Now, Look…

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Good morning.

Good morning. Who’s this?

This is Jack calling from Denton, Texas.

Hi, Jack. What’s up?

Such a pleasure to speak with you both.

Oh, same here.

Yeah, what’s up?

I’ve got a question that seems a little bit timely in the political season.

When we hear people speaking, either the politicians or news people, it seems like they’re throwing out these catchphrases that are almost automatic.

And they just throw them out there and they will start their conversation with, now look, I mean.

And sometimes they even put them together and say, now look, I mean.

And it’s almost like they’re saying, you have no way of understanding what I’m saying, but try.

And I’m wondering how these become so popular and so widely used.

It’s something that seems recent.

There’s a lot of different ways into answering this question. I’ll tackle the very last word first. I don’t think it’s recent. It’s been ongoing for ever and ever. These are what are known as discourse markers. These are ways that we adjust a sentence or we bridge different thoughts or we throw in natural pauses in order to emphasize or there’s a lot of different reasons we use discourse markers.

But these two, I mean or now I mean and look or look now look, these have different roles that I can see a politician using on purpose, maybe even coached to use.

For example, when you say, I mean, it frequently is like a prelude to a restatement or a redefinition or a rephrasing where you want to make sure your audience understands you and you want to give the impression that you are speaking plainly.

So you might first say, when you all know that the right people don’t pay the right amount of taxes, I mean the rich people pay too little and the poor people pay too much.

You’re kind of leading up to your little punch.

And then now look is another one of those where you refocus people’s attention on what you’re about to say.

Maybe you’ve had a long explanation and now you want to summarize it.

You will say, now look, the way I feel about this is, and it’s also a way of suggesting you might be contrarian to what’s previously been said.

Yeah, I remember when Obama was running for president the first time, some people were.

Commenting on the fact that he began a lot of sentences with look.

And in fact, somebody wrote an article that said something like, look, Obama, stop using look.

Yeah, he does.

And your other question you asked, which is a good one, how does this happen?

Why does this become so common?

And it spreads like all language does.

It’s almost contagious.

I won’t say viral because that gives the wrong connotations these days.

But it’s the kind of thing that you pick up from people that you respect.

You pick up from people in authority.

If you’re a politician, you may pick it up from your aides or pick it up from your people who are coaching you.

Or you might pick it up from your advisors or even dominant donors or voters, people who spend a lot of time talking to you.

Well, I wonder if some of it, too, is just campaigning.

I mean, you have to say the same thing over and over and over again, and you’re almost like an automaton.

Right.

It is very automatic.

Yeah.

Thanks very much.

Yeah, sure.

Our pleasure.

Thanks for calling.

Enjoyed your show.

Thank you so much, Jack.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It is a political year.

If you want to talk to us about political language or anything else, 877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.