Rhetorical Advice
Historian David McCullough spoke at the
“Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation,” McCullough implored
He said he’s particularly troubled by the “relentless, wearisome use of words” such as like, awesome and actually.
“Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually,” he said.
Graduates apparently thought his speech was, like, awesome. They gave him a standing ovation.
Right on, David. Far Out! But seriously, most of the fad expressions of the baby boomers eventually died out, so there’s hope for the demise of current kidspeak. We boomers came up with a few rhetorical flourishes that were colorful or cryptic, although we peppered our speech with “like” and “you know” out of sheer laziness – perhaps as much as the current generation.
The problem seems rather the same as it was in 1960 when Lee Adams wrote the lyrics to Bye Bye Birdie:
Kids!
I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today!
Kids!
Who can understand anything they say?
