Pet Peeve #28H

...or, Think Before You Speak.

Those of you who know me know that the way today's people communicate in a professional setting has a great tendency to piss me off. Though there are several grammatical faux pas that come to mind, I am currently sitting behind the #28H pet peevert, and I'm trying VERY HARD to not kick him every time he says "you know" ... no, I don't know. If I knew you wouldn't have to tell me, now would you?

Well, you know, the you know manager decided to you know even out the you know playing field, so he looked into the you know overseas market and you know brought you know another expatriate into the you know company.

Holy Mother of Jesus. Are you kidding?!? (This is not exaggerated. I copied it straight from the voice recorder I had used in class...) This was a 10-second clip from a 45-second response containing 24 uses of the phrase "you know." No shit.

Without the filler words, the 45-second response could have been clipped to a mere 15 seconds. Considering that this guy responds approximately five times per class, he spends around 1 minute and 15 seconds filling his speech while he thinks about what to say next. Extrapolating to the whole semester, he has permanently stolen 18.75 minutes of my life. Assuming that I had never been in class with him before, that's the equivalent of eating lunch. Grr.

Scientists have long known that using filler words is a worldwide linguistic anomaly. Each language has its own vocalization syllables, but in English most people say um, er, or uh (or most commonly these days: LIKE). My professor for my undergraduate Music History classes (five semesters of him...) was nicknamed Captain Um. On average, we'd fill a letter-sized sheet of paper with tick marks in the span of a single lecture.

So why do people use filler words? Scientists believe it is to keep the listener listening instead of attempting to speak. The second reason is to let your brain think about what you want to say next.

This comes straight from the White House (no commentary on the monkey in office, please) by the leader of the free world:

Discussing Social Security at a March 21, 2006, White House news conference, the leader of the free world used these words to describe a recent crisis: “The system,” the president declared, “was about to, like, fall into the abyss.” Later in the news conference, Bush gave his take on the current situation in Iraq: “There are other voices coming out of Iraq, by the way, other than Mr. Allawi--who I know, by the way, like, he's a good fellow.”

Geez, people. Listen to yourselves. And use the top half of your head to ward off the idiocy the bottom half spews.

...or, Think Before You Speak.