In a side note in Safire's On Language today (devoted to some spare phrases from the now-ended political campaign) there is the following:
We saw it during the late political campaign when Sarah Palin was asked by Sean Hannity
of Fox News for the reaction of her daughters to her coming campaign:
the governor said she “asked the girls what they thought, and they’re
like: ‘Absolutely. Let’s do this, Mom!’ ” (The use of “they’re like”
rather than “they said” reflects a current dismissal of the dull verb said; I used a variation above as “your reply goes” rather than is to demonstrate with-it-ness.)
Safire's, like, totally wrong!
Used as above, "like" does not replace "said". More accurately it replaces "told me something like this" in abbreviated form as "like".
Is there some sort of prize co-funded by Webster's and Massengil that I should anticipate in the mail?
