This article investigates quotative use in American English in apparent and real time. The use of quotative be like, go and say in a corpus of conversation in American English dating 2004 / 2005 is compared with use in a similar corpus dating 1995 / 1996 (Barbieri 2007). Findings show that in present-day American English be like is the favorite choice for all speakers below age 40, and is extremely popular among young teenagers. The real time comparison reveals that speakers who in the mid-1990s were in their teens to mid-20s have not only maintained, but considerably increased use of be like over time; women aged 27–40 have also maintained use of be like over time.Such findings provide evidence of generational change, as well as of “lifespan change” (Sankoff 2005). Overall, the present findings indicate that be like is a true case of change in progress — a change still led by women; however they do not point to one particular type of change, suggesting that generational and communal change may operate simultaneously in the advancement of change.
2012. Social factors affect quotative choice. Journal of Pragmatics 44:10 ► pp. 1150 ff.
Cukor-Avila, Patricia
2012. Some structural consequences of diffusion. Language in Society 41:5 ► pp. 615 ff.
D'Arcy, Alexandra
2012. The diachrony of quotation: Evidence from New Zealand English. Language Variation and Change 24:3 ► pp. 343 ff.
Davies, Mark
2012. Some methodological issues related to corpus-based investigations of recent syntactic changes in English. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, ► pp. 157 ff.
Davies, Mark
2015. The importance of robust corpora in providing more realistic descriptions of variation in English grammar. Linguistics Vanguard 1:1 ► pp. 305 ff.
Mark Davies
2013. Examining syntactic variation in English: The importance of corpus design and corpus size. English Language and Linguistics 19:3 ► pp. 1 ff.
Deuber, Dagmar, Eva Canan Hänsel & Michael Westphal
2021. Quotative be like in Trinidadian English. World Englishes 40:3 ► pp. 436 ff.
Fernández, Julieta
2017. The language functions of tipo in Argentine vernacular. Journal of Pragmatics 114 ► pp. 87 ff.
Fox, Barbara A. & Jessica Robles
2010. It’s like mmm: Enactments with it’s like. Discourse Studies 12:6 ► pp. 715 ff.
Hansen, Beke
2020. Localisation, Globalisation and Gender in Discourse-Pragmatic Variation in Ghanaian English. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 23 ff.
Lasan, Ivan
2024. Expression of formality in writing: English-dominant speakers’ and English learners’ knowledge, preferences, and other-language influence. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 27:1 ► pp. 98 ff.
Laube, Alexander
2023. Variation in the imperfective in Bahamian English. World Englishes 42:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 february 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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