Like, oh my God, you know, like, I mean, whatever. No, really, totally, like, whatever, you know?
I wonder if I'll live to see the day when people consider that a complete sentence.
I normally would never watch a morning show such as Dr. Keith, but the episode I saw on the morning of Sept. 29 caught my attention. Dr. Keith interviewed The Plastics, a MySpace.com group renowned for bullying people they considered too ugly to joain their exclusive group. One member in particular, "Jon," was so inarticulate that it hurt to listen to him. I estimate that 50 percent of everything he said consisted of "like," "you know," "I don't know," "I mean" and "whatever" or a combination of those.
Unfortunately, Jon's utter lack of eloquence accurately represents the way many young people today talk - even students right here at Ball State University.
Next time you watch a movie from the 1940s or even the 1970s, pay close attention to how people talk. You will quickly notice one thing: They actually know how to talk. They properly enunciate their words, rarely swear and don't inundate each sentence with filler words such as "like" and "whatever."
The reason for this is because back in those days, public schools required elocution. Today, because of lack of money or initiative, they don't. The inevitable result is a generation of people with the oratory skills of "Jon" who don't know how to speak properly or how to speak in formal situations.
The following is a list of the most annoying examples of bad speech that I hear on a daily basis:
"Like" - I freely admit that I'm not immune to this one. However, overuse of this import from the dialects of California just makes people sound like valley girls, regardless of their sex or gender.
"I'm good" - You mean, as opposed to evil? I catch myself using this one also, but you should say "I'm well," "I'm fine" or "I'm all right."
"Her and me are going to Bracken to study" - I cringe whenever somebody says something like this. It's "she and I." You only say "her and me" when you are receiving an action, e.g., "The professor told her and me to go to Bracken."
"There's many things" - What are wrong with this picture? If you're talking about more than one thing, then conjugate your verbs as such.
"If someone wants to talk to me, they can hit me up" - I must have missed something; who's the other person? If you really need to be gender-neutral, say "he or she," or just "she," which will show that you're not privileging males over females. You can also pluralize the sentence. Using "they" to refer to one person, however, is wrong.
To put it bluntly, as I often do, speaking incorrectly does not make you sound cool; it makes you sound stupid and poorly educated. It makes you less attractive to employers - particularly if you're going into a profession that requires good communication skills - and less respectable to grown-ups out there in the real world.
If you talk like an idiot, people will assume you're an idiot.
Unfortunately, aside from COMM 210, most Ball State students have not had the opportunity to improve their speaking skills through formal education and probably never will.
For that reason, it's our job to watch what we say and how we say it. Otherwise, we'll all end up sounding like our country's verbally challenged president.
Alaric DeArment is a senior journalism major and writes 'The Dork Report' for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Alaric at ajdearment@bsu.edu.
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