NorthStar4Canes
Registered User
- Oct 12, 2007
- 2,782
- 792
I've noticed that at time or two as well, but had always considered it to be a hesitation sound while collecting his thoughts/searching-for-the-right-word during the sudden block most people occasionally run-up against during conversation. If he does, in fact, have a stutter he's overcome then my hat's off to him for doing the job he does.
Something to consider though; listen to the daily conversations around you or on non-scripted shows, etc. Notice the number of times you hear "like" and "um" or "ya know" uttered as hesitation-fillers. Then pick out what has become my personal pet peeve word now used 90% of the time to express agreement, and by 50% of people to unnecessarily accentuate everything from the exciting to most banal..."definitely". I (definitely) think that what used to (definitely) be amusing wordplay for a brief moment in 1988/89 has now (definitely) become (definitely) irritating. It's like a fad that never played-out. It took root so deeply in the kids speaking Rainman-ese back then that when the context of humor faded and disappeared they didn't even notice and just kept blabbing it forever out of habit. What we hear now are verbal boogers picked from a nose but the nose-picking is happening today in real life without the comic context of the grubby kid doing it as a vehicle for laughs in the Bad News Bears circa 1976. Now it's just unconscious and reflexive nose-picking. Worse, those 80s kids are now adults with kids, and kids mimic parents' conversations, so now we're treated to 2 generations snot-ragging the nomenclature.
"Definitely" is a word, I'll grant that, and had a great place in conversation when used judiciously, but now it's verbal garbage. It has been so over-used and strung into spoken sentences like cranberries between every 4 pieces of popcorn on a homemade Christmas tree decoration, hearing one makes me want pull my gun and shoot the rest of the dammed "definitely"(s) I know will follow out of the air the instant they clear the speaker's lips, right under his nose, so they never reach my ears.
A broadcaster can't speak like people having conversations now. "Like"(s), "Um"(s) and a constant, head-wrecking stream of "definitely"(s) are to be avoided if you're a professional talker, and what Tripp does as his job is conversational in nature, not scripted. Him having a stutter is possible. But it may be that his occasional stuttering sound isn't a bona-fide stutter at all, merely being what happens when he's fighting the pull of lapsing into using the same everyday garbage filler-words and sounds that one is aurally assaulted with as we race to become the society foretold by the movie Idiocracy. If I had to guess the cause, I'd totally choose the latter.
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