This addition to the Sociolinguistics is interesting and well researched. It is, however, original research, and therefore not appropriate for Wikipedia.
That is, of course, I believe that it is not appropriate. If you would care to argue for inclusion, the Talk:Sociolinguistics page is an appropriate venue for such discussion.
Rather than consigning your work to the ether, I will place a copy here. This should make it easier to replace on the Sociolinguistics page, or elsewhere, if you and other editors wish to do so.Cnilep (talk) 07:48, 5 December 2008 (UTC)
College Age Vernacular
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Another aspect not mentioned in depth, which deserves equal attention, is the college age population, more specifically those on American college campuses. There are many factors that contribute to the make-up of a college student’s vernacular. Two very specific contributors are grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation of one’s learned language. Grammaticalisation is “understood as a process through which lexical, denotationally meaningful elements in a language are transformed by successive generations of speakers into morphologically dependent linguistic elements in the grammatical structure” [1]. In other words, the grammaticalisation of language is the process by which it constantly changes as the meanings of words and their uses evolve within our everyday speech. Pragmaticalisation has one function, which “is to bleach the propositional content of linguistic expressions to such an extent that they no longer function as expressions contributing to the truth value of a proposition but begin to function as markers indicating procedural meaning in verbal interaction” [2]. In more simple terms, pragmaticalisation is the process by which certain words in a language are so changed grammatically that their meaning is more or less unclear. Typically, these “bleached” words serve the purpose of denoting how a sentence should be interpreted by the hearer. Richard Watt’s term “Expression of Procedural Meaning (EPM)” is a relatively new branch of study with not as much research done in the linguistics field.
Expressions of Procedural Meaning serve many functions within college dialogue. The first function is that of a time marker, as in the use of um, oh, er, ah, ugh. These utterances are strategically placed within dialogue to mark space, time, and could even be used to signal one’s “turn” is not yet over. When we follow common rules of our language, we understand that it is impolite to speak when another is already talking. Therefore, these utterances can mark a turn within a conversation where it would be impolite for another to begin speaking. House and Kasper (1981) would categorize these utterances as hesitators. These hesitators “are pauses filled with non-lexical phonetic material” [3]. However, simply defining these expressions or utterances does not necessarily make them easier to understand. Watts himself proves that expressions of procedural meaning often need to be examined within the context in which they occur and on a situational basis.
A prime example of Watts’ point is with the word like. The word like can act as a time marker, along with the common umm and ugh utterances. Looking in a standard dictionary, one can find at least ten different meanings of the word "like", depending on the dictionary. Especially with today's college generation, who helped coin some of the newer definitions, "like" has a wide variety of functions in the English language.
The word's dictionary origins: 1150–1200; ME lic, lik < ON līkr; r. OE gelīc, c. D gelijk, G gleich, ON glīkr, Goth galeiks like, lit., of the same body or form.like definition
| SENTENCE
I cannot remember a like example. |
SENTENCE
He's busy like a bee. |
SENTENCE
You're just like your brother. |
SENTENCE
It would be like him to forget everything. |
SENTENCE
Wow, it looks like snow. |
SENTENCE
He looks like a good candidate for office. |
SENTENCE
There's nothing like a cup of hot chocolate to warm you up. |
SENTENCE
There are a wide variety of sports, like swimming, football, soccer, cross country, rugby, or volleyball. |
SENTENCE
She looks more like 45 years old instead of 28. |
SENTENCE
It happened pretty much like you would expect it to. |
SENTENCE
With a little elbow grease, it'll be like new. |
SENTENCE
She's like, "Oh by the way, you have an exam next week." |
SENTENCE
It's, like, totally awesome. |
| "LIKE" MEANING
of the same form, appearance, kind, character, amount, etc. |
"LIKE" MEANING
in like manner with; similarly to; in the manner characteristic of |
"LIKE" MEANING
resembling (someone or something) |
"LIKE" MEANING
characteristic of |
"LIKE" MEANING
as if there is promise of; indicative of |
"LIKE" MEANING
as if someone or something gives promise of being |
"LIKE" MEANING
similar or comparable to |
"LIKE" MEANING
as; such as; for example |
"LIKE" MEANING
nearly; closely; approximately; about |
"LIKE" MEANING
in the same way as; just as; as |
"LIKE" MEANING
as if |
"LIKE" MEANING
informal.(used esp. after forms of be &/or to introduce reported speech or thought) |
"LIKE" MEANING
informal. (used esp. in speech, often habitually, to preface a sentence, to fill a pause, to express uncertainty, or to intensify or neutralize a following adjective) |