Use of "like"

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It's possible that all this like-ing is a nervous habit that has simultaneously inflicted an entire generation of women, but I'm starting to wonder if something more is at work.

We know that saying "like" excessively is not a linguistic style that leads to others to view us as intelligent people. At best, someone who notices that I say "like" a lot would just ignore it or see it as a benign cyst on my verbal communication skills. At worst, too much "like" can cause my audience to shut themselves off to the idea that I could possibly have a valid opinion or worthwhile thought; after all, I'm talking like a silly girl. If it looks like a ditz and walks like a ditz and talks like a ditz, then it probably is a ditz. I know this. I know what saying "like" is conveying to people. I'm just not thinking about it while I"m doing it, at least not consciously.

Since we know that saying "like" too much leads others to negatively judge our intelligence, maybe inserting "like" into a sentence is something that we do to purposefully make ourselves sound less intelligent and forceful and therefore less formidable than we actually are. We're sabotaging ourselves! Saying "I'm an aerospace engineer," or "I enjoy reading Don DeLillo" sounds much more intimidating than "I'm, like, an engineer," or "I enjoy reading, like, Don DeLillo."

Maybe women of my generation have been taught, through positive social reinforcement, that we're supposed to pepper our speech with meaningless modifiers that make us sounds a little less sure of ourselves, a little less credible. No one likes a show off or a know-it-all. Better temper your smart-talk with assurance to whoever you're speaking that you're not, like, a threat or anything. Any girl who's been teased for middle school nerdery has likely developed a long standing aversion for the feeling of being excluded for being too smart or opinionated. This is the way that socially acceptable people talk. This is the way that pretty people talk. Women are taught that it's more important to be pretty and socially accepted than it is to be smart. Ergo, like.

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See Judith Baxter's "Double-Voice Discourse".

Source: http://jezebel.com/5815628/my-love-affair-with-like