Pollsters at Marist College report that 47 percent of Americans are most annoyed when we hear others say “whatever” in conversations. Another 25 percent are annoyed by “you know.”
Whatever.
I mean, that got me thinking about my own list of annoying words and phrases. It is a long one, and the older and more curmudgeonly I become, the longer the list grows.
First student readers, I, like, nearly go mad when I, like, hear the staccato repetition of “like” all day. As when you say (in your lingo, “go”), “Like, I mean, you know, I was like, you know. I mean …”
What I find astounding is that a listener nods, signifying that he, like, knows, and picks up the conversation: “Yeah, I was like, and he was like, and then me and him … “
In class when students start burping out “like” and “ya know,” I occasionally stop them with “No. I do not know.” Or, “it’s not ‘like ethics’; it’s ‘ethics.'” They look at me blankly for a second and then patiently translate what they are saying into language an old fuddy-duddy professor can understand.
I mean, beginning a sentence with “I mean” annoys me to no end. Especially when it is paired with “you (ya) know.” “I mean,” ought to let me know that a speaker is going to explain something she said previously. And if she’s telling me something she assumes I did not know, why add “ya know”?
I would bet the New York Times could save millions on ink each year by banning “arguably” and “famously.” There, for example, Thomas Pynchon was “a famously reclusive author.”
Most recently, economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote that when Goldman Sachs was “arguably reprehensible” when it bet for and against mortgage-backed securities at the same time.
Who, besides a Wall Street Banker, would argue the point? I should have said iconic New York Times, which last year sent off to their heavenly rewards Walter Cronkite, “Iconic Anchorman,” and Farrah Fawcett, “Iconic Beauty.”
“Emblematic” is another one. Master’s winners wore the “emblematic green jacket,” I read in the sports section at tournament’s end. And in a story on the Vatican’s recent trials, the lead told us that of the heartbreaking details, one “stands out as particularly emblematic,” though we had to mine well into the second paragraph before we found out what that particularly emblematic detail was.
More Brit-isms are making the list, too: “early on,” “towards,” “amongst” and the TV weatherman’s “one hour’s time” and “in the overnight hours.” When I hear those, I click off before I know whether I’ll need the bumbershoot in the morning hours.
I know what all of my fuming over language will come to. Some day — at the end of the day — my wife is going to find me sprawled on the couch in front of the TV set, a cliché-packed newspaper clutched in my cold, dead hand, and my face, like, I mean, you know, arguably contorted like that of the figure in Munch’s famously iconic “The Scream.”
For now, thank you for reading my rant. And please know that I can hear your heartfelt reply: “Whatever.”
Larry Lorenz is the A. Louis Read Distinguished Professor of Mass Communication. He can be reached at [email protected]
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