The article describes the peculiarities of grammaticalization of the English word like, owning to which it has acquired the function of a discourse marker. Pragmatic and socio-linguistic aspects of its development are examined, as they are presented in the works of Russian and foreign linguists. Such pragmatic functions of like as metalinguistic, emphatic, the function of a hesitation pause, the function of introducing a direct speech into the sentence, example, and approximate quantity are noted.