Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T11:17:11.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and internet newsgroup data

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2010

Isabelle Buchstaller ,
John R. Rickford ,
Elizabeth Closs Traugott ,
Thomas Wasow  and
Arnold Zwicky
Isabelle Buchstaller
Affiliation:
Newcastle University
John R. Rickford
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Thomas Wasow
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Arnold Zwicky
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines a short-lived innovation, quotative all, in real and apparent time. We used a two-pronged method to trace the trajectory of all over the past two decades: (i) Quantitative analyses of the quotative system of young Californians from different decades; this reveals a startling crossover pattern: in 1990/1994, all predominates, but by 2005, it has given way to like. (ii) Searches of Internet newsgroups; these confirm that after rising briskly in the 1990s, all is declining. Tracing the changing usage of quotative options provides year-to-year evidence that all has recently given way to like. Our paper has two aims: We provide insights from ongoing language change regarding short-term innovations in the history of English. We also discuss our collaboration with Google Inc. and argue for the value of newsgroups to research projects investigating linguistic variation and change in real time, especially where recorded conversational tokens are relatively sparse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 191 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alford, Daniel Moonhawk Alford. (1982–1983). A new English language quotative. Not Just Words. The Newsletter of Transpersonal Linguistics 2:6.Google Scholar
Androutsopoulous, Jannis, & Ziegler, Evelyn. (2004). Exploring language variation on the Internet: Regional speech in a chat community. In Gunnarsson, B.-L. et al. (eds.), Papers from ICLaVE 2 Uppsala Papers from the Second International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, ICLaVE 2. Uppsala, Sweden: Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Bakht-Rofheart, Maryam. (2002). Avoidance of a new standard: Quotative use among Long Island Teenagers. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 31, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.Google Scholar
Barbieri, Frederica. (2005). Quotative use in American English. Journal of English Linguistics 33:222–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barbieri, Frederica. (2007). Older men and younger women: A corpus-based study of quotative use in American English. English World-Wide 28:23–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, Robert, & Santa Ana, Otto. (2004). Chicano English: Morphology and syntax. In Kortmann, B. et al. (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English. Vol. 2. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 374–390.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. (1988). The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, Mary. (2004). From stance to style: Innovative quotative markers and youth identities in discourse. Paper presented at the Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Age, New York University, New York.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. (2001). He goes and I'm like: The new quotatives re-visited. Paper presented at New Ways in Analyzing Variation 30, University of North Carolina, Raleigh.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. (2004). The sociolinguistic constraints on the quotative system—British English and US English compared. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle. (2006). Diagnostics of age-graded linguistic behavior: The case of the quotative system. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10:3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2009). Localized globalization: A multi-local, multivariate investigation of be like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13:291–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchstaller, Isabelle, & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. (2006). The Lady was al demonyak: Historical aspects of adverbial ALL. English Language and Linguistics 10(2):345–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, & Hopper, Paul J. (eds.) (2001). Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Wenghong, Boase, Jeffrey, & Wellman, Barry. (2002). The global villagers: Comparing Internet users and uses around the world. In Wellman, B. & Haythornthwaite, C. (eds.), The Internet of everyday life. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Crystal, David. (2001). Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cukor-Avila, Patricia. (2002). She say, she go, she be like: Verbs of quotation over time in African American Vernacular English. American Speech 77:3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fought, Carmen. (2003). Chicano English in context. New York: Palgrave/MacMillan Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory. (1988). Advanced VARBRUL Analysis. In Ferrara, K. et al. (eds.), Language change and contact: Proceedings of the sixteenth annual conference on New Ways in Analyzing Variation. Austin: Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin. 124–136.Google Scholar
Hoffmann, Sebastian. (2007). Processing Internet-derived text—Creating a corpus of Usenet messages. Literary and Linguistic Processing 22(2):151–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopcroft, John E., Motwani, Rajeev, & Ullman, Jeffrey D. (2001). Introduction to automata theory, language, and computation. Boston: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne, Nesselhauf, Nadja, & Biewer, Carolin (eds.) (2007). Corpus linguistics and the Web. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Graham, & Schieffelin, Bambi. (2007). Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk: Uses of be + like in instant messaging. Language and Communication 29(1):77–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, James, Rice, Ronald, & Aspden, Philip. (2001). The Internet, 1995–2000: Access, civic involvement, and social interaction. American Behavioral Scientist 45(3):404–418.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972). Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Milroy, James. (1992). Linguistic variation and change: On the historical sociolinguistics of English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Milroy, James. (2003). On the role of the speaker in language change. In Hickey, R. (ed.), Motives for language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 143–157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu. (2004). Mapping change in Tudor English. In Mugglestone, L. (ed.), The Oxford history of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 198–211.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R. (2000). Variation and change in our living language. The American heritage dictionary of the English language. 4th ed.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. xxii–xxv.Google Scholar
Rickford, John R., Buchstaller, Isabelle, Wasow, Thomas, & Zwicky, Arnold. (2007). Intensive and quotative all: Something old, something new. American Speech 82(1):3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rickford, John R., Mendoza-Denton, Norma, Wasow, Thomas & Espinoza, Julie. (1995) Syntactic variation and change in progress: loss of the verbal coda in topic-restricting as far as constructions. Language 71:102–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, Everett M. (1983) [1962]. Diffusion of innovations. 3rd ed.New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne, & Lange, Deborah. (1991). The use of like as a marker of reported speech and thought: A case of grammaticalization in progress. American Speech 66:227–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singler, John. (2001). Why you can't do a VARBRUL study of quotatives and what such a study can show us. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 7:257–278.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2004). He's like, she's like: The quotative system in Canadian youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 8(4):493–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & D'Arcy, Alexandra. (2007). Frequency and variation in the community grammar: Tracking a new change through the generations. Language Variation and Change 19(2):199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali, & Derek, Denis. (2005). OMG, it's so PC! Instant messaging and teen language. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation 34. New York City.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali & Hudson, Rachel (1999). ‘Be Like et al. Beyond America: The Quotative System in British and Canadian Youth’. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(2):147–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vincent, Diane, & Dubois, Sylvie. (1996). A study of the use of reported speech in spoken language. In Arnold, J. et al. (eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information. 361–374.Google Scholar
Waksler, Rachelle. (2001). A new ALL in conversation. American Speech 76:128–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel, Labov, William, & Herzog, Marvin I. (1968). Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Lehmann, W. P. & Malkiel, Y. (eds.), Directions for historical linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press. 95–189.Google Scholar
Wimmer, Ann. (1990). Be + all and other new quotative introducers in California English. Senior honors thesis. Stanford: Stanford Linguistics Department.Google Scholar