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Profile: Muffy Siegel ’76G Like, get real

– Charles Creekmore ’95

Muffy Siegel ’76G: Studying a coolness badge. "ENGLAND AND THE U.S.," SO the witticism goes, “are two great nations separated by a common language.” Now let’s translate this same quip into the common language of many young Americans: “England and the U.S. are, like, two great nations separated by, like, a common language.” The operative word here is “like.” It’s also the operative word in the unlikely research conducted by Temple University Linguistics Professor Muffy Siegel. Siegel’s work not only helps clarify the common language that separates the two great cultures of America – meaning us old fogies on one side, and the under-25 crowd on the other but also spotlights the not-so-secret code word of the “Like Generation.” As a connoisseur of semantics, Siegel was always amused by the way “like” got bandied about in the conversation of her two, like-minded, teenage daughters. They didn’t use the word very often with Mom. But as soon as any of their friends arrived on the scene, it was like, “I wouldn’t want, like, a tattoo or anything.” Siegel’s professional interest was really piqued one day four years ago, when she asked her younger daughter if she had any books to return to the library. “Yeah, they’re in my room,” came the reply. When Siegel’s search of this demilitarized zone came up with zippo, she called her daughter, who marched directly to her bed and pulled out a cache of literature from underneath. “Yeah,” said her daughter, “there’s, like, every book under the bed!” The complexity of this odd and wonderful remark hooked Siegel for good. “It’s a funny sentence in and of itself,” says Siegel, “but you wouldn’t notice the implications unless you knew what linguists do, that people would never say that sentence without the ‘like.’” To determine why, Siegel began envisioning a formal study of the magic word. Her research eventually produced a research project described in last November’s Journal of Semantics. Siegel’s work showed that colloquial uses of “like” go far beyond those of so-called fillers, such as “ah,” “um,” or “well,” which basically pave over pregnant pauses in any speaker’s spiel. “‘Like’” has no part of speech,” explains Siegel, “nor does it have any grammatical purpose in a sentence. Yet it has developed meaning and purpose.” Namely, “like” is a jack-of-all-trades that comes on like gang-busters and does many odd jobs. It serves: as a red flag to imply uncertainties in a conversation; as a “discourse participle” to spice up gab; as a stand-in for “said”; as a “coolness badge”; or even as a trendy way to exaggerate. Siegel found the best explanation of “like” when she returned to her original source, her younger daughter. “Like,” she explained, “indicates that what I’m about to say is the best way I can come up with to word what I want to say, but I’m not sure it’s exactly right.” In this context, “like” has come a long way from the 1950’s, when beatniks commandeered it for their counterculture. To quote TV’s likable beat parody, Maynard G. Krebs, “Like, wow, good buddy!” The coolness quotient of Siegel’s study wasn’t lost on the media. Her research was covered by PBS, the Associated Press, CNN, CBS, and (natch) Cosmo, among others. As Siegel summarizes the utility of the word: “‘Like’ is a very useful tool when searching for complex, unplanned answers.” For a demonstration of this idea, eavesdrop on your kids. You’re likely to overhear something of this kind: “She isn’t, like, really crazy or anything, but she did, like, paint her hair a really fake-looking, like, purple color.” “Like, get out of here!”

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