Contents
Like, like, in short, in general, you know, yes, well, so to speak, here … With such turns of speech, we try to hide ignorance or excitement, and when used excessively, we make the interlocutor lose the thread of reasoning and cause irritation. What is it: a bad habit, a speech impediment or a communicative necessity? What do these words say about us and should we get rid of them?
First of all: “parasitism” lies not so much in the essence of individual phrases (there is nothing terrible in themselves “as if” or “in general”), but in frequent and inappropriate use. So, French researchers are especially amused by the word “clear / understandable” meaninglessly repeated in a conversation. After all, this world has certainly never been clear. Or “shorter”, which makes you think about whether the further information will be important and interesting (otherwise, why shorten it?).
“In quotation marks” – an expression that cancels the meaning of what was said before – is another “favorite” of the sociologist, author of books on language, Pierre Merlet. “The phenomenon itself is not new: even Balzac complained about “superfluous” words,” he says. “However, in the current generation, this habit is a consequence of the “radio and television syndrome”: silence on the air is unacceptable, so the pauses are filled with a stream of words.”
Emotional state (and not only)
Spontaneous speech is fundamentally imperfect. We think about how to develop our thought, we cannot find the right word, we try to hide ignorance of the subject, in the end, we just worry. When we correspond, we stop printing. In oral communication, we use what English-speaking scientists call disfluencies.
“Oddly enough, if a pause is filled with just silence, it looks even worse than if we fill it with parasitic words or sounds like “uh-uh,” “mmm,” notes linguist Maxim Krongauz. “Their function is not in meaning, but in structuring and filling a pause, the reasons for which may be different.”
In Soviet times, “means” and “so to speak” were popular. The current favorites are “as if” and “type”
Is it possible to do without them? Parasite words are necessary to overcome speech difficulties, and it is pointless to fight them. Unless, of course, you insert “means” and “so to speak” through the word, because then this is already a speech defect that makes communication difficult and annoying to the interlocutor.
Once upon a time, these words were perceived only as indicators of poor language skills, mistakes that only complicate the perception of information. They were objects unworthy of research attention and study. But over time it became clear that they should not be underestimated. For all their meaninglessness, they testify to our belonging to a particular social group, generation, era. So, in Soviet times, “means” and “so to speak” were popular. The current favorites are “as if” and “type”.
Moreover, the first is more often used by people who are more educated, the second – less. They both talk about some uncertainty. But in a context unusual for them, that is, when there is no uncertainty, they lose their meaning. For example, “I sort of live here,” says the person who lives in it for sure about the apartment.
Personal qualities
There is also an individual parasitic word that is not popular with a wide range of speakers, but it regularly slips through a single person (like the famous “definitely”, so beloved by a famous politician) and over time can “infect” his listeners and interlocutors.
“Definitely” emphasizes the speaker’s confidence. And, on the contrary, people who are insecure use “as if” more often than others,” says Maxim Krongauz. But he does not agree with the unknown authors of the note “Parasite words give away our secrets” circulating on the Internet: “Still, the idea that they reveal our deepest hidden qualities is not very accurate. It is rather just a bright stroke in our speech portrait and a characteristic of the era and the community to which we belong, rather than our individual characteristics.
Communicative intentions
Do these words have national features? Since they are not recommended for use and they are not in dictionaries, we are not familiar with this part of foreign languages. In the English-speaking world, a rare informal conversation does without a palisade of “I mean” (“that is,” literally – “I mean”) and “you know” (“know / know”).
“There are quite a few similarities,” Maxim Krongauz notes, “for example, our “as if” intersects with the English “like” (not in the meaning of “like”). Although it is not known if there is an analogue of “shorter” anywhere else. Where did these expressions come from?
Its function is to keep the interlocutor on a short leash.
“I mean” warns of upcoming clarifications to the above, and “you know” invites the interlocutor to participate in the conversation (at least to express agreement or disagreement). Such words are called discursive markers. They are also used not for the sake of the main meaning, but to form a conversational structure and warn about the communicative intentions of the speaker. An example of a marker in Russian is “yes?”.
“In form, this is a question, but we don’t wait for an answer to it, we don’t even pause so that the listener has time to insert something,” says Maxim Krongauz. – Its function is to keep the interlocutor on a short leash so that he is more attentive. It’s true?” makes the monologue more dialogic.