\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are you doing watching that program, Art?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strictly for educational purposes, my dear.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
That was the exchange earlier this week when my wife asked me to turn down the volume of my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153educational\u00e2\u20ac\u009d program, Entertainment Tonight. Not highbrow enough? Well, let me explain:<\/p>\n
Purely for education and edification, I left the TV on after the evening news, enjoying a passive education and nodding occasionally, between my own nodding off.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing research for my next column,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I told Mdm. Light Sleeper, who usually sacks out at 9. And so it was educational. But let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s back up a bit.<\/p>\n
Remember the derriere pose by Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz, photographed together during the Oscars? The pose, which has appeared in several magazines, shows the women facing away from the camera then simultaneously, turning their heads toward the camera to be recognized.<\/p>\n
The pose, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m quite convinced, is available to voyeurs on YouTube. Now the educational part of this scenario is strictly for scholarly research. You see, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really interested \u00e2\u20ac\u201d at my age \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in the cheesecake aspects of the photo; no sir, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really concerned about looking at Diaz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Lopez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarkable physical attributes; rather, I watched solely to become educated, to learn more about language.<\/p>\n
Entertainment Tonight showed several stage and screen celebrities. TV reporters approached some of the stars, asking their impressions of the awards. But suddenly, as a camera crew went up to Diaz and Lopez, their backs to the camera, the two turned their heads in unison.<\/p>\n
One reporter asked whether that synchronized body movement had been choreographed. Indeed it had been. This is how Cameron Diaz so eloquently expressed it:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We were messing around during rehearsal and we were like, we we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwhat are we gonna do?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and we just started like kind of like hanging out and they were like here and we were like, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwe should totally just like and they weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ready for it, ya know, and so we were like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc1, 2, 3 and we were like (giggle).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Take a moment to grasp the profundity of Cameron Diaz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfathomable contribution to the canon of lofty language. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally underwhelming.<\/p>\n
I like both Diaz and Lopez and concede both celebrities are, like, fine actresses, easy on the eyes; they look great in evening dresses, but they, like, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do much to elevate the level of communication.<\/p>\n
The trouble is that people with such visibility and recognizability often get listened to more than the average person. Would somebody unattractive, unsexy like even get noticed by a TV camera operator?<\/p>\n
Does the state of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s typical conversations owe a debt to movie and TV stars, who are much more visible than the regular masses? Remember, celebrities\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 words and opinions and their own version of erudition ostensibly carry more weight. In just a couple of sentences which took Diaz about 10 seconds, our language is like enriched by nine instances of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
What is it about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that makes it such a favorite, not only of teens but also of established, 30-ish glitterati? Part of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u009d popularity might be that it serves as multiple parts of speech. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I like that\u00e2\u20ac\u009d contains a verb; \u00e2\u20ac\u0153they were like brothers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes it a preposition; I felt like I had been kicked\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes it an adverb; \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the like(s) of which\u00e2\u20ac\u009d makes it a noun; and it becomes an adverb (again) in expressions such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She enters the room and wonders, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLike where is everybody?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Like it or not, for years, as a speech teacher, I cautioned students against using \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forbidden words,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which serve merely as filler. Listen to ordinary people and note the frequency of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ya know,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what else?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and that wretched \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Doing so might be quite instructive, but the danger in keeping a tally of such words is a tendency to disregard the message due to the unabashed use of such filler.<\/p>\n
My older sister Dolores only recently pointed out that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d used \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d four times in just a few sentences, as I was giving someone directions. Could it be that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve unwittingly become the egregious equivalent of Oedipus, who, faced with the plague that beset Thebes, finds out from the Oracle that it was his own fault that the plague descended upon the city?<\/p>\n
Why has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d become like, ya know, the most popular of these expressions?<\/p>\n
Occasionally I come across a former student who immediately needs to choose the words carefully. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I remember you as the teacher who wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t let us use \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcya know,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 you know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Alas, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why we language cops just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any friends, as those we speak to somehow must believe the grade they received in Beginning Speech last millennium is really being held in abeyance, depending on the frequency of forbidden words.<\/p>\n
Take heart. As surely as fads come and go, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will lose its luster in due time. What will replace it? An expression we hear more and more is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sheesh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a brief expression that means much.<\/p>\n
Although \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sheesh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is of fairly recent vintage in my glossary, fellow Optic columnist Lupita Gonzales swears the term\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been around since the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s.<\/p>\n
The beauty of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sheesh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is that it is always directed at someone else. If someone else makes a mistake, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proper to sheesh him or her. The term, however, should never be directed at oneself.<\/p>\n
So, sheesh, should I kind of, like, ya know, consult an oracle to find out if I am like the cause of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like\u00e2\u20ac\u009d problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are you doing watching that program, Art?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strictly for educational purposes, my dear.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That was the exchange earlier this week when my wife asked me to turn down the volume of my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153educational\u00e2\u20ac\u009d program, Entertainment Tonight. Not highbrow enough? Well, let me explain: Purely for education and edification, I left the TV on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}