Why you should keep using “like” and “um” and “you know”?

Blog by Elizabet Peterson, University of Helsinki

Here are a few examples of headlines you might see if you do a search on how to improve your speech: “How to stop saying ‘um’ when you speak.” “Stop saying ‘like’ and immediately sound smarter.” “Stop saying these four filler words and communicate more effectively.” Communication and language mavens make money by telling us what we are doing wrong when we speak. As such, they have a vested interest in getting us to believe that we are communicating all wrong. Do you know who does not have a vested interest in telling us what we are doing wrong when we communicate? Linguists. Linguists are scientists who conduct research on language. Their job is to figure out how language works, not to tell us how good or bad we are at using language. While there are many different subfields of linguistics, a subfield that concerns itself with so-called “filler” words, as they are often called, is discourse-pragmatic variation and change. In fact, a network of linguists who research this field have a website here: https://www.dipvac.org/.

The DiPVaC research network lists their main areas of interest as “discourse markers or pragmatic particles whose primary functions are interpersonal and textual (e.g. well, like, you know, comme, alors, doch, zwar, diciamo, dakedo); tag questions; silence; filled pauses; adjectives; adverbs; and general extenders.” That is quite an expansive list of linguistic features! Something that stands out from this list is that it consists of elements of language we are often told by “experts” that we should extricate from our speech and writing. The tag question innit, for example, was among a list of words that was banned in UK schools some years back (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/15/london-school-bans-pupils-slang-innit). Adjectives and adverbs are a common target of the “don’ts” of writing — “Don’t use adjectives! They are excessive! They are superfluous!” — and other such adjectives used to describe the dangers of adjectives. In English, complaining about the use of like doesn’t seem to lose its appeal, even after decades of shouting into the wind about its perceived shortcomings and faults. The reality is that like is not going away, but maybe eventually complaining it will. How interesting to note the mismatch in value everyday people tend to place on these features of language compared to the linguists who study these features scientifically.

Linguists who study discourse-pragmatic features consider them heavy load-bearing elements of language. This means they are key to achieving important multiple functions in language at the same time. Take the example of word such as well, the first word in the list of features from the DiPVaC research network. The word well, when used as a discourse marker in a sentence like “Well, it was yesterday” might not appear to be doing much in terms of content—it is not a noun, it is not a verb, and, in short, it does not supply much literal meaning to the sentence. So why is it there? It may not be supplying literal meaning, but it is in fact doing a lot of work, all the same. On one level, it is supplying valuable interpersonal information from the speaker to the hearer(s). That one little word offers the opportunity for a speaker to imbue it with emotion, intention, and with stance, in large part because it does not carry much propositional meaning. Uttered with a long, drawn-out vowel sound, for example, the word well might signal that the speaker is uncertain about the truth value of the sentence that follows. If the word well is uttered quickly and emphatically, it could portray that the speaker is frustrated or angry. If a speaker exhales sharply while uttering the word well, it could express exasperation. It would be difficult, maybe even impossible, to imbue the other words in the sentence with the same interpersonal meaning a speaker could potentially load into the little word well.

Staying with the same example, well, it is clear that the word also completes an important structural function in the sample sentence. This kind of function becomes clearer if we think of it in the context of an actual conversation, and how one turn builds on another.

Speaker A: Are you coming to the meeting?

Speaker B: Do you mean the staff meeting? Well, it was yesterday.

Here, in addition to offering interpersonal meaning, the word well is serving as a transition between two parts of a turn. Due to its placement, it signals to Speaker A that Speaker B is continuing a conversational turn; Speaker B is not yet ready to yield the floor. Even though people who critique language might say something like “All those wells and you knows and likes are just thrown into language, just filler anywhere,” but this is not a valid observation. It would be odd to end a conversational turn with well, as in:

Speaker A: Are you coming to the meeting?

Speaker B: Do you mean the staff meeting? It was yesterday, well.

Even though another discourse-pragmatic feature, for example you know, could work in the sentence-final slot quite effectively. This goes to show that there is a time and a place to use these elements of language: there is a system, and people know how to use the system extremely effectively without even giving it much thought. They are definitely not thrown in haphazardly.

Language would not be nearly as successful without these important elements that are often dismissed as “filler,” or “meaningless.” We wouldn’t have the same range of effective tools to create interpersonal meaning, and our conversations would not function nearly as efficiently. These elements signal things like “I am continuing my turn, please don’t interrupt,” or “I am finished talking now.” Instead of striving to diminish these key components of our language, perhaps it is more helpful to spread the word about the critical communicative load they carry.