October 15, 2008
Dear Mr. Safire,
They're sort of the new black. Actually, they're kind of the new “like.”
I don’t really want to get my James Kilpatrick on, but recently, “sort of” and “kind of” have become so ubiquitous that I’ve started to notice them everywhere. I first picked up on the speech of my teaching colleagues, who, at meetings, talk about the need to “sort of evaluate students” and one in particular who wants to “sort of meet with me every other week or so.”
“Sort of” and “kind of” have become the adult-sanctioned equivalents of their younger, less respected cousin “like.” I’m sure they have been around for awhile longer than I have been aware of, but in the last year or so, they have multiplied to the point of creeping into the language of some of our most esteemed, or at least visible, citizens. Journalists, media representatives and public figures have embraced it: For just one, Caroline Kennedy, at the Democratic Convention, talked about Obama’s opportunity to “kind of transform his leadership.”
So what? While adults bemoan the continuing domination of “like” over our teenage masses, verbal pauses such as “you know” have long been acceptable in adults, at least in moderation. Like an extra breath, “you know” and its ilk allow us to collect our neural resources for the next utterance, while our brains locate just the right words.
But “sort of” and “kind of” are different from “you know.” “Sort of” and “kind of” are diminishing phrases that qualify their anteceding verbs with a sense of ambiguity. Adjectives, on the one hand, sometimes merit only a vague accuracy, as in, “He’s sort of tall,” because “tall” can be a subjective claim. But doing verbs? Not unlike being pregnant, you either are or aren’t: “So, I was sort of walking down the street.”
These “sort ofs” take the assertion out of the message, softening it, in some cases, to the point of flaccidity. Adding “I feel,” especially as a replacement for “I think,” to a statement does similar things, and has been cited as a weakening phrase that more women than men employ. As a general cultural rule, women worry about constant approval, and thus the forcefulness in their expressions that may not be taken well by their receivers. So they add backpedaling flourishes and say, “I feel we should take drastic action,” rather than the unapologetic and more confident “We should take drastic action.”
What’s the harm? we may think, but can we imagine a general declaring, “I feel we must invade immediately”? And do we trust him if he wants to go in and “sort of deploy some troops”?
We are each our own representatives, so it is technically redundant to tack “I feel” and even “in my opinion” to our declarations. Unless we are directly speaking for someone else who cannot do it themselves, of course we are voicing our own opinions and what we ourselves feel (think). I am guilty of it myself. But when I think about it objectively, it’s almost as bad an offense as my students so reliably writing in their papers, “In this essay I am going to tell you what I think about _______.” I have explained to them many times that they don’t need to explicitly announce this. Of course you are going to tell me what you think in your paper. At least that’s what I hope.
My teaching partner and I like to playfully call our students out when they start telling the class about how they “like, went to the movies last weekend, and like, saw the guy that Tiffini, like, totally has a crush on.” “Did you, like, go to the movies,” we ask, “or did you go to the movies?” Now I’m wanting to turn similar questions on adults, such as my graduate education professor, who informs our class that later on “we’ll kind of report out and have a discussion” and that on the reading test we are preparing for we “kind of have to read [each] question very carefully.”
But that would be rude, or at least James Kilpatrick-ish. And I sort of don’t want to be like that. Plus, I am not immune. I have caught myself saying such things to my students as, “This is where Elie Weisel sort of begins to question his faith,” then wincing afterwards.
Julianne Moore, in a recent NPR interview about her new film “Blindness,” explains the emotion in a scene where she realizes she has forgotten to set her watch. The real tragedy, she says, is not necessarily in the events of the scary dystopia that the film presents, but the more relatable sense of not having control in life at all. “It kind of moves us,” she summarizes, and thus takes the oomph out of her own example.
It’s easy to proffer such teacherly advice as “Say what you mean, and mean what you say,” but perhaps it’s difficult to know what to say in these times. When around us, the most powerful financial players are crashing and burning, more soldiers continue to die for unclear visions of democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere, and the ethical stance of our leaders is about as hazy as permit legalities on a family moose hunting trip, ambivalence and non-commitment are natural reactions. These days, every action seems to have an equal and opposite negative reaction. So we turn to cautious tip-toeing, even down to a linguistic level, as the safest option for now. Even the divisive presidential race can’t guarantee unequivocal sentiments, as illustrated by a female voter in Pennsylvania who recently opined to NPR’s David Green, “You kind of pick the person that you kind of have a feel for, and I kind of have a feeling for McCain.”
This kind of disturbs me. But I’m curious about the evolution of this phenomenon and am going to kind of wait and see where all of this kind of leads.
What do you think? I’m kind of wanting to hear your thoughts.
Sincerely,
SC Carleton
R.I.P. William Safire
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