Variation and change in the sociophonetic variable ing in format ties
Format ties, “partial repetitions of prior talk” (
Goodwin & Goodwin
1987, p. 207), are interesting from an interactional perspective with respect to their functions relating to, for
example, (dis-) agreement/alignment or humour, and for scholars of Language Variation and Change because they offer uniquely
comparable phonological contexts in naturalistic speech. The present paper investigates the distribution of the sociolinguistic
variable
ing in format ties in a set of dyadic interviews of six speakers from the North-East of England who were
recorded two or three times throughout their twenties – those career-building years during which we often see a change from the
predominant use of the alveolar variant (“in’”) to the velar (“ing”).
The analysis offers possible interactional and stylistic explanations for the community-level stability and the
speaker-level variation and change of ing by focusing on contexts in which speakers format tie. It shows that the
use of the highly frequent and thus less marked alveolar variant tends to occur in aligning contexts, while the few velar cases
occur in moments where speakers disalign on some level. This argument contributes to work combining interactional and variationist
endeavours, in particular with respect to the variable ing.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Format ties
- 1.2The variable ing
- 2.Data and methods
- 2.1Data preparation and coding
- 3.Results
- 3.1
ing variation overall
- 3.2
ing in format ties
- 3.2.1Alveolar-alveolar format ties
- 3.2.2Alveolar-velar format ties
- 4.Discussion and conclusion
- Notes
-
References