Why do young people say 'like' so often?

Research finds that young people in the UAE say the word 'like' about 20 times per 1,000 words

Study shows discourse markers, such as the word 'like', are more prevalent in the speech of younger people. Photo: Klaus Vedfelt

Do you ever, like, wonder why some people use the word “like” so often?

This humble four-letter word has become ubiquitous in the speech of many young people — and a new study shows this is certainly the case in the UAE.

Researchers found that students at the American University of Sharjah uttered “like” no fewer than 3,937 times during 58 interviews, making it the third most-used word.

In 2,951 of those instances, it was being used as what academics call a discourse marker, a word that breaks speech up into segments.

If you look at who’s using it, it has nothing to do with speakers who aren’t intelligent

Dr Eliane Lorenze,
Justus Liebig University Giessen

There are many discourse markers — others include “you know”, “I mean”, “well” and “as I say” — and we often use them without realising we are doing so.

With young people, the word “like”, which is thought to originate from American English, often appears to reign supreme. In fact, among the 17 to 24-year-olds interviewed, it had an average frequency of 19.5 per 1,000 words spoken — which is considered high.

One student used “like” just 0.51 times per 1,000 words, but another uttered it 55.14 times every 1,000 words.

The interviews were actually carried out to analyse attitudes to English by the students, who came from a variety of South Asian and Arab countries, including the UAE, and were typically multilingual.

Dr Eliane Lorenz, a senior lecturer at Justus Liebig University Giessen, in Germany, and the study’s author, noticed how commonly young people used the word and decided it was worth analysing.

Word transcends nationality and culture

“Like was such a prominent feature,” she said. “We realised this was super interesting, there was so much more to this data.”

Like’s ubiquity in the interviews may be partly because the discussions were relatively informal and because the people interviewed were young.

Previous studies found a frequency of “like” per 1,000 words of 4.38 in Canadian English, 2.23 in Philippine English, 2.18 in New Zealand English, 1.51 in Indian English and just 0.49 in British English, all a fraction of the average in the new research.

But these figures are from studies carried out several years ago — perhaps before “like” became as popular as it is today — and that were not focused on younger people.

The use of "like" is, Dr Lorenz said, “controversial”.

The word is often, she said, associated with “valley girl” speak and can even make people perceive the user to be less intelligent, which Dr Lorenz suggested was unfair.

“If you look at who’s using it, it has nothing to do with speakers who aren’t intelligent,” she said.

In the new study, females on average said like more often than males — 21.1 times against 18 times per 1,000 words — but the difference was not statistically significant.

The new study has been published as, “We Use English But Not Like All the Time Like — Discourse Marker Like in UAE English,” in the journal Frontiers in Communication.

Discourse markers have two key functions, according to Michael Handford, professor of applied linguistics and English language at Cardiff University in the UK.

One is as cognitive filler, meaning they give the speaker thinking time to formulate what they are about to say.

The other centres on the interpersonal relationship side of communication, as discourse markers can soften what is being said and ensure that the other person does not take offence.

Prof Handford gave the example of a person declining an invitation to a party. Using “filler” makes the rejection less direct.

“People often use this filler in order to hedge or downplay the potential threat to the other person’s self image,” he said.

“If you remove discourse markers from your speech, you’re going to sound very abrupt.

Discourse markers are not unique to English, with Prof Handford citing the example of Japanese, which he speaks, in which “etto” is used as filler.

While “like” is much maligned, Prof Handford said it has long tended to be the case that language used by young people has been considered inferior.

“Like” typically fulfils functions, he said, that would otherwise probably have to be fulfilled by other words. As with other discourse markers, it is used as filler, and is additionally often employed to introduce direct speech.

One subject Prof Handford teaches is professional communication, and because the use of “like” may create a negative impression, he helps people find alternatives.

“We talk about other words that you might use other than 'like' to introduce reported speech,” he said.

“Personally, I don’t have any problem with 'like'. Not everybody shares that view.”