As time passes by, it can seem as if people are ever more emphatic in how they communicate. What was once a single exclamation point now has to be (at least) two. Instead of just saying, “It was insane,” someone will say, “It was actually insane,” or, to the dismay of many, “It was literally insane.”
Why can’t we just tamp it down and relax? The reason is that human conversation is not only about making statements, but about making statements worth your interlocutor’s attention. Our purpose is less to simply say, “This,” than it is to say, “Here, think about this.”
But as with anything designed to make a noise, so to speak, the effect wears off after time, like an old joke or a song you get tired of. This means that language is always drawing new things into the churn to keep us sounding urgent, committed. The linguist Martin Haspelmath calls this “extravagance,” where we operate according to the maxim “Talk in such a way that you will be noticed.”
The exclamation points are a classic example. Decades ago I was briefly under the impression that European academics were quite fond of me, as they would use an exclamation point after my name in emails. After a while I realized that, for them, that exclamation point was a sunny kind of politeness, a way of adding a dash of enthusiasm to a hello. Since then, something similar has happened to the exclamation point in America. A simple period now seems flat or even annoyed, while an exclamation point conveys a smiling salute, a signal that all is okay between you and the other person. (“Be there soon!”) This means that to convey actual exclamation, we now need two markers. (“Good God!!”) And I would not be surprised if in another 20 years people are using three.
This extravagance is behind much of what can sound like jittery filler. “Yeah, no” is a great example. First person: “So moving that far out wasn’t so bad after all, right?” Second person: “Yeah, no. We got a great house cheap and finally some peace and quiet.” The “no” does not contradict the “yeah” but complements it. If that exchange had taken place a couple of generations ago, the second person would have just started with “yeah” in agreement. The added “no” agrees with the first “yeah” even more extravagantly by denying the idea many might have, that moving far out would be a bad thing. “Yeah, no” is a stronger version of “yeah.”
We get extravagant even in our answers. “I know, right?” is what happened when “I know” alone lost its mojo. Fans of the old Britcom “Fawlty Towers” will recall the episode where Sybil is on the telephone and drives Basil crazy by repeating “I know!” as she listens to her friend. Today a Sybil in that situation may well repeat “I know, right?” The “right” gives “I know” some new spark. It sounds more connected, showing that you’re really listening. This is also what is behind the uptick in people saying “100 percent!” as agreement.
In this vein, English is always and forever seeking new ways of saying “truly” in an emphatic, collar-clutching manner. In the 1300s “very” was the one to beat, but over time it lost its semantic punch. The grammarian Bryan Garner now judges that “in almost every context in which it appears, its omission would result in at most a negligible loss.” “Really” was an attempt in the 1500s to create a new “truly” with the word “real.” Time passed, and now the word is pronounced “rilly,” and the connection to “real” comes out only in writing. Its force is also kaput. “Oh, that was really nice” serves almost as mere decoration. And here we have why someone today might say, “It was actually insane.”
Or, yes, “literally insane,” or “I was literally dying of thirst so we stopped at a 7-Eleven.” Because in this usage of “literally,” a scourge in the eyes of many, we do not actually mean that we were about to perish from clinical dehydration. But words often have contradictory meanings with no one batting an eye. A chair is stuck fast to the floor, but a rabbit runs fast. You seed the ground and seed a watermelon — no one thinks you insert seeds into your slice. The figurative use of “literally” is never confusing. It’s just one more way of having a “truly” that pops. “Literally” is like that kid that everybody started picking on for no real reason in fifth grade — why him?
The churn is eternal. “Irregardless” is our attempt to give “regardless” a shot in the arm. “Bye-bye” adds some substance to what had become a lone “Bye,” worn down over the centuries from “God be with you” to “Goodbye” to just “Bye.”
If you know where to look, English is full of fossils of the extravagance of yesteryear. “Yes” started as “Yea.” The “s” at the end is a worn-down remnant of what once meant “it is” — “Yes, it is!” was an “I know, right?” for the Dark Ages. And “yes” has been decorated endlessly since. First “yessir,” and then the almost desperate-seeming “yessiree,” and finally the goofy mystery of “Yessireebob!” Anything to keep “yes” popping.
Not long ago I heard someone praising my tween daughter’s new hair color as “tuff.” OK, that one is weird to me — but in the end, it’s a more extravagant way of saying “cool.” “Tuff” has a bit of street in it and is also creative in a diagonal sort of way — aesthetic appeal as “tough.” “Cool,” after all, is a tad elderly now to get the job done.
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