Page 24 - Winter 2022 The Bulletin

Letter to the Editor October 6, 2022
Dear David,
I had to smile at your Editor’s column in the Fall 2022 Bulletin. I, too, have been aware of the “#24” use of the word “like.” As a linguist in graduate school, I authored a paper that was presented to the San Diego State University linguistic forum on the origin and uses of the word “like.”
The current use of the word comes from what we call Valspeak, short for Valley Speak. We acquire language and associated dialects between birth and age twelve. Histori- cally, we have learned to speak a language in the way it was taught to us, by those adults and peers who were around us during that time of language acquisition. Until the 1960s and 1970s, this was our parents, neighbors, and friends. Then, things changed.
More and more children were left alone with television as their primary source of language learning, resulting in the acquisition of a language and a dialect that did not reflect that which was local. Rather, the dialect that chil- dren learned was from Hollywood, California, including the San Fernando Valley, where most television programs originated. In short, children learned the dialect of Holly- wood, nicknamed “ValSpeak”. “Like #24” is one of many examples of this.
Michael Kelly
Linguist and Medical Spouse
24 HCMA BULLETIN, Vol 68, No. 3 – Winter 2022