963: How “Bad” English can Enhance Communication and Relationships with Dr. Valerie Fridland

Pete Mockaitis

Valerie, welcome.

Valerie Fridland

Well, thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

I am, like, literally so excited to be talking about your work and the implications of language in life and business and professional careers. So, tell us, what is your area of expertise as a professor and researcher and writer?

Valerie Fridland

Well, that’s a bit of a tongue twister. I’m what’s called a sociolinguist, which you don’t want to say five times in a row at a party because it tends to get blurred together. But what I basically study is how the language we use comes from who we are socially, and this can be things like whether we’re young or old but also from the way we interact in particular social settings. So, it’s not, like, there’s just one system of language and we use that same system everywhere. Language is really fluid and flexible depending on who we are generally and who we are in moments, and that’s what I study.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Lovely. And you have packaged some of your insights into your book, Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English. Tell us, any particularly surprising discoveries you’ve made while putting this together?

Valerie Fridland

I think every chapter was actually something very surprising to me even as a linguist where I knew some generalities about it, but as I did more of a deep dive into the background and history of some of these features that we love to hate in our speech, like “like,” or, “literally” used non-literally, that they all had these really fascinating histories to get to where they are today. A lot of them are centuries old, even though we think they’re new things.

So, I think the biggest surprise for me was how old some of the features that we think are new are, and also how “um” and “uh” are incredibly useful from both a listening and a speaking perspective, and I had known that there was literature that suggested that we do them because we’re thinking harder, but I didn’t know the extent of how impactful they are on a listener as well until I started doing the research.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Valerie, we just can’t wait. How is that impactful and useful to a listener hearing “ums” and “uhs”? I’m assuming you mean impactful not just in the “I’m so annoyed at this unprepared speaker,” but rather in some other ways.

Valerie Fridland

It might be impactful in that way as well, but I think “um” and “uh” are a great example of things that we feel are socially not helpful, that actually offer a lot of linguistic benefits, and that’s why we do them, because things don’t just spontaneously happen just because. In language, they happen because they’re doing something for us.

And “um” and “uh” are interesting because, A, they’re universal. We really haven’t found a language yet that doesn’t have some form of “umming” and “uh-ing.” They may not sound exactly like English, so it might be “a” and “ano,” for example, in Japanese, but they have similar traits of being these short words that we put in when we’re thinking heavily about what we’re saying.

From a listening perspective, I think what was fascinating to me is that there’s a difference between “uh” and “um” that I think people don’t realize. We typically “uh” when we simply need a very short break to process something in terms of what we’re going to say. But we say “um” when we are doing even heavier cognitive retrieval.

So, what we find when we look at research, if we measure the pause length that follows an “uh” or an “um,” people pause longer after “um,” suggesting they’re searching for a word more deeply in their cognitive archives, than when you use an “uh.” And, typically, people tend to have some sort of sense of how long they need to break for. So, they understand how deeply they need to think.

So, when we asked students questions that could have one-word answers but some of them were more difficult than others, so, for example, “What’s your dog’s name?” which should be pretty easy for you to come up with, versus, “What’s the name of the sport in which they award the Stanley Cup?” which people like me would have no clue, we find that people either used “uh” or “um” depending on how long they thought it would take them to answer, which is really fascinating.

But the even more amazing thing about your “ums” and “uhs” in the listening perspective is they seem to signal to a listener that you’re going to say something that requires them integrate new information. So, for example, if we’d been talking about names, and then I was using a name that we’d talked about before, I probably wouldn’t say “uh” or “um” before it.

But if I’m switching course and bringing up something completely different, I probably would say “uh” or “um,” which signals that my brain is actually connecting different cognitive resources and different neural pathways to this conversation. Well, by doing that, by saying “uh” or “um” as a speaker, what I do is I get you ready as a listener for harder thinking, harder processing.

So, what we find is when we give people pop quizzes about an hour after a conversation or a story, they actually remember the points that followed an “uh” or an “um” better than they remembered the ones that didn’t, which I think is pretty amazing.

Pete Mockaitis

Wow. Yeah, that’s fascinating, and I had no idea. So, they remember that better than if they didn’t have it. And part of me wonders then, have we also done the experiment, comparing that to just silence prior to?

Valerie Fridland

Yes, that’s a very good question because, right, one thought would be, “Well, simply because there’s a little more time between.”

Pete Mockaitis

And some suspense, “I’m curious, what’s he going to say?”

Valerie Fridland

And so, we’ve done it where it’s silence, so silent pauses, and also where there are other noises, like a cough, that is the same amount of time as an “um” or an “uh,” and those do not have the same effect. In fact, we find that coughing actually makes it harder for people to remember what came after, so it’s more disruptive to the thinking process as a listener. But a silent pause does not have the same impact, so it doesn’t help you at all. So, it’s specifically “uh” or “um.”

What’s even more interesting is if a listener is listening to someone who they expect will not be fluent in English, so it might be a non-native speaker or it might even be someone that they’ve been told has some sort of speech impediment, it doesn’t have the same effect because then they think it’s related to their speech disfluency rather than as a signal of heavy cognitive information retrieval. And so, it does seem to be very specific to what we know and do for us typically.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that’s so fascinating. And I’m going to speculate, and you tell me what we know or don’t know or what the smarter speculators are speculating. I’m guessing that’s because somewhere deep inside us, we know or understand or have linked and learned that something which comes after an “um” is something that is thought out, it is considered, some effort has gone into it, and, thusly, we afford it, more value or significance or import, like, “Ooh, this is a treasure that is about to be placed upon me,” as opposed to some junk you can rattle off without thinking.

Valerie Fridland

I think it’s more like, “Oh, my God, they expect me to think by using that, so I better get ready.”

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, okay.

Valerie Fridland

So, when we look at the statistical distribution of where “uh” and “ums” tend to occur, they always occur in the average use before more abstract, more difficult, less common, or less familiar words, or at the very beginning of a sentence when we’re mapping out the sentence structure, especially of complex sentences. Which means that, as listeners, what we’ve been exposed to is that “uh” and “um” precede hard stuff, right? They precede things that are taking a little more cognitive effort.

So, that’s probably why we have learned to be trained into letting it signal to us that we better ramp up our cognitive resources to do some heavy cognitive lifting when we hear “uh” or an “um” in the speech stream. So, in other words, it’s sort of like a flag that says, “Hey, hard word here,” and I get my brain ramped up for that hard word because I know it’s coming due to the “uh” or the “um.”

Pete Mockaitis

And is there an optimal length of “um” or “uh” so as to maximize the powers of this effect?

Valerie Fridland

Well, “uh” seems to be more effective than “um.” and that’s probably because it signals shorter pauses than longer pauses.

And when someone “ums,” we find people are more likely to try to jump in and help them, and I think that’s because when you “um,” it signals to a listener that it’s a harder thing you’re doing, that you’re really searching more deeply in your cognitive word lexicon to come up with that word, so as a listener you start thinking, “Huh, what word are they meaning?”

Because have you ever had that happen where someone’s like, “It’s uh, uh,” and you were like, “Okay, I could come up with that word for you”? It drives my mother crazy, actually, because I do it to her all the time. But I think the “um” tends to signal that someone needs more help and, therefore, we don’t think about what they’re saying as much as what they are needing to try to say or get out, and it doesn’t help us.

Pete Mockaitis

Intriguing. And could you tell us a little bit about the magnitude of this effect? Is this a smidgen more memorable, or is this like dramatically, double, triple memorable?

Valerie Fridland

I don’t think it’s a magnitude effect of in huge enormous order because there are a number of different things that can influence it. For example, if you say “uh” instead of “um,” also what type of speaker you are, if you’re native, non-native speaker, if someone thinks you have a speech disfluency, all those things affect us. It also depends on the listener and the speaker’s relationship and whether they know that person “uhs” and “ums” a lot, it’s just a habit, because we do have heavy “um-mers” that might say “uh” or “um” a lot.

And if that happens, you’re probably less likely to have this keeping on happening every time they’re using an “uh” or an “um.” And I think we’ve all met that person that “uhs” pretty much every word. Well, you just can’t devote that much mental energy to them. In fact, it can be kind of exhausting. So, I think we have to just sort of mitigate it to say “uh” and “um” are not bad things, in terms of how they signal to a listener that we’re actually coming up with some pretty important things that they need to listen and pay attention to.

The magnitude effect is that it’s certainly happening more than when they don’t do anything before those words. Whether you want to add “uh” in front of important words in a presentation, I would say that you probably want to hold off on that, but whether you want to eradicate them from your speech, that would be where I would spend more time thinking about.

So, say you’re preparing for a presentation as a speaker at a business or at a convention that you’re going to, I think what you need to think about is, “Do I ‘uh’ or ‘um’ as a habit where it’s distracting because what it’s indicating to a listener is I haven’t practiced enough because I’m searching for the words?” because that’s what “uh’ and “um” mean to us.

“Or is it helpful because it’s before key points that I might want them to remember later?” And I think that’s where the fundamental difference lies. If it’s before key points, it actually can be helpful. If it’s every other word, or even every key point, then it’s actually going to be distracting. So, I think you just have to be really strategic in what you choose to do with “um” and “ah.”

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I think the most striking thing you said is that it’s more potent than a silence, because I have found, sure enough in my own experience, when someone’s speaking, then they just pause for a while, “Well, what’s going on?” I mean, they’ve really got me. And so, if the impact of an “uh” is better than a silence, that sounds pretty potent indeed.

Valerie Fridland

Well, silences are confusing. I think what happens is when someone pauses, we don’t know why they paused. So, they could pause because they’re trying to give a rhetorical effect and really make us think about what they just said, or they could pause because they don’t know what they’re saying, or they could pause because they’re having a heart attack. I mean, we just don’t know.

And so, we’re, as a listener, trying to struggle to figure out why they’re pausing, but when we “uh” or “um,” we know what that is, and so it’s a really clear signal that someone is continuing, is planning to continue the talk, and also that they’re just needing a break to process things.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And tell us then, thinking about in professional context, if we are using “ums” and “uhs” or “likes” and “literallys,” what is the perception of us as speakers by those listening and hearing us, ideally in a professional environment, if you have that research available? Because I think that could be a concern is like, “Oh, my gosh, I sound like a moron with all my ‘ums,’ ‘uhs,’ ‘likes,’ ‘literallys.’” And to what extent is that well-founded versus a dream?

Valerie Fridland

I would say that one of the things people ask me a lot is how they can stop using “like” so much because they feel like it makes them sound like an idiot. I mean, that’s definitely something that people come to me to see if they can get any help, and there’s a couple things that I need to talk about before we break down the research on that. One thing is that “um” and “uh” are actually quite different than “like” and also “literally” used non-literally.

“Ums” and “uhs” are what we call filled pauses, and they actually are cognitive flags of processing. So, they’re really not having any semantic content or literal meaning. They don’t contribute anything to the meaning of what we’re saying. They’re simply indicating that a speaker is actually processing things in their brain, and that’s just a sort of verbal, “Hold on a sec.” “Like” has some content. So that’s different than a filled pause. That’s what linguists call a filler word because it fills a space in a sentence that could exist without it. So, I could say, “He’s, like, going to go there,” or I could say, “He’s going to go there,” and in both cases, the general meaning is the same. But if I say, “He’s, like, going to go there,” that actually gives you as a listener a little different vibe about what I’m trying to get across than if I just said, “He’s going to go there.” It might indicate to a listener, “I’m not 100% sure when or how or if, but I think he’s going to go there,” versus a statement like, “He’s going to go there.”

Or, if I said, “He’s, like, ‘I’m not going to do it,’” what that tells listeners, it might not be verbatim. If I said, “He said ‘Whatever,’” that tells you this is exactly what he said. But if I said, “He was, like, ‘I don’t think so’” that just means that’s the gist. It’s not verbatim. So, it actually communicates some literal meaning. I know it’s a really fine distinction, but it’s actually important in how we use them.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m laughing because sometimes when you’re communicating what happened, people might just make noises for the gist of what someone said, “She’s all like, ‘Aargh.’” And so, you wouldn’t ever say, “She said, ‘Wah!” “No, I’m sure she didn’t say that.” But if she’s like that, it’s like, “Oh, she was feeling kind of frustrated and irritated by your request.”

Valerie Fridland

Bingo!

Pete Mockaitis

“Yes, she was like that noise.”

Valerie Fridland

That’s exactly right. That’s a perfect example of the difference between “say” and “like.” The other thing we find with that quotative is sometimes people will say “I was like” when they’re talking about themself and then they’ll use a different verb to describe what someone else said. So, I might say, “Well, he said he didn’t want to do that, but I was like, ‘Hell, yes, I’m going to do that!’” where it’s more like you’re describing your thought process, and you want to make sure that someone doesn’t think you actually said it out loud. So, there’s actually a lot of nuanced meaning to “like” in those circumstances that it does communicate.

I think the “like” that people tend not to like is the one that we call a discourse marker, which is where it’s sort of just stuck in between things. So, it can be at the beginning of a sentence, it can be at the end of a sentence, it can be just stuck in the middle of a sentence, but people tend to think that it really has no meaning, that it doesn’t contribute much. And I think what we find is people tend to react more negatively in job interview settings, or in even communicative settings, to those kinds of likes than the likes that’s used as either an approximator.

And that would be something such as, “He was, like, 12 years old,” instead of, “He was about 12 years old,” or the quotative verb, because those actually serve a purpose, and the “like” that’s just stuck in at the beginning or the middle don’t seem to serve a purpose to us. So, I think what’s really important when we talk about, “Do people like or not like “like” in communicative or job settings?” is, “Which kind of ‘like’ are you talking about?”

As an approximator, “like” doesn’t really affect people’s interpretation of you because it’s so widespread and it seems to be across the age groups, and that’s the one where you’re using it instead of “about.” We do find a trend that younger speakers use it more in that context than older speakers, but even then, it’s quite prevalent in all ages’ speech. The quotative and the discourse marker “like” do tend to be typically younger speakers. And for that reason, when we look at how they sort of perform as speakers in job interview contexts and when they’re using “like,” they do tend to get a negative bent in their receptivity of job interviewers when they do that.

What that means is when you’re going to a job interview or a context that’s high stakes in a workplace environment, particularly if that environment or the upper management is older, using “like” in those other contexts does seem to give off a negative opinion of you. But the interesting thing is when we looked at that same research that showed that, that evaluators tended to rate people down if they used those kinds of “like,” we find that when they were in an interaction in that same interview, where they were having casual conversation about their families, or activities, or something that sort of switched from the more formal parts of an interview to the less formal parts, we find that that actually increased sociability ratings of that candidate.

So, I think what’s really the key takeaway here is when you walk into an interview, do you want to use “like” wildly? No. But, again, if you’re having a casual, more intimate conversation about something social rather than something occupational, it’s okay to let that more informal language out a little bit. You just want to be a little measured in your use.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, it sounds like when you say it’s okay, it may even, in some contexts, be superior. Like, if we’re in a casual, socializing, bonding environment, and I am speaking in the Queen’s perfect English the whole time, like, “Valerie, what plans do you have for your weekend? I am looking forward to going on a boat with some friends.”

Valerie Fridland

“With whom do you want to go on the boat with?”

Pete Mockaitis

With whom, yeah. And so, it’s almost like, are you, like, do you have a script? Or is this just how you talk? Or what’s going on here? In terms of there’s a time and a place where these components seem to reinforce the vibe in a positive, likeability way.

Valerie Fridland

Absolutely. And I think what you did is you hit on a really interesting fact about language, is we have a repertoire or a sort of continuum that we operate on between this very, very formal, in a really high-stakes context type of language, and then we have the really solidarity-based, friendly, intimate language, and we all vary on those two poles of our daily conversation. So, when I’m talking to my family or a friend over a beer, if I talk to them like I talk to my boss at work, I wouldn’t have a lot of friends to have a beer with.

The same goes to say with my boss. If we have a more kind of distant relationship, if I take a too intimate tone with him linguistically, that will not go across very well. But what if I’m trying to build that kind of a relationship? Then I might want to add some more informal banter and talk about casual things in those tones because that will help us build a relationship. Because part of what makes us understand our relationship to each other is the way that we choose to talk to each other. So, if I use overly formal speech, what I’m doing is I’m distancing us.

And what we find, actually, is when we look at joking contexts or arguing contexts, joking contexts tend to have more informal speech. When we start to argue, we tend to actually use more like G’s on our I N G’s and more formal speech overall because we’re trying to take a power and authoritative stance. And I don’t think when we have a relationship with someone that’s friendly and casual, we want to have an authoritative stance with them. So, I think we do need to weigh carefully the types of relationships we have and what’s the most appropriate language to use in those contexts.

And, again, a lot depends on who you’re talking to. So, if you’re in a very white-collar field with older white men as who you’re going to be talking to, chances are a more distant, formal, linguistic environment will be what you find there. If you’re doing it at a startup in Silicon Valley, and they’re playing pool while they’re interviewing you, chances are you want to use a little more “like” and be a little more flexible, maybe even stick an “um” or an “uh” in and say “literally” non-literally about five times, because that’s the kind of language use that’s going to ingratiate you in that context. So, I think there’s no one answer. There’s a variety of answers, depending on the context you find yourself in.

Pete Mockaitis

In terms of thinking about professionals who want to be more awesome at their jobs, you have a wealth of knowledge about linguistic matters, we’ve covered a few fun nuggets here, what are some of the top do’s and don’ts that your research has highlighted for professionals in this context?

Valerie Fridland

Well, I think one really interesting do is that we should be a little more intense. When we look at people that use adverbial intensity, and what I mean by adverbial intensity is they use adverbs that pump up or ramp up how much they are trying to express of something. So, if I say, “I’m totally excited about this,” or “It’s really great the way our numbers have shot up,” that’s the use of intensity.

When we look at studies that measure how much people use adverbial intensity in workplace settings, we find that people that don’t use them, come across as very robotic and less sociable, and people that do use them not only come across as more sociable, but also as more reliable and as more believable. And I think that’s because when you use an intensifier, which is ramping up an adjective or a verb, what you’re expressing is, “I’m really confident in this. I don’t just feel like it’s good. I feel like it’s really good.” So, it’s basically saying, “I’m pretty committed to what I’m saying here, that I believe in its truth.”

Whereas, if I don’t use an intensifier, “You know, you take it or leave it,” I think there’s an ad that’s sort of, “Just okay is not okay.” Have you seen that ad? And it’s like, “How’s the surgeon?” “He’s okay.” I mean, no one wants a surgeon that’s just okay. You want a surgeon that’s really amazing. And it’s, again, this idea of intensification, highlighting how much of a quality something has, and my belief and commitment to it.

And so, as a speaker in a presentation or a business setting, I want to convince the people that I’m talking to, whether it’s sales or marketing, that I’m 100% on board with what I’m saying, and using some intensification can really help that. I think that’s one good finding that linguistic research can parlay into the job setting.

Pete Mockaitis

That is phenomenal. And we had Jonah Berger on saying similar things, that we like to hear confidence, totality, absoluteness, in so far as you could do that without being deceptive or, like, “Actually, we need a reasonable risk profile on this, and so your totally, absolutelys, are actually making me more nervous.”

Valerie Fridland

Right, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis

But in many contexts, we like a lot of absolutely, totallys, even if it’s a, “Hey, unfortunately, I know I said, ‘Absolutely, I could do that by Thursday’ but, you know, these emergencies have popped up.” Are you aware, do we lose face or credibility if we play the adverbial intense game and then don’t deliver more so than if we’ve played it safer?

Valerie Fridland

Well, I think it depends on how reliable you are, typically. I think that’s really a personnel-driven issue rather than a linguistic-driven issue. If you tend to do what you say, then I don’t think, whether you’re intensifying or not, people are going to be disturbed by you promising something extremely and not delivering.

But if it’s a pattern, then, absolutely, what it does is it actually makes people believe you less, and I think if you intensify more and deliver less, that’s absolutely going to be problematic. But I think that’s really personality-driven and how good an employee you are has a problem that’s less to do with your language and more to do with your performance.

But another thing that I would suggest that people think about when they’re trying to use language to help them in a job is we do a lot of speaking in our work, and sometimes we’re speaking to just colleagues and it’s really casual. Other times we’re giving presentations or we’re talking at a meeting and we’re representing something.

One thing that we find is when people are dynamic speakers, and that means that they use a fairly fast speech rate, and they moderate their tone up and down, obviously, you don’t want to do it in a weird way where it comes across like I’m doing it in a perfunctory manner, but just in a very excitable sometimes a little slower and more dramatic and others, that you’re moderating your tone a bit and your prosody, that those speakers come across as more charismatic.

And when people are more charismatic speakers, we don’t notice things like “ums” and “uhs” and “likes” as much. So, we filter them out because we’re really, really interested in what they’re saying. So, I think what we need to do is think about, “How can I be a dynamic speaker?” especially on Zoom, a lot of us are doing virtual meetings. And is there anything worse than having someone drone on and on in a monotonous voice, saying something very uninteresting without any dynamicity? Not really. So, think about being a dynamic speaker.

The faster you speak, and I don’t mean be crazy fast, make sure, obviously, people can understand you, but faster speech rate tends to correlate with better ratings of speakers, and a little more dynamic in your tone. And if you try to do those in a natural way, it can help you come across as a better speaker.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. Along the lines of don’ts, I’d also love to hear do you have any particular pet peeves that just annoy you so much? And also, there is scientific evidence, research to suggest, “Hey, it’s not just you. Most people can’t stand this, so maybe we should cut it out.”

Valerie Fridland

That’s a hard one because I’m supposed to know better. Of course, there are things that that annoy me. I’m personally really dedicated to LY on adverbs. I really love my LYs, so I like to go slowly rather than slow. And I don’t want to walk quick, I want to walk quickly. And research does show that those are going the way of the dodo, so I’m in a minority in terms of wanting to use them. But it is still something that prescriptively people do suggest you use. So, it does prescriptively seem to matter to people in writing, but in everyday speech it doesn’t seem to matter. But I also know that’s a me problem and not an LY problem so I’m trying to be more understanding of it.

The other thing that I think most people find annoying is those terms like “bruh” or “bro.” That actually drives me crazy. Well, the only reason is because I have a daughter who calls me “bruh” all the time, and I think there are a lot of older speakers that feel that way. But in general, I’m pretty understanding about almost everything we do in language because language change is fundamentally what brought us the English we speak today. I don’t think anybody wants to go back to the days of Beowulf, so I’m pretty open.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, I’d love to share with you some of mine and you tell me if there’s any research on this or I’m just a quirky fellow.

Valerie Fridland

Okay, I’d love to hear it. What is it?

Pete Mockaitis

I don’t care for, I think it’s kind of related to each other, when people say “obviously” as well as “right?” So, when someone say, “Well, obviously, this is the best podcast ever.”

Valerie Fridland

Well, obviously it is.

Pete Mockaitis

You know, it’s like, it just feels so presumptuous. I also feel the same way, like, with the newspaper headlines when it says that such and such issue. It’s like, “The Trump trial. What you need to know.” It’s like, “You don’t know what I need to know. You don’t know me. You don’t even know my context, my goals, my values, my visions. Like, what I need to know is wildly different than what maybe someone else needs to know.”

So, I guess I’m a little bit persnickety about, I guess, maybe just like the implied judgment. So, it’s like, “Obviously says to me, if you didn’t know that, you’re an idiot.” And it’s like, “Maybe they didn’t know that so don’t take any unnecessary risks here.” So, this is my view, but sometimes I’ve been told I could take language a bit literally, as opposed to just really absorbing kind of the emotional vibe that’s really what’s at work behind the language.

Valerie Fridland

I don’t think you’re alone. I’ve actually heard a lot of people that get annoyed with that “right?” that comes in as an agreement marker. So, Mark Zuckerberg actually uses that “right” form quite a bit, and there was even an article in the New York Times about his use of “right” in that way because people find it kind of insulting because what it’s assuming is he is right and you have to agree with him.

Pete Mockaitis

It’s like, “Actually, no, Zuck, I disagree vehemently.”

Valerie Fridland

“I disagree. Yes, I strongly disagree.” And so, I think what you’re talking about is this assumption that a speaker makes that you share the same background knowledge and belief system as they do. And, yes, it can be irritating when you get that idea, but I bet you have people in your life that say “obviously” and “right” that don’t annoy you that way. So, it’s probably somewhat dependent on who’s using the “obviously” and the “right,” but I don’t think you’re alone in especially the “right.”

I know that’s something that’s been written about a lot, because it’s not a “right” that’s simply asking someone to consider a proposition. It’s a right that’s asking them to agree with you on something and sometimes you just don’t agree with someone, and it sort of presumes that you should. So, I think you’re not alone in feeling that’s irritating. Rest assured.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, certainly. And tell me, anything else, irritants that we’d be better off just banishing?

Valerie Fridland

You know, I know a lot of people that don’t like “hopefully” as a sentential adverb because it’s supposed to only be in front of a verb and not the entire sentence. So, that was a complaint that I think about 20 years ago, really, was a big one so, “Hopefully, we’ll go there tomorrow.” And proponents of very prescriptive usage say that you can’t use “hopefully” as a sentential adverb. But I’m here to say that I think we use it as a sentential adverb more often than not these days. So, that’s another one that has sort of gone the way of the dodo and personally doesn’t bother me. But I’m sure there’s someone out there listening that’s getting very irritated about my “hopefully.”

Pete Mockaitis

These scorching hot takes are going to cause some rancor, perhaps, in the comments or…

Valerie Fridland

Maybe. Oh, the other one I think a lot of people get annoyed, and I use this one myself, so I apologize to everybody that I annoyed through this podcast, is “actually,” using “actually” quite a lot, where you say, “Actually, that is exactly what I thought,” or, “He, actually, is going,” or,“Are you actually going to do that?” where you’re using “actually” quite often. That seems to be something that I hear a lot about that some people don’t like the use of “actually” in those contexts because they think it suggests that someone wasn’t going to do it otherwise.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now when you say “actually” that reminds me of the phrase “to be honest.”

Valerie Fridland

Oh, yes.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, I think that goes without saying and I think you’re always honest. I have a friend who is a lawyer who, he was he was in court, and the judge said something to him. He was just sort of thinking for a while, it was like, “Well, your honor, to be honest, we…” and he said, “Counselor Doyle, I expect you to always be honest with me in my courtroom.” He was like, “Oh, yeah. Yes, of course,” which I thought was part of the “Yeah, that’s what we’re thinking, but we can’t say that because we’re not judges who could preside over the conversation.”

Valerie Fridland

It is really funny how we feel driven to tell people that we would be honest in this one circumstance, and not in every other one. But people definitely now are saying “honestly” or “to be honest” a lot more than they did before, and I think I have heard a number of people say that, “Well, I expect you would be honest with me all the time.”

But, again, that’s where we get that literal sense versus metaphorical sense of language use that people get really tied to, and this is a problem with “literally” used non-literally. People get really tied to what the original sense of a word was or the original use without realizing that there are so many things in language that we use every day that are the complete opposite of the meaning that they had a hundred, two hundred years ago.

“Literally” used non-literally is one of those that people get annoyed with, but “very” has changed in meaning drastically since the 17th century. When we look at Chaucer or Shakespeare or things from the 1500s, some of the Bibles, the Tyndale Bible, for example, we find that “very” was used to mean “true.” So, he would be the “very prophet,” meaning the true prophet, or you’d be “very” in word and deed, “true” in word and deed. And we didn’t find it used as just an emphasizer or intensifier until about the 17th century, where it started to take on, if something’s true, it has a hundred percent of something. It’s very emphatically true. It’s a high degree of something.

And so, we started to see “very“ used to mean extensively or extremely and not true anymore. Although, every once in a while, you’ll hear someone say, “On this very spot, this is where he died.” And again, that means on this exact or true spot. So, here’s a perfect example of a word that’s changed drastically and we use it for all sorts of purposes, every single one of us, and we don’t get annoyed by it. So, I think we just have to be a little more flexible in the way we look at language.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Valerie, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Valerie Fridland

I think that’s good. I feel complete.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Valerie Fridland

Honestly. To be honest, I feel like we’ve covered it all.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I appreciate your honesty. Can you tell us about a favorite quote?

Valerie Fridland

My favorite quote is from a linguist called Max Heinrich, and he had the quote that said, “Language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” And I think that’s a very accurate way that we describe the difference between who speaks a dialect and who speaks a language.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Valerie Fridland

Well, I think the “um” “uh” study, where people were given, they were connected with electrodes on their head, and they were given sentences where there would be an expected or predicted word in it, versus one that was unexpected. So, it would be like, “Everybody has bad habits. Mine is biting my blank.” What would you put in there?

Pete Mockaitis

Nails.

Valerie Fridland

Your nails, right? But what they did instead is sometimes they would put nails and sometimes they would have what followed be something unpredictable. So, “Everybody has bad habits. Mine is biting my tongue.” So, is it possible to bite your tongue? Yes. But would it be a weird habit to have? Absolutely.

Well, when they found that if they stuck an “uh” before the unpredicted word, they actually decreased the brainwave activity around that unexpected word. It was called an N400 effect, which is something that indicates someone didn’t expect to hear what they heard and they were having problems processing it.

Well, when you stuck an “uh” before saying “tongue” instead of “nails,” you decrease that effect, meaning people were better able to integrate that unpredictable information. And I also think it’s hysterical to imagine people, all stuck up with these electrodes, talking about biting their nails and their tongue.

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Valerie Fridland

I love The Professor and the Madman. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book. It’s by Simon Winchester. Now, it’s, on the surface, the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, which I know sounds kind of boring, but it’s actually about a man that contributed in the 1800s to the Oxford English Dictionary, probably more than any of the other volunteers that they had working on looking at first known uses of words.But the crazy thing about him was that he was this brilliant genius in an insane asylum. He had been sent there because he was a madman and he had killed somebody, but yet he was so brilliant and he brought with him to the insane asylum his collection of rare books, and he spent his life helping to construct what we now know as the greatest dictionary of all time, the Oxford English Dictionary, and it’s really a fascinating book.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool?

Valerie Fridland

I would say that my favorite tool is writing things down. I know I’m a linguist and I focus on spoken words, but what I find when I’m preparing for something is the act of writing really commits the grooves in my brain to what I’ve written.

So, when we just sort of orally practice something, we’re just not dedicating the cognitive sort of density of writing to what we’re trying to get across, and it’s a little more superficial of a practice. What I find is when I write something, it commits my brain to what I’ve written. In fact, I can visualize it when I’m talking about it orally, and it really helps me be organized and conscientious in the way that I’m talking to someone.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Valerie Fridland

In my book, I say, “There’s no right way to speak English.” And I’ve actually found that that surprised me but it was one of the things that was most often quoted. In fact, for example, in the Wall Street Journal review, that was one of the things that was quoted because it was so obvious to me that we all have different ways we come to language, and whatever is right for us has been developed because it has worked for us in our lives, in our neighborhoods, and who we talk to.

But we have such firm beliefs about bad English that I think that’s why that has resonated with a lot of people that feel justified in the choices they make linguistically because that’s what their truth in terms of language has become. And so, when someone that’s a linguist who studies language is able to say, “There’s no right way to speak English,” meaning we have a lot of different diverse ways that we talk in different circumstances, and what’s right for one person and in one context isn’t right for everybody else, I think that’s legitimizing, for example, people that use “literally” non-literally or say “like” a lot or vocal fry or choose to use singular they. It just lets people be who they are and make the linguistic choices that fit their identity.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Valerie Fridland

They can go to my website, ValerieFridland.com.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Valerie Fridland

I would say just relax and breathe when someone is doing something with their language that bothers you. Just remember, it’s probably you, not them, and we can all learn to just be a little more understanding and empathetic to the different types of ways that we’ve learned to use language, and what’s worked for me may not work for someone else. What’s been indoctrinated linguistically into another person may not be the same as what I’ve learned or been socialized into. And I think if we can just relax a little bit instead of be so judgy, it will help us be better speakers, better empathizers, and also better employers.

Pete Mockaitis

Valerie, thank you. This has been awesome.

Valerie Fridland

It’s been awesome to talk to you, too. Thank you for having me on.