{"id":51900,"date":"2021-08-30T09:00:34","date_gmt":"2021-08-30T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=51900"},"modified":"2021-08-30T09:00:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T14:00:34","slug":"im-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=51900","title":{"rendered":"I'm (like)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I had a ride with a young man (age 23) from East Liverpool, Ohio to Irwin, Pennsylvania, a distance of about 70 miles, so we had the opportunity for a good talk.\u00a0 He is a tow truck operator by trade, but was also acting as a taxi driver to earn some extra income.<\/p>\r\n

We had a nice, free-flowing conversation covering all sorts of interesting topics:\u00a0 his work as a tow truck driver, the ceramics industry in that Tri-State (Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia) corner of the world, his 12-year-old niece winning the first demolition derby of her life and getting a 6-foot-high trophy plus a prize of $1,200 at the Hookstown County Fair, and much else besides.<\/p>\r\n

Fairly early in our conversation, I noticed an unusual feature of the young man's speech, the prevalence of the word \"I'm\" at the beginning of sentences.<\/p>\r\n

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At first, I didn't know what to make of this prefatory \"I'm\", but after awhile I was able to analyze its various functions.\u00a0 He used it to mean \"I think\", \"My opinion \/ impression is\", \"It seems that\", \"I'm would guess\", and so forth.\u00a0 For example, if I asked, \"How far is it to the airport?\", he might reply \"I'm… about thirty miles\".<\/p>\r\n

A less frequent variant of \"I'm\" was \"I'm a \/ uh…\", with the \"a \/ uh\" barely uttered, but still there.<\/p>\r\n

I don't know if this usage is typical of all East Liverpudlians, be they young or old, but it grew on me, and I found it to be quite charming.\u00a0 I will be back in East Liverpool half a month from now, and I'll make a more extensive survey of the speech patterns regarding \"I'm\" at that time.<\/p>\r\n

When I had a chance to analyze the overall usage of this young man's distinctive expression, I got the impression that it had developed as a mechanism for avoiding \"I'm like\", which used to so ubiquitous in the speech of young people.\u00a0 It was clear that the young man was making an effort to be well-spoken, so maybe someone along the way had told him that it's not a good idea to pepper you speech with \"I'm like\".<\/p>\r\n

Whether you consider \"I'm like\" a filler, pause word, discursive marker, or whatever, \"I'm (uh)… there's some overlap between the young tow truck driver's 'I'm (uh)' and the Valley Girl (or whoever) '(I'm) like.\"<\/p>\r\n

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Selected readings<\/b><\/p>\r\n