When I was in 8th grade I had an English teacher who said “you know” every third word. As the days in the classroom passed I gradually lost the ability to hear anything she said except “you know”. Thus I learned little English that year beyond the pitfalls of the verbal pause.
The worst verbal pause known to modern man is “like”. “Like” has become such a pervasively used word that it has transcended verbal pause status and usurped the meanings of other words. And regretfully my generation is responsible for this tragedy. I was floored the first time I heard a typical “like” driven conversation in the workplace. “I called the supplier to follow up on the order and he was like, your order shipped a week ago, and I was like, I haven’t received it yet, and he was like, what’s your tracking number.”
I am almost numb to “like” now—aside from making involuntary negative judgments about people who overuse it—and am focusing on the latest batch of new verbal pauses. Two years ago I began to notice a rapid increase in the use of the word “basically”. Some people cannot go three sentences without starting one with “basically”. Agony!
But “basically”’s star is waning as “actually” ascends. God forbid anything just happens; now it must actually happen. “Actually I went to the store”; “This is actually a banana”; “We are going to actually state a fact”. It never ends. So for myself, I am making a concerted effort to avoid verbal pauses. Words are the medium of communication. To communicate clearly, one must use a degree of precision when choosing words. Saying “Basically, I was like actually there” is semantically equivalent to saying “I was there”. So I am officially off verbal pauses. But the worst part is that sometimes you just can’t stop yourself. So my own personal latest verbal pause is “Actually…damn”