Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This is a slam poem by Melissa Lozada-Oliva responding to the poem "Like, you know" by Taylor Mali, which criticized "uptalk" and similar ways of speaking as non-declarative/not strong/not saying what you mean, etc, and thus not poetically effective. Both poems were part of the same competition, and Melissa won the competition because of this poem. Thought it was an interesting poetic window into our discussions on claims about "young people's language" and that "the internet is ruining language" -- and of course, gender and race both play into the contestation between the two poets.