They should fine each student for each “like” per sentence. These artificial voice inflections that turn affirmative sentences
into questions marks. should be punishable with three years in prison. These are supremely annoying as they impose on the listener to constantly nod and affirm. Our must well educated college grads sound like insipid insecure Barbie dolls when they converse. We must rescue them !
CSUs have an oral communication requirement.
It’s because the elementary and middle schools didn’t teach oral communication. College is too late.
https://debuk.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2015/07/05/just-dont-do-it/
Both “like” and “uptalk” are associated with young women and are often traced back to California “valley girl” dialect.
I’ve met plenty of young people who know how to speak well. At D’s HS they certainly taught the kids how to speak, greet adults, introduce themselves, even how to make business/professional phone calls. But I have met those who did not attend that school who know how to comport themselves. I’m sure there are more who CAN than who sound like a Valley Girl.
Who learns to “speak” in school? Really? We learn speech patterns from our families and friends.
“Like” is this generation’s filler word for when our mouth is moving faster then our brain. Other options for filler words historically include uhhh or umm or just an awkward pause. I get that its a little annoying, but you can’t just like tell people to change their dialect. Would you tell a southerner to stop saying y’all even though its not necessary perfectly correct? No. So leave people alone. I agree that being able to communicate effectively is important, and speech classes are a good available option, but don’t judge younger people just because they don’t talk exactly the same as you do.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never actually heard a barbie doll talk…
Anyway, many of us have different speech patterns for formal and informal situations.
And, by the way, as someone who does oral history interviews with the elderly- y’all have some strange speech patterns, too, it’s just that they’ve been around longer and have thus become normalized.
Language changes. Every generation complains about how the next generation talks. It’s always too informal.
OP you lost all credibility for the sloppy posting. If you want kids to learn the norms and expectations of adult communication (as they do in our Oregon high school communications class) then set a good example. If your comment specifically targets females (“Barbie dolls”) then you should have been more gender specific too.
Also, if you’re going to criticize how a group of people communicate, please do so with better grammar, spelling and punctuation of your own.
I hear men (mostly students my own age, but also professors in their forties) using uptalk all the time. I don’t know why no one else notices. 
I do it to some extent, and while I’ve tried to reduce it, it’s part of my accent and pretty hard to change.
I think I speak the way I do because of school, although for the most part I wasn’t explicitly taught how to speak. Before I went to school, I said “ain’t” and had kind of a drawl because my mom does. (My family is from rural northern Ohio, so I’m not really sure why my mom has a drawl, but she does.) After attending school for a couple of years and being chastised for “ain’t,” I acquired a more typical American accent and have spoken that way ever since.
I don’t know about you, but I call this “active listening” and see it as a positive effect.
Yes, and it’s one of the fascinating paradoxes of speech policing: Speech habits associated or originating with young women are the most criticized but also the most rapidly imitated.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/28/science/young-women-often-trendsetters-in-vocal-patterns.html
(I teach a unit on this stuff)
I am currently in a senior level, undergrad English class in literary theory. My (male) professor says “like” and “um” in almost every sentence. He’s a very fast talker, so he happens to stumbles over words frequently. Although his speech is imperfect, he’s a brilliant guy nonetheless.
I was watching, “Shark Tank” a short time ago, and there were two 20-something female presenters. Their “uptalk” was juvenile-sounding. I was then shocked to learn that they were both Harvard grads. I would have thought that their years at H would have had more of a positive influence on their speech patterns.
Perhaps their years at H had a positive influence on their ability to resist judging people’s maturity or intelligence based on superficial things like speech patterns.
Use of the quotative like, uptalk, and vocal fry can sink an interview; that’s just the way it is.
If you look on YouTube for “day in the life” type interviews of people in different careers, if the professional is an American under 40 there’s a good chance they’ll be using uptalk. Some examples are this software engineer ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt79JcPfZQA#t=01m11s)) and this aerospace engineer ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8sQx27oLxU#t=00m59s)).
C’mon, people where using “like” back when I was in middle school. Believe me, that’s some time ago, well before the valley girls. I remember my mom correcting me. The other was “ya know,” which I do use in certain casual contexts. But, consciously.
Loved the VG song, btw.
Oops, Omagawd.
The pernicious overuse of “like” and tedious uptalk is not a gender issue. Both male and females are afflicted by them. The problem is that are not just annoying informal slang. They are pervasive in professional settings and even job interviews. They make the speaker sound inane and can indeed sink a job interview.