Since the 1980s, I’ve listened to the English language in the United States steadily adopt a habitual inclusion of what I’ll call “filler” words. These are words that convey no meaning and essentially take the place of the equally useless “um” or “uh” that serves as a placeholder in the auditory stream, indicating the speaker is momentarily stumped as to what to say next, and feels compelled to fill the air with noise.
Over the decades, this practice of inserting filler words has become infectious. Now, even network news hosts are peppering their on-screen oration with such words. Luminary television journalists are doing it now. I’ve heard people like Anderson Cooper stuck in oral neutral, spewing filler word after filler word, while the listening audience waits on a cliff edge for some morsel of meaning to finally spill out.
I have been interviewing (virtually) college juniors for a paid internship that I’m offering, to help the young adults at San Diego State University find a bridge between academia and their first real job after graduation. One interview again demonstrated how pervasive the habit of filler words has become.
My question to the candidate: “You’ve said that your class in human resources was your favorite so far in your upper division coursework. What specifically have you learned that has stuck with you from that course?”
The answer I got: “Well, you know, the class had a lot of, you know, really interesting things that were all about how people in a business, you know, they’re important, and I sort of found it to be, you know, interesting. Yeah, that’s it.”
Fighting back my dismay at both the state of mental acuity of a college junior studying business subjects, and the absolute lack of any information provided in the student’s response, I gamely asked a follow-on question to hopefully give the person another opportunity to pull a fact, an idea, anything from their favorite course, to share with me.
They responded: “I’m sort of, like, you know, blocked.”
If this were a singular event in my experience, I would be rightfully branded as a self-satisfied sniffing language purist and a jerk. But it’s a daily experience, coming at me from all sides of life–colleagues, medical professionals, the paid media spokespersons, even people who are highly trained communications professionals and published authors. This last group astounds me. They don’t write the way they talk, so why do they talk that way? Why is this verbal habit so damn contagious? If the coronavirus we’re all dealing with were as pervasive and persistent as the automatic insertion of nothing words in our discourse, half the population would have already passed on.
Here’s my theory. Language is not just about communicating information, facts and figures. It’s about forming a social connection, and is part of the ancient process humans have to decide if another human is friend or foe. Common auditory habits within a common language is another method of segregating other people into safe or unsafe categories. It is in addition to smell, touch, facial expression and body movement, which also provide cues for deciding whether another person is okay or not.
As we know very well, such inclusion/exclusion dynamics are learned in adolescence and young adulthood. That’s why these language practices are most often started by teenagers.
But if any of you teenagers or college students are reading this (not likely), here’s a secret weapon that can catapult you to the head of the line for internships, jobs, great experiences and ultimately success in any endeavor you attempt: Get rid of the filler words. Communicate clearly, with meaning, using strong grammatical structure, eliminating words that don’t advance your message or add value to your listener’s ears. You will stand out so brightly that anyone you talk to will never forget you. Especially now, because most people around you will be, like, you know, sort of, you know what I mean?