And then there are things parents say, thinking the words make them sound “cool” (there’s one of them), that embarrass their children.
We do that on purpose @rosered55
@Chrchill - how about diction?
bevy - (n) a large group of people or things of a particular kind.
My D was required to take a class that I jokingly referred to as Finishing School. I was quite amused when she thanked me for annoying the uptalk out of her when she was a teen. Every time my kids uptalked I would respond as if it were a real question, asking about the fact that was turned into a question. They were very annoyed at the time but it seems it was effective.
Another aspect of Finishing School was identifying and removing the students’ filler words.
The weird old grumps who (foolishly, self-defeatingly) reject interviewees based on their speech patterns are luckily rapidly being replaced by younger, more open-minded people who understand that uptalk and other speech patterns have little bearing on a candidate’s competence at the vast majority of jobs and that turning away a well qualified applicant for something as superficial and subjective as not liking the way he or she talks is both stupid and myopic.
@marvin100 shall I be crucified for an overactive ipad 
? T’was a TYPO
@marvin100 hardly…we’ll just be replaced by other appropriately dressed younger folks who expect to hear both questions AND declarative sentences!
@marvin100 Clients don’t take well to uptalk, likes and similar nonsense. They want professionals with focus. Not rambling messes.
@Chrchill - very few jobs are client-facing, and each month and year that passes, more and more “clients” are also using uptalk and like. They’re among the fastest spreading vocal patterns in North American English.
Here’s an interesting piece about uptalk in particular, with quotes from and links to several other good pieces:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002967.html
@Chrchill Yes, because if you’re going to criticize others on how their communication style isn’t “professional,” you need to be professional yourself. Don’t be a rambling mess and proofread your comments before you post!
There is something to be said for learning how to tailor your speech and writing patterns to each audience as appropriate.
And, um, like, I’m not just, like, speaking of the workplace setting, but also other venues/areas of our lives?
For instance, if one is in a working/lower-middle class area with a high crime rate, one may want to switch off that professional sounding accent…especially the upper-class British/American variety popular among some at posh social establishments or some Ivy/peer elite universities(i.e. Princeton).
That is unless you’re favorably disposed to earning a few free knuckle sandwiches from the local criminal element and being involuntarily raided of all your worldly possessions.
That’s it. Time and place for all types of communication. They aren’t better or worse, just know which is used where.
(But I have to admit, upspeak really hurts my head to hear it for more than a few minutes.)
There’s also something to be said for understanding that our speech variations don’t carry all the meanings we often ascribe to them (southern accents don’t mean the speaker is dumb, AAVE doesn’t mean the speaker is a “thug,” uptalk doesn’t mean the speaker is uneducated).
Of course there’s a difference between is and should be, but without being attentive to the classism and bias of is we can’t make any headway on what should be.
What is AAVE, @marvin100?
[African-American Vernacular English](aave - Google Search), @Waiting2exhale
Here’s a hilarious (but long!) David Foster Wallace piece that is exceedingly relevant to our discussion:
http://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf
The “endless policing of women’s language” … seriously??? I guess whoever wrote that never heard of the endless policing of men’s language (surfer-speak gnarly, dude!, dude?, etc.).
D18 will sometimes be in like overdrive after school but settles down. Probably the most irritating teen-speak out there is excessive use of the F-word. It’s F this and F that all the time when they’re in a group. Mainly the boys.
@droppedit - did you read the deb uk piece? One thing she mentions (and backs up with evidence) is that there’s a long and very visible history of publications and articles that specifically police women’s speech. Until you can find an equal corpus focused on men, you don’t have a leg to stand on.
In fact, the Deb UK piece starts out with this parody of [this Business Insider piece](The One Word to Strike From Your Vocabulary to Sound More Confident):
@Chrchill “Clients don’t take well to uptalk, likes and similar nonsense. They want professionals with focus. Not rambling messes.”
Wait … there are people who still actually verbally converse in the workplace? I thought every communication went the way of email these days.
Ridiculous. If a I went into a business meeting and my presentation contained many “dudes”, “gnarlys”, “awesomes”, etc. (except in a joking way, you know, making fun of the way many teenage boys speak) I would certainly damage my career prospects.
I don’t have women-are-always-victims blinders on. I hope that my D18 stays far away from people like you when she gets to college. If she’s told “you can’t win” enough times, she might start believing it. Right now she knows that what she does is the important thing, not who she is, what she is, where she came from, etc.
This is a perennial complaint:
3. “THE TOTAL NEGLECT OF THE ART OF SPEAKING”
In the preface to the 1780 book A General Dictionary of the English Language, Thomas Sheridan wrote:
'The total neglect of this art [speaking] has been productive of the worst consequences…in the conduct of all affairs ecclesiastical and civil, in church, in parliament, courts of justice…the wretched state of elocution is apparent to persons of any discernment and taste… if something is not done to stop this growing evil …English is likely to become a mere jargon, which every one may pronounce as he pleases."
http://mentalfloss.com/article/52209/15-historical-complaints-about-young-people-ruining-everything