Alex D'Arcy's "like" research quoted in Time

Time magazine turned to Linguistics Professor Alexandra D'Arcy for expert comment on the use of the word "like" in everyday conversations. 

"Despite the word’s detractors, like is in fact extremely useful and versatile. Alexandra D’Arcy, Canadian linguist at the University of Victoria, has dedicated much of her research to identifying and understanding the many functions of like. D’Arcy ebulliently describes her work for the university’s YouTube channel: “Like is a little word that we really, really don’t like at all — and we want to blame young girls, who we think are destroying the language,” she explains. But the truth is that like has been a part of English for more than 200 years. “We can find speakers today in their 70s, 80s and 90s around little villages in the United Kingdom, for example,” D’Arcy says with a smile, “who use like in many of the same ways that young girls today are using it.”

Read the full article, "Why Saying 'Like' a Lot is Like, Actually a Good Thing," in Time.