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I Mean, What Does It Mean?

Why did “I know, right?” suddenly become such a popular phrase?

When I first heard I K R, as it’s known textingually I was literally brought up short. I had no idea what was being communicated. I had said, nice weather, good day for a bike ride, and my companion said, “I know, right?”

At first I thought she was admonishing me for saying something so completely obvious -- “I know.” She already knew it was nice weather before I told her, so that seemed fair enough. Of course it was nice weather, she knew it.

But then the “right?” I was being included again, being asked to confirm something for her. So she wasn’t sure. It seemed as though she was telling me “I agree with you it’s a great day for a bike ride,” but then she was asking, “Is it a great day for a bike ride?”

To me the most interesting part of the phenomenon is not how opaque and meaningless the phrase is. English language is full of bits of sound that serve zero purpose. No; what was more amazing was how no one can agree on what the heck it’s doing there.

A convivial beer with three other English teachers recently nearly came to blows over an argument of what exactly IKR did to the rest of a conversation. Was it just a pause, a place holder -- or did it mean something and, if so, what?

I was similarly confused when the benign phrase “no problem” -- which always seemed like another way to say “happy to help,” morphed into the passive aggressive “not a problem” which lets the listener know in fact there is a problem, but I’ll go ahead and put the extra napkins in a the bag anyway.

But this is just how language evolves. That’s why your paperback copy of Beowulf may as well be written in a foreign tongue.

I’m Dan Libman, and that’s my perspective. Right?

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