Columnist Melissa Schorr: So, you know, she like talks funny

Melissa Schorr

Monday, Nov. 23, 1998 | 12:09 p.m.

"I was like, whatever..."

"I don't tell just anybody, you know."

"I was just like -- you're going to die -- I was like, 'Oh my god, what just came out of my mouth?"'

So the Tripp Tapes are out and the entire country has now heard the famous "Voice of the Orifice."

And the most startling revelation is this: Monica sounds like me! Ohmigod, I, like, talk like Lewinsky. You know?

Oh, maybe I wouldn't call the Commander-in-Chief "butthead," but overall, Monica's vocabulary is scarily similar to mine and most of my peers' -- sprinkled with a heavy dose of modern-day sentence stuffers.

Eavesdropping (along with the rest of America) to the gabfest gone global, I noticed that "like" and "whatever" were the phrases in heaviest rotation, coming up far more often than either "blue dress" or "Big Creep." Most amusing was to hear Linda match Monica "you know" for "you know," in a blatant attempt to appear simpatico.

A newspaper headline agreed with my assessment: "Lewinsky comes off on tape like a typical 20-something."

The Baby Boomers may have been groovy, man, but my friends are like, you know, whatever.

We are the cohort that has singlehandedly forced a new grammatical usage of "like" into the national lexicon. According to Webster's, "like" can now be used as a verb ("Monica liked Bill"), as an adjective ("Bill was like a dog"), and as what the dictionary politely calls "without syntactic function" ("they are, like, busted").

We also have this nasty habit of making bold declarative sentences? But with an intonation that suggests we're asking a question? As if we're not sure what we mean? You know?

We're sneaky about it, though. We know it drives our elders nuts, so we turn it off in polite society. I'd never write professionally the way I talk. But it's like the eubonics of my generation -- back in the youth ghetto, I can't help but backslide.

To my rescue is UNLV professor Gary Palmer, a linguistic anthropologist who calls these pet phrases "discourse markers" and says they do serve a function. "They help to organize the conversation," he notes. "It's actually a lot more efficient to say, 'I was like,' than to say, 'I'm now going to describe the state I was in."'

"As a linguist, I wouldn't look at it as a problem," he adds. "Each generation has its own style of speaking."

Exactly what I've been telling my parental units for years, but do you think they'd listen? They've been on a two-person bandwagon to weed the superfluous sayings from my vocabulary.

A typical conversation with my dad:

"So, did you fill-in-the-blank nagging reminder today?" he inquires.

"Yeah," I reply.

"Yeah?" he retorts, sarcastically.

Long sigh on my part. "Yesss," I hiss like a snake.

Then begins the rant. "What's a smart, college-educated person saying 'yeah' for? Do you talk that way at work? You don't write that way, but when you open your mouth ..."

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Though the nagging failed, Monica's inarticulate chatter just might be my wake-up call. It's time to rid myself of the "yeah, like, whatevers."

You know?