beyonceprivilege:

i’m doing all this research on when “like” is used as a filler vs. “um” or “uh” or whatever & i’m really loving this

basically my fav pattern so far is how these teen girls use “like” pretty exclusively when they’re sharing these concepts that are unknown to them or  just guess work, ya know? 

they’ll say “here’s the, um, living room” but then they’ll say “in this picture my brother is, like, howling or something” 

& i love it i mean i love the way they use “like” to express uncertainty and idk pensiveness? “um” expresses a break in a sentence, some disfluency. but “like” holds actual semantic meaning and is an indicator that expresses what follows isn’t gonna be totally accurate but just to the speaker’s best estimation.

i mean, he’s, like, howling or something, right? 

girl talk is cool talk