My D - very intelligent and an excellent public speaker - lapses into the “likes” all the time in normal conversation. We correct her when we notice it (more in a joking way) - it does make her sound uneducated. Her parents don’t speak like that, so she clearly was influenced by friends and media (yep, gonna blame that to a certain extent).
Humans - and other creatures - tend to mimic those with whom they want to be associated. I give you the teenager. If you ask her or him, you will be told that he/she is different and unique and special, just like all of her/his friends that all wear the same clothes, style their hair the same, and fall into similar language usage. Speech norms change over time, and I am sure there were people 200 years ago complaining about how some folks were using crude speech that made them sound common. World keeps spinning…
I don’t think there is any one right way to talk. It is about communication. If using the word “like” makes you a better communicator then go for it. For some “locker room talk” is perfectly acceptable.
When you are talking to a jury you don’t want to sound too proper and professional. You don’t want to alienate the jury and sound like some pompous jerk. Everything depends on the circumstances. There is no one right way
OP is speaking in hyperbole for heaven’s sake. I think double parking should be punishable by death…so I think a 3 year sentence for “like” seems reasonable…(it’s called sarcasm, another form of communiction people should study (and is also not terribly professional).
If I am seeking investment advice for 2 mil retirement and I’m getting val-speak from my consultant, I’m out the door. And, right or wrong, so are many others. At some point, kids need to learn that in the real world, not everyone gets a trophy for showing up. There are professional settings in which casualness will cost. I’m not sure why this even needs to be said.
Mark Zuckerberg shows up to work in blue jeans. If your financial consultant uses val-speak and has a record of phenomenal returns NO ONE cares . That is the real world!!! Not everyone gets a trophy for acting like an uptight upper class snob from the Hamptons
Oh, @snarlatron , fine–and if the OP and supporters had held their position to “I want my financial advisor to speak the way I speak,” then there wouldn’t be much of an argument–you can pick your financial advisor with whatever criteria you choose, no matter how silly and superficial. But that’s a far, far cry from the substance of the OP and ensuing thread.
That said, be aware that someday your insistence on judging people’s professional competence with something as superficial and irrelevant as their speech patterns may cause you to pass up the better person in favor of the more polished one…
Yes, and without any hesitation. Whether it’s fair or even rational, many people, especially in a professional context, may judge you as an ignorant redneck if you say y’all.
Since when and why have some of you taken this discussion to be restricted solely to the most traditional, stodgy, and image-based “professional context”? That’s a different question entirely and not at all where this discussion started. It’s as if someone started a thread saying “Cheese is the worst. It’s poisonous.” and then a few pages of clear debunking later, a few people jumped in to say “cheese you left in your yard for three weeks and your dog pooped on it is totally poisonous, so that debunking is demonstrably false!” I mean, it’s more than a shift of goalposts, it’s a completely different sport.
Sometimes it depends where you live, what sort of accent is advantageous in a professional context Sometimes “y’all” can be an asset. My local attorney uses it. He is successful and wealthy and very well connected. Of course, I live in the south. I have a north east lawyer, too, because I used to live there. His speech is appropriate for his practice and locale … no “y’all” for him.
@alh - true, and conversely I’m quite certain there are plenty of “successful and wealthy” lawyers in the South who do not use y’all and other “successful and wealthy” lawyers in the North who do. In law as in most areas of life, our competencies can make up for superficial idiosyncrasies–we’ve all known “successful and wealthy” people with glaring social quirks or even inadequacies. After all, nobody ever accused Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg of having well-honed social skills, and it sure didn’t hold them back.
If your post was directed at me, my answer is speech patterns are very deeply ingrained, and the way people talk at work is usually close to how they talk outside work and vice versa. Most people aren’t able to flip a switch so their speech patterns sound like an Appalachian coal miner at 7am but a Cravath partner at 8am.
Maybe not that extreme, but we all code switch all the time. You don’t talk to your bank representatives the way you talk to your closest friends; you don’t talk to your boss the way you talk to your children; you don’t talk to a job interviewer the way you talk to a police officer. But again, most people’s jobs have nothing to do with the sort of “professional” polish and class-based propriety towards which some comments in this thread have attempted to move the discussion.
Well, Black people code switch all the time. It can be extreme, the change of diction and tone. (I speak in dangling participles as a matter of choice.)
It has been a survival mechanism, and while it may not hold true - does not hold true - for all Blacks, all the time, it is certainly very much a part of how Blacks navigate living in the world.
(There’s a lot of wonderful research and writing about code switching. It’s an area of rich analytical possibility and has been examined quite a bit in recent years.)
Y’all is local for you all. Having five likes per sentence is a meaningless and mindless filler. It conveys an undisciplined mind and the need to control the airwaves. The combination of like, upspeak and so convey an immaturity. I have never once heard Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Sergey use any of these terms.