The pragmatic marker like in English teen talk

Abstract

This study reports on the use of like in Aboriginal English teen talk. The analysis of a sub-corpus of 40 adolescent texts from a corpus of 100 narratives by speakers of Aboriginal English in Western Australia revealed that like is often employed by these speakers, and that it performs a variety of functions. In general it is observed that like may mark off a) a discrepancy between the intended conceptualization and the expressed concept, b) an attitude, feeling, or a certain degree of commitment towards a lexical item, and c) a shift in some element of discourse. The results of this study support and extend the analysis carried out by Andersen (2000) on London teen talk.

Um . . . Who Like Says You Know

“…Other research suggests that another purpose of you know is to confirm the understanding of a listener (Erman, 2001). The purpose of the discourse marker like is more ambiguous, but some studies suggest that speakers use it as a hedge when they do not want to fully commit to what they say (Fuller, 2003; Sharifian & Malcolm, 2003). However, Liu and Fox Tree (2012) have countered the suggestion that like acts as a hedge by showing that this discourse marker exhibits different patterns from other hedges and likely has its own unique function.…”

Marking imprecision, conveying surprise:Likebetween hedging and mirativity

“…The expression like in English presents a constellation of uses and functions, which have been categorized through a number of taxonomies (see, in particular, D’Arcy (2005) for extended discussion). In the present paper, we focus on the discourse particle use of like , whose pragmatic function has been informally described in terms of hedging (Schourup 1985, Jucker & Smith 1998, Siegel 2002, Sharifian & Malcom 2003, Dinkin 2016, Dinkin & Maddeaux 2017).…”

Variant-centered variation and the like conspiracy

“…Examples of this tendency are not hard to find on the Internet. Shepherd (2011), in a blog post entitled "You, Like, Need to Stop Using the Word 'Like'", conflates quotative like with "randomly inserting the word 'like' where it doesn't belong" and describes it as untranslatable (instead of correctly perceiving it as roughly synonymous with say). Tracy (2013), writing for The New Republic, in critiquing Metcalf (2013)'s defense of quotative like, segues from the .…”

“…Let's begin with the function of like as a discourse particle. There appear to be two main schools of thought on its discourse function: that it serves as a marker of non-contrastive focus (e.g., Underhill 1988, Miller & Weinert 1995; and that it functions as a hedge, or indicator of inexact or non-literal speech (Sharifian & Malcolm 2003, James 1983, Schourup 1985: 141, Jucker & Smith 1998, Andersen 2001. Although Miller & Weinert portray these two hypotheses as mutually incompatible, Fuller (2003) convincingly argues that both hedging and focus are within the range of functions the discourse particle like can be used for, and that those functions overlap in some utterances; she suggests that the hedge, broadly construed, is likely to have been like's original discourse-particle function.…”