Consider these two sentences:
I said, "Whatever."
and
I was like, "Whatever."
What's the difference? My late grandmother would say that
one is right and the other is wrong, and that the wrong one
sounds uncouth, uneducated, low-class. Is there any difference
in their meaning? Mama Kramer would say no, aside from indicating
the speaker's social status.
Here's the thing. I'm a well-educated person, as high-status
a person as person could reasonably expect to be. I use the
'incorrect' form all the time. I wouldn't do this unless it
made practical sense to do so. As I introspect, I realize
that the modifier 'like' carries rich grammatical content.
I said, "Whatever."
equals
I recall saying the word, "Whatever."
whereas
I was like, "Whatever."
equals
I recall saying a word or phrase that was either "Whatever"
or something functionally identical, fill in the blank.
There's a significant and information-bearing difference
between the two statements. One unconsciously asserts certainty,
as if the memory is journalistically accurate. The other is
explicitly indeterminate, recognizing the essential dynamic
and continually evolving nature of memories. To insert the
prefix 'like' into a phrase is to indicate your limited certainty
of the veracity of what you're saying. For me and my age cohort
of Americans at least, this is a clearer representation of
our state of mind.
"I be shopping. You be talking on the phone. He be
at work. We be at school."
My black neighbors in Brooklyn have improved the English
language significantly by making the verb 'to be' consistent
with nearly every other verb. The wild irregularity of 'to
be' in English stems from a similarly irritating quirk of
old German. Presumably this irregularity dates back when German
itself congealed from Icelandic and whatever else. To say
'I am, you are, she is, we are' from a root of 'to be' is
wildly and perversely illogical. I pity anyone learning English
as a second language. Conjugating 'to be' like a normal English
verb would remove a significant obstacle from the daily lives
of a lot of people. If we're going to ram our language down
the world's throat, I'd like to at least offer a language
with functional elegance. My only hope is that the regular
form of 'to be' enters mainstream usage with a minimum of
anguish from the academy.
Black slang has always been one of the most fertile grounds
for linguistic innovation. Every significant black slang term
follows a similar curve: unknown outside its community of
original use, then picked up by hipsters and white negroes
like me and repeated to our white friends, then diffused out
to the media, then battled fiercely by English teachers until
they retire and the next generation of English teachers incorporate
the term unconsciously into their everyday speech, thus solidly
legitimizing it. See the words 'jazz', 'funk' and 'funky',
'cool', 'corny', 'man' as a greeting, 'hip', 'hopped up',
every marijuana term ever, etc.
Steven
Pinker's must-read book The Language Instinct distinguishes
between descriptivist and prescriptivist viewpoints of language.
The prescriptivist establishes rules as to how language should
be used, and criticizes usages that don't follow the rules.
Descriptivists study the way language is actually used in
the world to understand its emergent structure. Pinker argues,
and I agree, that to criticize the way humans speak or write
is like criticizing the way whales sing or birds build their
nests. I would go further and say that prescriptivist fervor
usually masks anxiety and hostility towards one's fellow humans,
an epidemic pathology in America and places like it.
Why do we hate our natural speech? I think it relates closely
to the way we white people tend to hate our sexual and other
bodily functions, our
monkeylike ancestors, our similarities with our primate cousins
and many other aspects of our evolved selves. I could
blame Christianity, as Richard
Dawkins and others might, but I wonder if that answer isn't
too easy. Why did the early Christians dream up this business
about immaculate conception and original sin in the first
place? No meme can exert that kind of hold on so many humans
in so many different times and places without those humans
being strongly receptive. I think we're so receptive because
of our fundamental hostility and suspicion towards humans
from tribes not our own. In prehistory we rarely if ever had
to deal with outsiders and foreigners, and now it's a daily
fact of life in most of the world. This is all to the best,
but we evolve slowly,
and it's going to take our emotional hardware a long time
to adjust to our present circumstances.
Update: I
was pleasantly amazed to see the NY Times agree with me on
some of this.
© ethan hein 2007 | back
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