I've been wondering about the like-construction too.  I have noticed a
tendency among my students to incorporate direct quotations into their own
speech and writing rather than rephrasing thoughts to fit seamlessly into
the grammatical structure of a new sentence.  The like-construction
facilitates this tactic.  One writes or says, "He was like 'Oh wow!"
rather than "He was very impressed."  Have others noticed this
undigested-chunks tendency?

The use of a direct quotation as the object of the preposition like seems
grammatically intelligible to me.  Stylistically, I think it sends the
message that the speaker or writer is not very adept at manipulating the
language.  The use of "went" to introduce an interjection -- perhaps that
is influenced by "The pig goes oink!"  Around here, however, I think
people use BE more often to introduce the like construction.  I'm also
curious what other ATEGers think about "like."


On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Janet Castilleja wrote:

> Dear Ategers
>
> How would you folks analyze these sentences?
>
> 1.  He went, like, "you're crazy!"
>
> 2.  He was all like "You're crazy!"
>
> Janet Castilleja
> Heritage College
> Toppenish WA
>
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