I am returning from a great academic conference, right?
Along the way, you know, I fell into a poor linguistic habit, right, that my
Grandma Schultz called us out on, you know?
I found myself repeating these verbal patterns, right?
So,
you know, I got to thinking about this, right?
I think that people (myself included, right?) seek tentative agreement, right, with
some of the preliminary points of their observations or arguments, right, to
string along the listener, you know. It’s almost like waiver, right? If the
other person hasn’t said I’m wrong so far, right, I must be right, right?
When I used “you know” in conversing with my Grandma, right,
she’d sharply interrupt me, you know, and exclaim, “No, I don’t know. Are you
asking if I know or are you misusing ‘you know’?”
It’s not my place to clean up this language in the academy;
but if you catch me, right, using these conversation-stuffers, you know, please
play the role of my departed Grandma Schultz, right, and STOP ME! I will thank
you. So will my Grandma.
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