Language Log

It's, like, war

It's a war on like.  On this spoof site for the "Acadamy of Linguistic Awarness" that quotes an unlikely-to-be-20-year-old "Cathy" from Santa Barbara (yes, young and female and in southern California) using like in ways that ordinary people could only dream of, and cites a bogus research finding from the (of course) non-existent "National Survey of Academic Affairs" about the academic dangers of using like:

(Hat tip to Levi Self.)

Plenty of commentary on the Reddit site.

[Shamefaced addendum: Ben Zimmer points out that Eric Bakovic posted on this spoof and a related one back in 2005.  So treat this as a reminder.  I plead the enormous number of Language Log postings and the difficulty of searching on like.]

Posted by Arnold Zwicky at December 10, 2007 11:15 PM