Mallspeak

Like, Penn is trying to stem the tide of slang. You know?

illustration by A.J.W.

Surely you've heard the irritating "likes," "you knows" and "whatevers" that pad the speech of today's college students. This "Mallspeak," as it is commonly called, has become the norm among students, regardless of their class or educational level.

But not for long, if some educators have their way.

Professors at elite universities such as the University of Pennsylvania are dismayed by what they hear emanating from students' mouths, and they are attempting to tidy it up.

Penn recently introduced "Speaking Across The University" (SATU), a program that requires students to do more oral presentations. In other words, no more "likes," "umms," and " I means." Penn wants to send its students into the working world prepared.

"Behind intuitive speaking is intuitive thought," says Dr. Deborah Rossen-Knill, director of Penn's SATU program. "In an academic and professional context, [students] are not skilled speakers. Not only are they not skilled, they are terrified of speaking."

Universities have always offered speaking-intensive courses and extracurricular activities such as debate teams; however, SATU is interdisciplinary—all students, from biology majors to veterinary med school students, can learn to speak effectively.

Penn modeled its program after Smith College's "Speaking Across the Curriculum." Ruth Simmons, president of Smith, started the program because she was disgusted by what she heard coming out of the mouths of her students. Simmons was unavailable for comment, but she told the student newspaper Five College News in February, "There are some students, I just want to grab them by the shoulders and say, 'Do not say 'like' one more time.'"

The impetus for Penn's program came from students who "wanted more out of the classroom experience," says Rossen-Knill.

This new emphasis on speaking skills is catching on. Wesleyan, Duke, Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown offer similar speaking programs.

"Universities are responding to what they see as a deficit that they didn't see before," says Dr. William Lutz, an English professor at Rutgers University-Camden, who is currently working on a book about manners.

Rossen-Knill and Lutz agree that Mallspeak does have value—when spoken at the proper time and in the proper place.

Conversational speech "helps us get things done in the world. It enables us to establish and negotiate relationships," says Rossen-Knill.

"We're not trying to get every 'like' out of every student's mouth," she explains. When students use "likes" and "reallys" while chatting, they can identify with each other. "I don't want to take that away, but there's an appropriate time and an inappropriate time to use it."

The problem, according to Lutz, is that many students don't know the difference. "You eat differently when you are with your parents than when you are with your girlfriend's or your boyfriend's parents," he says.

So, if people learn their language in the environment in which they live, what is expected of a television-saturated culture?

"When schools talk about alternative curriculum what they don't realize is that they are the alternative curriculum. Television is the curriculum, the norm," says Lutz, paraphrasing Neil Postman, New York University's chair of the department of culture and communication. "I'd be hard-pressed to find a television program about which I could say, 'Go thou and speak likewise.'"

Though Lutz cannot pinpoint the exact year Americans' speaking skills began to deteriorate, he guesses that it was sometime in the last 30 years.

"Today everyone has to be so chatty, so conversational, when they are speaking and writing"—everyone from politicians to newspaper columnists to talk show hosts.

What's more, formal speech can be off-putting.

"In this ruthlessly democratic society, formality, manners and courtesy are seen as politically incorrect or elitist," says Lutz. But these social mores exist to "oil the flow of social interaction."

Is American English in a state of crisis? Penn sociolinguist William Labov doesn't think so. Labov, who has researched and written extensively about change and variation in American English (including African-American English), says that young people's speech has been criticized for thousands of years. "There's always been a resistance to language change."

Today's Mallspeakers' parents were once condemned for their speech, their grandparents were condemned for their speech, and so on.

"My kids make fun of me when I say 'swell' and 'what do you say?'" he muses.

Labov believes young people coin their own terms simply to speak differently than their parents, among other reasons. He says this "natural state of indignation will always exist."

"The linguistic viewpoint is that of calm. The normal viewpoint is that of hysteria."

In "Mallspeak," or any type of conversational speech, you give as little information as possible. When you leave out details, you are telling others that you share their point of view, says Labov. "When you lay everything out, as you do in formal speech, you create a distance."

Nevertheless, Labov believes formal speech has its value, too. "It enables you to speak to people who don't share your frame of reference, to connect to the wider world."