You Know. Doppelganger. Trademarks. Funnily.

It’s time for our quarterly listener question extravaganza podcast! 

Discourse Markers

"Hello, Mignon. My name is Hal in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I'm calling to suggest a segment on the expression ‘you know.’ Seems like everybody I talk to uses ‘you know’ in every sentence, so it must be serving a grammatical function, but it's not a grammatical function I can figure out. Thank you for listening, and I hope you can discuss this issue."

Oh, Hal, you have hit upon one of my own verbal tics. When I am unscripted, like when I do radio interviews, I say “you know” a lot if I’m not actively reminding myself to slow down and not to say it.

What I love about the way you asked the questions is that you didn’t rant about how much it bothers you or how annoying it is. Instead, you’re curious! And you realize that if lots of people are saying something, there must be a reason. I mean, it must serve some purpose or people wouldn’t do it, right?

That’s the kind of thing linguists study, and they call phrases like “you know” and “I mean” “discourse markers.” 

Cambridge Dictionary says we use discourse markers “to connect, organize, and manage what we say or write or to express attitude.” For example, they say people sometimes use “you know” to mark that what follows is “old, shared or expected knowledge.” So if I’m answering a question on the fly about the difference between initialisms and acronyms, which we covered a few weeks ago, I might say something like “So, you know, some abbreviations are pronounced as words, like ‘NASA,’ and for others, we say all the letters, like ‘FBI.’” In that case, I’m using “you know” because I’m starting with a fact that I expect most people to recognize.

But the phrase “you know” doesn’t ...

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