We conduct a multi-local, multivariate analysis of be like in comparable datasets from three discontinuous geographic settings (the U.S.A., England, and New Zealand). Previously, comparative cross-variety analysis of this form has been fundamentally hampered by key methodological differences. A methodologically coherent analysis reveals that the 'classic factors' (Tagliamonte and D'Arcy 2007: 203) grammatical person and content of the quote, as well as the effect of mimesis, are transferred to the receptor variety, albeit with varying degrees of completeness. Other conditioning factors are particularized to the local system into which be like is adopted, which leads us to define its spread as a case of weak transfer. We suggest that there are at least two explanations for this finding: (1) global innovations must be considered in light of the local systems into which they are adopted; and (2) the form and amount of contact must be correlated with respect to the knowledge transfer they allow.

This article presents a synchronic and diachronic investigation of the lexeme all in its intensifier and quotative functions. We delimit the new from the old functions of the lexeme and present a variationist account of all's external and internal constraints in various syntactic environments. our analysis is based on a variety of data sets, which include traditional sociolinguistic interviews as well as data culled from internet searches and a new Google-based search tool. on the basis of these data sets, we show that intensifier all is not new but has expanded in syntactic environments. We further pinpoint the syntactic and semantic niches which all has appropriated for itself among California adolescents and compare its patterning with that of other intensifiers in our data and the data of other researchers. All's extension to quotative function, however, is new, apparently originating in California in the 1980s. our investigation of its development spans across data sets from 15 years. using variable rule analysis and other quantitative techniques, we examine the distribution of quotative all vis-à-vis its competitor variants (including be like, say, and go) and show that the constraints on quotative all have undergone a marked shift in recent years and that quotative all is in decline right now, after peaking in the 1990s.

This article investigates the attitudes of British respondents towards the quotatives be like and go. The results of a matched guise test and a social attitudes survey are presented and compared with the findings of studies on be like and go‐perception in the U.S. It is found that the perceptual load of the two quotatives on both sides of the Atlantic is similar in some respects and different in others. This effectively means that, in cases of borrowing, the stereotypes attached to linguistic items are not simply taken over along with the surface item. Rather, the adoption of global resources is a more agentive process, whereby attitudes are re‐evaluated and re‐created by speakers of the borrowing variety. It is suggested that attitudinal information presents an important backdrop to distributional studies in cases of global language trends.

This article presents a cross-variety investigation of quotatives be like and go in apparent and real time. Distributional and attitudinal evidence points to a change in progress as the underlying process for the distribution of be like. However, there is also evidence of life-span change (Sankoff to appear). The patterning of go across age is much less clear-cut. It could be interpreted as age grading or as a change in progress. This paper discusses seemingly contradictory findings from U.S. and British English. It will be suggested that the distribution of go is due to unstable behaviour at both the individual and the community level. Furthermore, there is evidence that go has a latent presence in the linguistic repertoire and was picked up again after its frequency dipped due to the introduction of be like. This finding ties in with other reported cases of recycling of variables (Dubois and Horvath 1999).