Faculty members and librarians at the University of Windsor, in Ontario, voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to accept a new three-year contract. Classes will resume on Monday, according to a university statement. The university canceled classes for 16,000 students after more than 1,000 professors and librarians went on strike on September 17. The semester will be lengthened and the university has canceled the midterm break so coursework can be completed.
Over the three years of the new contract, professors and librarians will get a 9-percent increase, according to The Windsor Star, a local newspaper. Part-time lecturers will get a 20-percent raise over that period. —Karen Birchard
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14 Responses to Classes to Resume After 17-Day Strike at Canada’s U. of Windsor
DJ Weatherford - September 27, 2011 at 9:14 pm
You could be, like, way too logical here…
Approaching retirement, I’m a known pushover, but I just find I’d rather find out why the student came to talk to me before I shut them up; I can work on improving the formality of their language once I’ve convinced them that, like others in my department, I haven’t yet been known to bite a student.
lizgibbons - September 28, 2011 at 7:22 am
I wonder whether “like” and “y’know” have similar functions or fill similar needs. “Um” or “uh” are often used to give the speaker a moment to think, or to keep the floor when in a conversation, but “like” and “y’know” seem to occur in conversation in a different way. And often “like” is used instead of “said”, as in, “I’m like, ‘well just go without me’ and she’s like, ‘I still need a ride’”. Sometimes it provides a pause for emphasis, as in, “He didn’t get there until, like, midnight”.
jffoster - September 28, 2011 at 8:10 am
There have been several articles discussing the various uses in Modern American English of _like_, in _American Speech: the Journal of the American Dialect Society_ among other places. You’ve recognized a couple of them. The use of desubordinator _like_ is a little more complex, introducing a dramatized approximate reenactment of a conversation. (Remember American teens tend to be “high envolvement” and dramatize a lot of things that real adults might report more matter-of-fact-like. (And there’s a use of _like_ that has been with us since before King Alfred the Great and in unstressed form gave us adverbial suffix {-ly}.
The “placeholder” use of _like_ tends to be an introducer of a predicate, a direct object, or a prepositional phrase– somewhat like (i.e. ‘similar to’) the Welsh _yn_ which introduces a predicate noun or adjective or a verbal noun, as in
Dwy ‘ i ‘ n hoffi coffi.
am I predicate particle liking coffee
‘ I like coffee.’, more literallty, “I’m a liking coffee.”
dank48 - September 28, 2011 at 8:25 am
I don’t like ‘like’ even though it’s endemic to my cohort and I use it myself. It seems to me that it’s a matter of how heavily the speaker relies on a single crutch. What I find especially irritating is ‘to be’ + ‘like’ = ‘to say’: “I’m, like, ‘Yes, it is,’ and she’s, like, ‘Well, yeah, it is.’” Arggh. When someone can’t get a sentence out without a ‘like,’ it’s distracting. It’s like ‘you know,’ which I heard someone say over thirty times in five minutes the other day. (Yes, I was counting; it beat listening to what he was saying.)
But so what? I don’t like being addressed by restaurant personnel as ‘you guys,’ but if I want a seat and something to eat, I’d better, like, get used to it. I don’t like omission of the vocative comma, either, but I might as well complain about ‘she had thrived there’ and other weak forms replacing strong past tense and participle. I heard ‘smited’ yesterday, yet the sun came up this morning.
lexalexander - September 28, 2011 at 8:26 am
Among my own cohort (50+), I am increasingly hearing “like” used ironically. On my personal blog, I use it ironically, typically to indicate that my subject is ignoring something he/she shouldn’t in my opinion, e.g., “Abstract talk about worker safety never seems to take into account, like, dead people.”
pacifica888 - September 28, 2011 at 8:44 am
1970, Latin class. Me, a kid from public high school in a first-year seminar at an elite eastern Ivy League school. Mr. Luce is asking the class of fifteen if they can figure out a particular clause. None of the dimwit preppies sitting around me have it figured it out, so I raise my hand.
“Is that, like, and ablative absolute?” I offer tentatively.
“No, Mr. —, that is not LIKE an ablative absolute. That IS an ablative absolute,” he responds
Snickers all around.
Could he have possibly been, like, a more oafish instructor? I gave the right answer in his worn-out version of call-and-response discourse that somehow still passes for teaching in some quarters, and he can find nothing better to do than embarrass me. Years later, when I discovered the subfield of socio-linguistics known as pragmatics and learned how variously we deploy “like” in everyday discourse (see, e.g. http://mkuha.iweb.bsu.edu/like.html)–not because we are incapable of being precise but rather because we are reaching for a possibility–I was able to revise my understanding of that earlier scene: a lesson in bad pedagogy.
dpmccain - September 28, 2011 at 2:08 pm
I am unsure as to whether the instructor should be referred to as “oafish”. Teaching was different in the 60′s and 70′s. If you watch Dead Poet’s Society or The Emperor’s Club, the behavior of the instructors is counter to what we would expect, but nevertheless effective.
If an instructor (Kevin Kline’s character) had spoken to a student in PS whatever, he would have been terminated immediately (if non-tenured) for hurting the student’s self esteem. There may have been allegations of racisim or gender bias.
In any event, the use of words that do not contribute to an explanation become irritating to instructors who are inundated with them in class. ” It is unimportant how you speak outside of class, but in my class, please remove the use of double negatives from your sentences”.
Yes, I recall a student, who had committed some disruptive behavior, and asked to cease, responded with. “I didn’t do nothing”. I responded, “By your statement, you did do something”
Snarky ( although aged, I do like the word snarky), perhaps, but people cannot continue to marginalize language (and its use) and then become upset when people are bored with their patter.
Did you feel as if you didn’t belong in the school? We have all been in that situation, but I cannot imagine that being chastised by an archaeic instructor scarred you for life. Was it important for us to know that the school was ”elite, ivy league, and in the east”? Watch Scent of a Woman to discover how Al Pacino’s character deals with the nasty full of themselves “preppies” with whom you went to school. There are mean spirits everywhere The stories I could share about the public school in my home town….
As an aside (and not directed at pacifica888)I am a bit confused with the graphic used on this blog. Wouldn’t the thumbs up mean that you like (the positive hurrah) something, while the like used in speaking would be used as a simile? Or is it simply a filler, as someone argued, like “um”? I was tempted to replace my use of the word “like” in my previous sentence with “as in the use of”…but heck, it’s time for breakfast.
doctorbill - September 28, 2011 at 6:29 pm
Things have a way of staying in the culture, being recycled, and repurposed. This applies to language. The use of “like” as an interjection between verb and predicate and more commonly as a introductory term prior to a full statement is an artifact of the Beat Generation and its imitators in the 1950s and ’60s. A little research will attest to its use in the TV series “Dobie Gillis” and the celebrated novel “A Clockwork Orange.” Additionally, prior to devoting himself to classical music, pianist and conductor Andre Previn was a successful jazz pianist. His biggist hit was a 1960 composition entitled “Like Young.”
The term possibly stayed around waiting for the goateed, skinny jeaned, stingybrim hatted hipsters to return it (or its holographic replica) to its original setting (or a reasonable facsimile thereof).
electronicmuse - September 28, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Recognize the torrent of “like” in students’ speech for what it is: not nervousness, but only another means used to identify with “the group.”
This generation has been taught to not only dress and think like each other-but to speak “like” each other . . .
Not nervous, but frightened. So fearful that they won’t be part of the crowd . . . (it’s easier to sell to any group who are monolithic in their outlook).
jamesraywatkins - October 3, 2011 at 8:55 am
Loundon Wainwright III wrote the best critique of the over use of “like” several years ago in a song called “Cobwebs.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNryxZhe7kA). He was correct then and nothing has changed.
droslovinia - October 3, 2011 at 8:59 am
Good article, and I’ll admit to being a stone-caster. I’ve been known to, while listening to my graduate students speak in public, hold up numbers indicating the number of excess verbal articles (“like,” “uh,” “um,” and others) that they use. It feels incredibly arrogant and overbearing at the time, but students often seek me out to get their “um count,” and tell me later that they appreciate the fact that someone was helping them watch for it.
caruso81 - October 3, 2011 at 9:17 am
Part of effective communication and a well-formed argument involves the art of expression. In other words, form reinforces content, an idea familiar to all of us here who interact with “an audience” in the classroom (our students). To suggest educators accept this annoying “tic” as a new element of communication that we are simply too out-of-touch to appreciate is insulting to those who, through writing or teaching or speaking or performing strive for some small measure of effective, and sometimes even aesthetically pleasing communication.
Now, let’s talk about “dude.”
gsudduth - October 3, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Maybe it’s time for like breakfast, man.
jl25and3 - October 4, 2011 at 1:48 pm
“The use of desubordinator _like_ is a little more complex, introducing a dramatized approximate reenactment of a conversation.”
I think this is a correct and important distinction, separating one
specific use of “like” from being mere filler. Look at some of the
examples given in the post and comments:
“So my TA was like, ‘I have a doctor’s appointment,’ and I said she
could have let me know, but she was like, ‘I’m sure I told you like last
week.’”
“I’m like, ‘well just go without me’ and she’s like, ‘I still need a ride’”.
In those cases and many like them, “like” is not a simple substitution for
“said.” What follows is not a direct quote but an approximation, and
the intent is to describe attitude as much as (or more than) the actual
words that are said. In that role, I think “like” serves quite
effectively.
As I once heard a 13-year-old girl say: “And she’s like all this-and-that, and I’m like, ”Whatever.’”