海角大神

How do you, like, react when people use 鈥渓ike鈥� a lot? Do you sometimes find yourself saying 鈥淚鈥檓 walkin鈥� to the store,鈥� or do you always enunciate the full 鈥渋ng鈥�? Do certain adverbial intensifiers literally make your skin crawl?聽

I spoke with sociolinguist Valerie Fridland about her wonderful book, 鈥淟ike, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.鈥� In it, she explains that many of our most maligned verbal tics play useful roles in communication today. She also reminds us that 鈥渢he difference between the features we embrace and those we can鈥檛 tolerate is really just one of power and perspective.鈥�

Vocal fry is a case in point. Fry happens when a person trails off at the end of a sentence, dropping the pitch of their voice and letting it creak like an old door. To older listeners, it can give the impression that the speaker is weary, bored, or put out. Vocal fry can evoke strong negative reactions 鈥� a journalist called it the 鈥渧erbal tic of doom鈥� and the Institute for Public Speaking warns that 鈥渋t is the sonic equivalent ... to nails on a chalkboard.鈥�

You might think that vocal fry is an inherently awful noise, but our attitude has more to do with our perceptions of the people who use it than with the sound itself. In the United States, we associate it with young, female speakers, and consider it a fault, something that makes women seem 鈥渓ess attractive and intelligent,鈥� as the New York Post warned. A few decades ago in Britain, however, vocal fry was a mark of high status, with upper-class, older men employing it the most 鈥� think lounging earl, not Valley girl.聽

One of the book鈥檚 most surprising chapters, for me, was the one about um and uh. We鈥檝e all been taught that using these verbal fillers makes us sound ineloquent. Recently, though, researchers have studied the ways they function as tools for communication. They signal that a speaker is about to say something that requires increased cognitive effort, such as bringing up a new topic or choosing among word options.聽

Um is more than a sign that a speaker is thinking hard 鈥� it cues listeners to 鈥渆xpect the unexpected.鈥� Experiments have shown that when people hear a sentence such as 鈥淓veryone鈥檚 got bad habits and mine is biting my ____,鈥� they expect the next word to be 鈥渘ails.鈥� But if the speaker adds an 鈥渦m,鈥� for example, 鈥渕ine is biting my, um,____,鈥� listeners are primed to expect something other than the usual answer, perhaps 鈥渢ongue鈥� or 鈥減encil.鈥澛�

Um and uh also serve as 鈥渢urn transition cues.鈥� If you simply pause while you are talking, your conversational partner may think you鈥檙e done, and jump in. If you say 鈥渦m鈥� and then pause, they know you haven鈥檛 yielded the floor.聽