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Fundamental to oral fluency, pragmatic markers facilitate the flow of spontaneous, interactional and social conversation. Variously termed 'hedges', 'fumbles' and 'conversational greasers' in earlier academic studies, this book explores the meaning, function and role of 'well', 'I mean', 'just', 'sort of', 'like' and 'you know' in British English. Adopting a sociolinguistic and historical perspective, Beeching investigates how these six commonly occurring pragmatic markers are used and the ways in which their current meanings and functions have evolved. Informed by empirical data from a wide range of contemporary and historical sources, including a small corpus of spoken English collected in 2011–14, the British National Corpus and the Old Bailey Corpus, Pragmatic Markers in British English contributes to debates about language variation and change, incrementation in adolescence and grammaticalisation and pragmaticalisation. It will be fascinating reading for researchers and students in linguistics and English, as well as non-specialists intrigued by this speech phenomenon.

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This article contributes to a growing body of theory that posits language-external, social factors as a primary motor in diachronic change. Politeness theory and the use of variationist approaches enable us to posit, and test, the hypothesis of a type of pragmaticalization, which I call Politeness-Induced Semantic Change (PISC). Historical data on quand même are presented that give tentative credence to such a model. Moeschler and de Spengler's (1981) and Waltereit's (2001) speechact theoretic analyses of quand même are reinterpreted within the framework of politeness theory and sociopragmatics. The ensuing corpus investigation of the grammaticalization and pragmatico-semantic evolution of quand même from 1500-2000 highlights the fact that not only the innovation but also the propagation of a new form-function configuration depend on social factors; politeness theory may have explanatory power in capturing the ever-changing social patterning of linguistic features and the conditions that favor the spread of innovation. I wish to acknowledge the very helpful and detailed comments of Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and anonymous reviewers from Language Variation and Change on a draft version of this article. Remaining inadequacies are, of course, entirely my own. I also recognize a debt of gratitude to the Research Committee of the Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences of the University of the West of England, Bristol, who granted me the research leave required to complete the article.

This paper posits that certain “qualificatory” semantic primes are recruited to serve face-management needs in a metonymic Meaning1>Meaning2 relationship at what Traugott and Dasher (2002) have called the inter­subjective, non-truth-conditional, procedural, scope-over-discourse end of the trajectory of pragmatico-semantic change. Terms expressing smallness, approximativeness, demurral/correction, adversativeness/concession and interrogation are applied in an attenuating manner in a number of languages. The paper draws on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, Sweetser’s (1990), Geeraerts’ (1997) and Kövecses and Radden’s (1998) cognitive and metaphorical/metonymic approaches to etymology, Traugott and Dasher’s (2002) Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change, Haspelmath’s (1999) notions of irreversibility and Kerswill and Williams’ (2002) sociolinguistic concept of “salience”. It is suggested that politeness theory, with its dual conceptualisation to do with conflict-avoidance and social indexing, has strong explanatory power in the two phases of semantic change: innovation and propagation. A new form–function configuration emerges in inter­action to manage rapport and is diffused, provided it is given positive social ­evaluation.