Overuse Isn't Too Much Of A Bad Thing, You Know
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday November 8, 2008
EXCESS is bad, right? Alcohol, ambition, appetite. Even exercise. Reluctantly, I include chocolate cake.
There are linguistic excesses too. Some favour the passive, unmindful of its accompanying density or that "constipated" comes from the Latin "stipare" (to press closely or crowd together). Some have difficulty sorting more important from less important, turning a recount into a novel form of torture. Some litter their conversation with quotatives ("and he was, like, whatever"), jarring the nerves of random passing ears. One's linguistic fingerprint means that of the myriad language options available, we each make our individual choices. And we're variously tolerant of other people's particular linguistic follies and foibles - what drives one person batty may be barely noticed by another. Most people agree that "you know" (YK) wins the prize for causing maximum irritation. Poor YK gets a lot of flak. Just shove a microphone in the face of a spent Olympic athlete and ask how s/he feels. I understand the frustration but feel compelled to mount a defence, if only because the condemnation of YK as "lazy" overlooks its multiple functions. Yes, it's a conversational gambit but it serves more than one master. For one thing, it helps you hang onto your turn, when you're not ready to give it up. For another, and this might seem contradictory, YK is inherently social: it flags conversation as a joint construction and that your contribution, when allowed, will be welcome. Excess aside, YK needs to be understood in terms of how it responds to the demands of spoken production. Language of the easy-going, conversational kind is not the cheap, illegitimate sibling of fine writing. It has its own rules, grammar, style and rhetorical conventions. It's built of different stuff from funeral eulogies, parliament openings, and nephew baptisms, which, arguably, are written texts, spoken aloud.Spontaneous language is produced on the run, in the moment's heat, off the cuff, in the daily hurly-burly of interactive life. No rehearsal, no plan. That a baby takes years to learn to produce a coherent sentence should provide some indication of the complexity of the task and the proficiency most adults take totally for granted. Superbly competent as we are, we're wont to forget the complex mechanics that underpin our skill. Seen this way, YK surely deserves a more kindly interpretation. Yes, seen only as a filler, it's not unlike "um" in that it allows the brain valuable catch-up time before the next cascade of fluency. But seen as a complex discourse marker, it's so much more. ruth@laraconsultancy.com
© 2008 Sydney Morning Herald