[ExI] And Meta You Know (was: You know what?)

[hkhenson]

At 11:31 PM 1/22/2008, John K Clark wrote:
>"Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
>
> > Has anyone besides me noticed a big increase over the
> > last several years > of the phrase "you know what?"
>
>For years, you know, one of my pet peeves has been, you know, people
>who say "you know" every 7 or 8 seconds. And this isn't, you know,
>limited to the, you know, uneducated, I've heard, you know, journalists
>and PhDs, you know, do it. I've fantasized about, you know, making a
>computerized "you know" detector that would blast an air horn whenever
>somebody, you know, said it. Maybe that would, you know, break them
>of the, you know, habit.

This isn't a new problem.  I remember this phrase infecting me and my 
friends back in the early 70s.  Most of us just hated it.  We 
instituted a program to get it out of our speech.  It doesn't take an 
air horn, saying "ding" when your friends stuck it in their speech 
was more than enough.

I remember an actor friend who thought he had excellent control over 
what he said and yet was entirely unaware of this two word phrase 
stuffing his speech.  When this was pointed out to him he was very 
freaked out and worked hard to get it out.

Now Meta mode.  Why do these things infest speech?  I am fairly sure 
I know.  It helps understand the model if you know how Bisync 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_Synchronous_Communications works.

"Fillers" such as these act like sync bytes, i.e., they inhibit turn 
around and keep the communication line open in one direction until 
more speech is generated.

The problem is that generating filler "sync bytes" eats into the 
capacity to generate more speech, often resulting in a serious 
apparent drop in a person's ability to communicate.  As they say in 
speech classes, slow down, and you communicate more.

Speech patterns (and sanity itself) are maintained by group feedback 
effects in deeply social animals like us.  Don't hesitate to ask 
friends to ding you for sticking fillers into your speech.  They will 
often respond "Do I do that?" and ask you to ding them too.

Keith