Article published In:
English World-WideVol. 28:1 (2007) ► pp.23–45
Older men and younger women
A corpus-based study of quotative use in American English
This article investigates the effect of the external variables speaker age and sex on the use of the quotatives be like, go, be all, and say in present-day spoken American English. The study is based on a large computerized corpus of naturally-occurring conversation collected from a wide range of speakers across the United States. The results show that there are striking differences in the way that men and women under the age of forty use these quotatives. Young women are in the lead in the use of be like, but the use of this quotative decreases dramatically among women in their late 20s and in their 30s. In contrast, the use of be like increases among men in their late 20s. The patterns of use described here represent a departure from previous findings and suggest that the effect of speaker’s age and sex on quotative use is more complex than has been posited so far.
Keywords: quotative, sex, age, American English, convergence, accommodation theory, evolutionary psychology
Cited by
Cited by 21 other publications
Barbieri, Federica
2008. Patterns of age‐based linguistic variation in American English1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12:1 ► pp. 58 ff. 
Barbieri, Federica & Suzanne E.B. Eckhardt
2007. Applying corpus-based findings to form-focused instruction: The case of reported speech. Language Teaching Research 11:3 ► pp. 319 ff.
Buchstaller, Isabelle & Alexandra D'Arcy
2009. Localized globalization: A multi‐local, multivariate investigation of quotative be like1. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13:3 ► pp. 291 ff.
Buchstaller, Isabelle, John R. Rickford, Elizabeth Closs Traugott, Thomas Wasow & Arnold Zwicky
2010. The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and internet newsgroup data. Language Variation and Change 22:2 ► pp. 191 ff.
Cukor-Avila, Patricia
2012. Some structural consequences of diffusion. Language in Society 41:5 ► pp. 615 ff.
D'Arcy, Alexandra
2007. LIKEAND LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY: DISENTANGLING FACT FROM FICTION. American Speech 82:4 ► pp. 386 ff.
Deuber, Dagmar, Eva Canan Hänsel & Michael Westphal
2021. Quotative be like in Trinidadian English. World Englishes 40:3 ► pp. 436 ff.
Fuchs, Robert
2017. Do women (still) use more intensifiers than men?. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22:3 ► pp. 345 ff.
Fuchs, Robert
2020. Sociolinguistic Variation in Intensifier Usage in Indian and British English. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 47 ff.
GARDNER, MATT HUNT, DEREK DENIS, MARISA BROOK & SALI A. TAGLIAMONTE
2021. Be like and the Constant Rate Effect: from the bottom to the top of the S-curve. English Language and Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 281 ff.
Habasque, Pierre
2019. “You’ll never have to listen to her talk like this? With an upward inflection? At the end of every sentence?. Anglophonia :27
Habasque, Pierre
2021. Is Creaky Voice a Valley Girl Feature? Stancetaking & Evolution of a Linguistic Stereotype. Anglophonia :32
Habasque, Pierre
2021. Isn’t the perception of LIKE by California college students, like, paradoxical?. Sociolinguistic Studies 15:2-4
KOHN, MARY ELIZABETH & HANNAH ASKIN FRANZ
2009. Localized Patterns for Global Variants: The Case of Quotative Systems of African American and Latino Speakers. American Speech 84:3 ► pp. 259 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2018. Corpus linguistics in language and sexuality studies. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
Oates, Morgan, Rebecca McCauley & Allison Bean
2024. Exploring Online Communication in Self-Identified Autistic Adolescents. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research ► pp. 1 ff.
Rühlemann, Christoph
2010. Conversational Grammar- Feminine Grammar? A Sociopragmatic Corpus Study. Journal of English Linguistics 38:1 ► pp. 56 ff.
Sayers, Dave
2014. The mediated innovation model: A framework for researching media influence in language change. Journal of Sociolinguistics 18:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Stephens, Nola, Lauren Hall-Lew & Vickie Shamp Ellis
2018. I’m Like, “Really? You Were Homeschooled?” Quotative Variation by High School Type and Linguistic Style. American Speech 93:1 ► pp. 108 ff.
Erik R. Thomas
2019. Mexican American English,
[no author supplied]
2013. Reference Guide for Varieties of English. In A Dictionary of Varieties of English, ► pp. 363 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.