Love Island is a lesson in how language, like, evolves | David Shariatmadari

Love Island is not for everyone. You might not appreciate the dating show’s rowdiness; its relentlessness (nearly 50 episodes this season!); its raunch. But even if you’re able to tolerate all that, you might draw a line at the language. I’m not talking about swearing, because there’s something even worse, apparently: Love Islanders’ liberality with their discourse particles.

This is not an innuendo. You can’t catch discourse particles. No, they are little words we use to signpost and structure our speech. Sometimes they are just used to maintain fluency, or to generate rapport. In short, they oil the wheels of communication. One of the big players is “like”. According to this week, it was used 76 times in under five minutes during one episode of the ITV reality show. The paper provided an example from Islander Amy: “Molly was like ‘oh he’s my type’ and I’m like ‘no sorry you’ve already got two’. It’s like three out of seven boys.” (Not all of these likes are discourse particles, but more of that later.)