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An Overabundance of Adverbs.

As a member of the esteemed PR community, I receive multiple emails a day compiling requests from journalists around the world.

Last week, there was this:

I'm working on a story about the word 'actually.' A warning: Most of my observations are from a couple of weeks of watching TV, and listening to conversations on the street and in blogs, so I know I may be way off base here, but it seems, among young people, the word has really become a popular adverb, perhaps, as popular as the discourse marker it's commonly used as. It's nothing new, I presume. But a shift that maybe has occurred in the past ten years. Any linguists out there with a particular interest in how these words become popular -- and especially why a word like 'actually' would become popular with one generation and not another.

Well, my observation would point to two other adverbs.

1. Honestly. Honestly, I cannot count the number of times I hear this in one day. Honestly, just about everyone I know uses this word. Honestly, are they lying to me the rest of the time?

2. Apparently. Apparently, they are lying to me the rest of the time.

posted by venus de kilo @ 10:42 PM