Outliers, impact, and rationalization in linguistic change

I’m Like, “Really? You Were Homeschooled?” Quotative Variation by High School Type and Linguistic Style

“…Although an individual's use of be like has been shown to peak during their mid-teens, use remains relatively high into young adulthood (Cukor-Avila 2002; Tagliamonte and D'Arcy 2007). Key to the possible homeschooler experience, however, is the fact that all of the parents of the college students analyzed here either entered adolescence before be like became dominant in the 1990s, or were among the first generation of be like users (see Buchstaller 2015;Tagliamonte, D'Arcy, and Louro 2016). In either case, this parental generation is unlikely to use be like as much as the young adults who comprise our participant sample.…”

Quotative like in the Englishes of the Outer and Expanding Circles

“…Tell me what happened ). The envelope of variation was defined as constructed dialogue, that is, all instances of “the reformation of thought, speech, action, nonlexicalised sounds, and gestures in the voice of oneself or another” (Tagliamonte et al., , p. 828). Following this method, the tokens of quotation were extracted manually from collected recordings.…”

“…The study of quotative markers has become a ‘veritable cottage industry’ (Tagliamonte, D'Arcy, & Rodríguez Louro, , p. 825) amongst sociolinguists and much of this effect is due to the rise of the global linguistic innovation, quotative be like demonstrated in (4). Having originated in California, back in the 1980s (Butters, ), be like swiftly made its way into new locales including Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand (Meyerhoff & Niedzielski, ).…”

“…Having originated in California, back in the 1980s (Butters, ), be like swiftly made its way into new locales including Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand (Meyerhoff & Niedzielski, ). Sociolinguists describe this rampant spread of be like as a ‘global process’ (Buchstaller, , p. 16) and ‘one of the most striking developments’ in the documented history of English (Tagliamonte & D'Arcy, , p. 493), while also noting that ‘[i]n current usage, be like is highly productive across all national varieties of native speaker English (that is, in the Inner Circle; see Kachru, , ) and appears to be used with analogous highly constrained patterns’ (Tagliamonte et al., , p. 825). Crucially, quotatives have been demonstrated to be vernacular features the use of which is triggered by an internally regulated system showing signs of systemic change (Sayers, , p. 187).…”

Situating media influence in sociolinguistic context

“…It seems to me that be like is the only one. Indeed, my collaborators in Victoria (D'Arcy) and Perth (Rodrigues‐Louro) and I think that be like is actually a very important anomaly; however, I will not go into the rationale for that here (Tagliamonte, D'Arcy and Rodrigues‐Louro ).…”