Language history and we: the case of “like”

Some people who monologue (like in a video) about a subject often use it. “Cleopatra was actually not black.” This makes some sense since you use it to emphasize something that you assume might be surprising, instead of using a more flat statement. But it gets weird when the speaker supposedly thinks that every statement that they make is surprising or even astounding to the hypothetical listener. No: many statements are expected, and some statements you had no prejudice about one way or the other, so the listener has nothing to be surprised about.

It feels like the the monologuer assumes that they are just blowing the minds of the listener on a continual basis.

It’s also often used for excessive emphasis: “I actually love ice cream”. Like “ice cream is literally my favorite flavor”. Excessive emphasis IMO should be sparingly used or else it loses its effect. It’s like “literally”: it can have a humorous effect when used to mean “figuratively”, but if you regularly use it like that it becomes lame. (But I have lost that battle: literally now literally means both “in the literal sense” and “in the figurative sense”.) I don’t appreciate the affect of someone who emphasizes every third sentence while speaking, and to me these emphasis words have the same effect when I read them.

That not this equals power is an interesting meme. Powerful people are usually crude (police, army, politicians, business magnates, aristocracy and the like isn't known for being very subtle either). Of course with humanities you can creatively construct almost any reading to the culture and society if you want to "prove" what you want. If you strictly equate cultural practices with social groups that can be dominant or not, there is already some gross simplification going on.

> a crude mode of communication where we don't care about communicating clearly or on subject

I didn't read this from it though. That seems somewhat orthogonal to the content of the article?

> or emphasizing respect to yourself and to the other person, or maintaining connection to the long term culture and history of thought.

This I do actually take issue with though. This is an example of what I meant above. I grew up speaking a "non-standard" English and I can say that I've never felt that using it was reflective of a lack for respect for myself or the people around me. Saying that someone should speak in a more "standard" or "high brow" way that comes unnaturally to them in order to show respect is an example of the power dynamic I'm talking about.

I come from Northern Ireland and my speech is heavily inflected. If I go to England and speak with people who have more linguistic dominance then I notice a change in how in received. There is an assumption that I'm less intelligent when I use my Hiberno-English, like saying "they learned me how to write" rather than "they taught me how to write." If the English of my home was dominant then we would see this effect in reverse.

Same for wanting to "maintain a connection to long term culture or thought." Those cultures and thoughts win out on the long term because of the power plays. How many languages have died out in the course of colonialism? Do think the speakers of those languages didn't want a connection to the history of thought, or did we just ignore them and forget them because they lacked the power to assert themselves?

> Of course with humanities you can creatively construct

What does this mean? Are you saying that your assertions are more rooted in hard science than mine? Or the whole field of social linguistics is hogwash? Then why have this conversation at all?

> If you strictly equate cultural practices with social groups that can be dominant or not

I didn't.

> Powerful people are usually crude

Is this an oversimplification? Are non powerful people usually not crude? This is the point: the sophistication is not an inherent trait of the language; it's socially constructed and perpetuated through social power dynamics.