That is my current annoyance. I don't know where it started, but since a few weeks 'this' seems to be turning up in more and more places. I really can't parse it, but I think it means agreement with the previous comment, sort of like an upvote.
Best I can figure, people just saying "This" mean "I agree with your above point, and I would like to see it expressed more often. Let me lend my support to you in spreading your ideas."
I'm not really seeing the point of this article. I had already noticed that people are saying "like" a lot, and Hitchens doesn't do anything beyond making this observation. And he really can't do anything beyond that because he doesn't know anything about language, language change or syntax. (Although to be fair, these are not normally considered necessary qualifications for writing on this subject.)
Anyone who's actually interested in the grammar of "like" would be better off reading something by someone who knows what they are talking about. E.g. this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/454820
Hitchens doesn't do anything beyond making this observation
I don't think that's fair. He wove a lot of observations into the piece.
Hitchens is a man of letters, not an academic linguist. He carries on that tradition as well as anyone, and while I disagree with him about a lot of things (who, besides him, doesn't?), boy oh boy can he write.
In what sense were they "observations"? I did see a lot of assertions about people's use of language that weren't backed up by any data, but I didn't see any observations.
>Hitchens is a man of letters, not an academic linguist.
I guess my question would be whether you'd be equally happy if he wrote in the same style about (say) physics, geology or programming. Is there something special about language that makes it unnecessary for commentators to know anything about their subject?
And really, the article is about like, for goodness sake. There are literally thousands of grumpy, contentless articles of this sort written over the past couple decades.
The thing is: I submitted a bunch of interesting (to me) links this morning and this is the one to get front-page attention. I don't understand the difference. Indeed, this seemed to me to be the most superficial among them. But with my wife and I recently wondering how "like" entered our own speech patterns, it interested me.
I can't comment on the collective voting pattern on HN, but my objection to Hitchens' piece is that he buries what might have been an interesting etymology of "like" under a mountain of prescriptive humbug.
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put two hyphens between the words Fish and And, and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, and also after Chips?
That is my current annoyance. I don't know where it started, but since a few weeks 'this' seems to be turning up in more and more places. I really can't parse it, but I think it means agreement with the previous comment, sort of like an upvote.
It bugs the hell out of me.
Random example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=875816