when I started reading about
01:10:46.060these Australian Bushrangers. Anyway, patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. If you pledge a dollar
01:10:51.520a month, you get early ad free access to all the episodes. And if you pledge at least $5 a month,
01:10:55.900you get the early ad free access and also the bonus episodes, including Australian Bushrangers.
01:11:00.960Do I do an Australian accent in the episode? You know, if you're on the Patreon, you'll know
01:11:05.200that the answer is good day. So anyway, thank you so much for listening to this podcast.
01:11:11.160And I'll talk to you all next time. Keep your pants on and your tits out.0.99
01:11:16.860Folger History is hosted, written and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi.0.99
01:11:22.220The Paranormal Mysteries of Liminal London