Maybe I’m just a linguistic sponge, but I find myself falling into the discourse of those around me. A northeastern boy, I’ve felt that if I moved to say, the south, that I’d pick up not only the vernacular but the accent within weeks.

This brings me to adverbs.

You know these words, which serve as modifiers or intensifiers. They often end in –ly. They are words like really and very or words answering questions like How? In what way? To what extent? Your knowledge may consist of information from the “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here” Schoolhouse Rock! song.

That song shows a store dealing in adverbs. But while everything else in our culture — except maybe fast food — has become more expensive, adverbs are cheaper than ever. The “Lolly” song — and with its catchy tune, how could it be wrong? — comforts us that “anything that can be described can be described some more,” so pile those adverbs on.

Adverbs do have their place, but these words, particularly ones that end in –ly or words like really and very, can spread like kudzu throughout your communications. By making everything “really great” or “very important,” we make nothing great or important. In extreme cases (see below), adverbs might make you seem like a pompous, condescending jerk.

Good communicators avoid overusing adverbs (a search of [avoid adverbs] results in hundreds of anti-adverb sites). I heard a story, probably apocryphal, about a budding writer who sent a manuscript to a famous author. All the famous person did was blacken out the adverbs with a marker and send the manuscript back: There’s your writing lesson.

What does this have to do with my linguistic sponginess? I realized adverbs are popping up everywhere in my language, in our adult discourse, and I’m blaming the kids. Like mosquitoes are vectors of West Nile virus, kids are vectors for adverbs. Spend enough time with the sub-ten-year-old set, and you will find yourself modifying everything.

Not that these little words don’t fit, well, perfectly sometimes, and not that kids have a monopoly on adverb use. (One dear friend of mine uses the word “frankly” as a warning that he is about to tell you a lie.) But the epidemiological examination of adverbs reveals they emanate from children, perhaps stemming from a child-like desire to exaggerate or just a linguistic reflection of the struggle to express intensity for first-time life experiences, now matter how minor: “This new cereal is completely awesome!”

There was a time when the kids had us totallying everything: “Totally this” or “Totally that.” They have given  us the bauble very: “She is very honest.” “This is very valuable.” “He is very, very tired.” Now we are awash in really, not just as a worthless modifier like very but often as a one-word question indicating disgust-laden disbelief. You know that cell phone ad campaign? “Really?” is cemented into our culture as a way of saying, “Are you that stupid?”

Because I spend time with these little spouters of adverbs, I knew I was infected, but I thought I was aware of the extent. Then I was shocked to discover a new vocabularic virus had embedded itself in my discourse. When I looked, it was everywhere.

The word? Actually.

I realized my little son has filled my house with a cloud of actually. Worse, what he is saying through this onslaught of actually is “as a matter of fact, dear father, this is the reality, not the one you are proposing.” As I noted that these actuallys left the house with me, I began observing his subversive linguistic behabior. When I asked him something, I learned that 94% of his responses begin with actually. (Further, of that 94%, 81% are accompanied by his raising an index finger, as if to emphasize his superior view.)  We have conversations like the following:

“Stay out of that freezer! You know you can’t have dessert until you finish your dinner.” “Actually, Mommy said I did finish eating.”

“I want those Legos picked up.” “Actually, [some other guilty party, normally a sibling] left them there.”

“Why are you still wandering around the house? We put you to bed an hour ago.” “Actually, I go to bed at 1:00 a.m. now that I’ve turned seven.”

Method of transmission? Brute repetition. I half-heartedly engaged in the task of disciplining myself to eliminate actually until a colleague of mine called me out. We were brainstorming about a project, and I responded to one of her comments by saying, “Actually, that’s a good idea.” She laughed at my use of actually, and I then understood how I sounded. In “Actually, that’s a good idea,” actually serves as a condescending head pat. I might as well have said, “While I didn’t expect the nonsense you were spouting to be a good idea, I now find myself surprised to find that it is.”

So I accelerated my mission of linguistic cleansing. I have asked friends, colleagues, family, and students to point out my adverbial excesses. But the vectors, while they pretend to assist, are crafty. Just the other day, that innocent little diseaser of diction “helped” me, catching a stray actually I had uttered by saying, “Actually, Daddy, you just used the word ‘actually’ again.”

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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Tags: language & grammar, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 8 Comments »