I'm like, whoa, this is English?

Yesterday, I posted an item about the decline and fall of the spoken word. "Vagueness," writes critic Clark Whelton, is a "linguistic virus" that is infecting the American spoken language. As a result, he thinks too many of us are too often reverting back to a kind of child-speak best exemplified by serial grammar-abusers like Snooki Polizzi: "I was like, my bronzer’s leaking off my face, and stuff." We hear verbal constructs like this all the time. I confess to using them myself when making a sardonic point. Still, I think the King's English will survive this latest assault to its linguistic castle keep. Then again, I can't help but marvel at the inroads to it, even in the vocalizations of very, very smart artists like Gore Verbinski, director of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie franchise. During an otherwise erudite interview with the New York Times about his next film project, Verbinski injected this gem: "And I was like, whoa, hey, this is an identity-quest movie." Sigh. Let's hope the castle's ramparts are sturdy.