So basically, I actually want to literally say that..

[erratio]

This was inspired by a column in the SMH where they had a short paragraph complaining about how these days everyone's peppering their speech with "like", "you know", and "actually","basically", and "literally"

Does anyone have any theories on this? And why those words in particular?

My own theory centres around the way that none of these words actually (there I go again) add much meaningful content to a sentence. Add that to the way that socially it's become much less acceptable to stop and think before speaking, you're expected to reply RIGHT NOW even if you have nothing meaningful thought up yet, and so you start inserting all sorts of qualifiers and extra words just to give you time to think of something relevant to add. I'm still not sure why those particular words, although I think it may have something to do with the way it's easy to put a rising intonation on them..

Comments

[erratio.livejournal.com]

ok, now I really need to disagree with you. First of all, it wasn't an opinion column, it was part of Column 8, which I didn't menton before because not all my livejournal readers are Australian, and I didn't want to go into the details of explaining how Column 8 works. Secondly, ad hominem attacks have no bearing at all on an argument. Just because the writer is an idiot doesn't necessarily mean that they never say anything worth thinking about, even if you only think about it in terms of why they're wrong and therefore an idiot.
Thirdly.. maybe it is time someone took a look into words like "well".. actually I'm betting someone already has. But they're certainly not completely meaningless in the context of sociolinguistics. Ingroup markers and all that like you say.
So yeh, this entry was someone having a bitch in Column 8 about the preponderance of stupid grammatically incorrect catchphrases, and I thought it was interesting and worth expanding on since it's something I've thought about myself every now and then.

[(Anonymous)]

Fair enough. But column8 submissions are even stupider than opinion columns.
...
:D