I'm Alan Olga and this is Clear In Vivid. Conversations about connecting and communicating.

Um and are incredibly valuable to our listeners. They do all sorts of things for one, they

help them remember what we say, they help recognize what we're going to say in terms of

words or story points faster than when we don't use an um and uh. They're incredibly good sign

posts for a listener and there is substantive research that suggests that you do a solid to your

listener when you're using um and uh. That's Valerie Friedland. She's professor of linguistics in

the English department at the University of Nevada Reno and while her research is properly academic,

she also enjoys talking to general audiences about the quirky ways in which we use language.

It was getting questions from those audiences, probably from people like me,

that later to write her wonderfully titled book, like literally dude,

arguing for the good in bad English. I can't thank you enough for coming on the show today

because I expect this to be not only fascinating but a life changing experience for me.

Well, it is so totally thrilling for me to be on here and I'm using some of my favorite language

tips and describing that. So right. So and totally. Yeah. Well, I expect this to be life changing

because my wife Arlene has notified me in subtle and unsuttle ways that I tend to be

homogeneo about changes in language. You're not alone. And you're going to tell me that I should

welcome these changes that it's good for me to go through this pain of here. Well, I'm trying

not to lecture but yes, I am in short. Just in a nutshell, why would you say it's good that these

changes are taking place sometimes in ways that sound contradictory to what's meant or that seem

to be distracting or wasting time filling in. What should I look on it with a more open mind?

Well, I mean, if you look back to the history of language, this has been how language has changed

through time. And I think when we say we don't like things or they bother us, it's just because

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