A scholar who finds the good in ‘bad’ English

How do you, like, react when people use “like” a lot? Do you sometimes find yourself saying “I’m walkin’ to the store,” or do you always enunciate the full “ing”? Do certain adverbial intensifiers literally make your skin crawl? 

I spoke with sociolinguist Valerie Fridland about her wonderful book, “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.” In it, she explains that many of our most maligned verbal tics play useful roles in communication today. She also reminds us that “the difference between the features we embrace and those we can’t tolerate is really just one of power and perspective.”

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 – a journalist called it the “verbal tic of doom” and the Institute for Public Speaking warns that “it is the sonic equivalent ... to nails on a chalkboard.”

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 “less attractive and intelligent,” 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 – think lounging earl, not Valley girl. 

One of the book’s most surprising chapters, for me, was the one about um and uh. We’ve 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. 

Um is more than a sign that a speaker is thinking hard – it cues listeners to “expect the unexpected.” Experiments have shown that when people hear a sentence such as “Everyone’s got bad habits and mine is biting my ____,” they expect the next word to be “nails.” But if the speaker adds an “um,” for example, “mine is biting my, um,____,” listeners are primed to expect something other than the usual answer, perhaps “tongue” or “pencil.” 

Um and uh also serve as “turn transition cues.” If you simply pause while you are talking, your conversational partner may think you’re done, and jump in. If you say “um” and then pause, they know you haven’t yielded the floor.