SHUT UP SO HARD - Tumblr Posts

there was a time in my life where I painstakingly trained myself out of using "likes" and "ums" for public speaking, and then when I started learning about like basic linguistics and shit I realized that fillers are completely normal and useful parts of language and now I use them even in text all the time. I feel like if anyone suggested that I should remove them from my speech at this point I would genuinely just be like "alright well you're not ready to engage with the topic I'm discussing yet."

until you stop needing communication & language to be just one specific way for you to view it as skillful, authoritative, persuasive, educated, etc. then you aren't prepared to engage in deeper conversations about language. if you can't handle "likes" and "y'know?"s then you certainly won't be able to handle the ways in which multilingual speakers can use one language's grammar while speaking in another, you won't be able to handle AAC, you won't be able to handle discussions with people with verbal tics or stutters... like you're not going to be able to engage with a lot of language and therefore your understanding of language is not going to be enough, currently, to really get into studying the ways in which power interacts with language or analyzing creative writing on a granular level of phrasing, word choice, punctuation, spacing