The localization of global linguistic variants

English World-Wide 291 (2008) 15ndash44 doi 101075eww29103bucissn 0172ndash8865 e-issn 1569ndash9730 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

The localization of global linguistic variants

Isabelle BuchstallerNewcastle University

Globalization has been defined as the process whereby ldquoevents happening in one place hellip impact upon many other places often remote in time and spacerdquo (Urry 2003 39) This paper examines the impact of two globally available linguistic resources mdash the quotatives be like and go mdash in two spatially discontinuous localities The investigation of the local processes that are involved in the adop-tion and negotiation of these global newcomers provides a holistic as well as a particularized view on the sociolinguistic mechanisms of globalization I will demonstrate that by way of creatively adapting linguistic innovations speakers can participate in global trends yet do so in a highly localized and idiosyncratic manner A micro-linguistic analysis of the emerging local practises allows us to situate localized linguistic processes into a ldquowider picture of structural becom-ingrdquo (Blommaert 2003 613) and provides one step forward towards our under-standing of the development andor maintenance of social spatiality

Keywords globalization localization space quotatives like go

1 Introduction

Katz (1999 145) rightly states that ldquoit cannot be far wrong to assert that every one of the social sciences and humanities has at least intermittently given attention to the question of how things mdash ideas and practices mdash get from here to thererdquo The process of globalization in particular has become an important and pervasive to-pos in fields as diverse as cultural studies sociology politics and economics Also linguistics has seen an increasing interest in exploring the repercussions of global or supra-local flows Several studies have recently pointed out cases of linguistic variability that can be interpreted locally as well as translocally (Tagliamonte and

This paper grew out of a talk I gave at the ICLaVE 3 conference held in Amsterdam I would like to thank Miriam Meyerhoff David Britain and Edgar Schneider as well as two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on this paper All remaining errors are obviously my own

16 Isabelle Buchstaller

Hudson 1999 Walters 2002 Milroy 2004 2007 Tagliamonte 2002 Stuart-Smith 2002ndash5 and many others) Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) call for a coherent theory of language variation and change that captures linguistic processes on a mi-cro as well as on a macro scale They demonstrate the need to incorporate variation-ist findings within broader empirical issues pointing in particular to the tension between global flows and their local consequences (see also Blommaert 2003)

This paper sets out to explore the nexus between global linguistic processes and their local underpinnings I will discuss the results of a case study on two globally spreading linguistic resources the new quotatives be like and go as in (1) and (2) in two spatially discontinuous locales1

(1) Some of the best food I have ever had was out of a mdash outside or inside of a place that we drove up and I was like ldquoIrsquom not eating in thererdquo2

(2) Some girl goes ldquodo you dares want to go picnicrdquo

The spread of be like and go is a global process in the sense that younger speakers of a number of varieties of English are now using these features for the introduc-tion of verbal quotation but did not do so previously (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 Singler 2001 Buchstaller 2004 Tagliamonte and DrsquoArcy 2004)3 Much has been written about these newcomers and their attestation in many varieties of English (such as the USA Canada Singapore South Africa the UK etc see Sin-gler and Woods 2002) Sociolinguists commonly assume that quotative be like and go have spread outwards from an assumed epicenter in the USA in all probability propelled by the mass media (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 with reservations Macaulay 2001) However much less is known about the adaptive processes used by speakers in varieties other than the United States when appropriating such in-novations Britain (2002 618) points out that in cases of contact between a (global or supra-local) innovation and local traditional norms we have to reckon with a whole range of possible outcomes which include at least (i) wholesale adoption of the innovation (ii) flat rejection or (iii) interaction between the local system and the innovative features which leads to transformation through interpretation

1 According to Giddens (1991) a locale is an explanatory framework Johnstone (2004 70) writes ldquoa locale can be defined as the meaningful elements of the temporal and spatial context of the interaction locale is setting but as seen from the perspective of human actorsrdquo

2 Examples are taken from the Switchboard Corpus to be discussed in the ldquoData and method-ologyrdquo section below

3 With respect to quotative go the literature concurs that the variant has only recently broad-ened its functional scope to full quotative function so as to include speech as well as sounds Quotative go with reported speech was first mentioned by Butters (1980) in the US Be like was first attested in 1982 in the US (Butters 1982)

The localization of global linguistic variants 17

Hence we might want to ask when spreading to Singapore and Ireland are be like and go adopted with their functional and social boots on Or alternatively do speakers reinterpret them as they hit foreign ground If that is the case which features are reinvented and which ones stay the same

The study aims to demonstrate that the globalization of be like and go goes hand in hand with the development of locally specific patterns both on the lin-guistic and the social plane As we begin to look in some detail at the adoption of linguistic innovations beyond a strictly local or intra-national scale the limits on the supra-local transfer of quality information without sustained face-to-face con-tact will emerge as an important consideration (as I will discuss below)

2 The conceptualization of space From micro to macro

Johnstone (2004) and Britain (2002 2004) have called for a re-examination of how we conceptualize spatiality in sociolinguistic enquiry pointing especially to the human agency involved in making place ldquoexperience[d] physical and social spacerdquo (Johnstone 2004 66 see also Hernaacutendez-Campoy 1999) Conceptualizing place as ldquothe meaningful context of human actionrdquo (Entrikin 1991 10) is method-ologically advantageous because it changes the meaning of space from an a priori category ldquogeographical locationrdquo to a social process namely the way in which hu-man experience shapes interacts with and participates in the creation of spatiality (Johnstone 2004) Spatial identity is hence construed in the same way postmodern social theorists have interpreted other social constructs mdash such as gender ethnic-ity etc mdash as actively created highly contextualized fluid and context-dependent (Reed 1982 Eckert 1997 2000 Rose and Hall-Lew 2004)4

How then does the process of globalization interact with the local ldquoem-placementrdquo (Johnstone 2004 67) of human experience Globalization has been defined as the process whereby ldquoevents happening in one place importantly im-pact upon many other places often remote in time and spacerdquo (Urry 2003 39

4 What is more a critical approach to space acknowledges that any notion of place is neces-sarily the result of peoplersquos (differential) engagement with their environment (Seamon 1979 see also Massey 1984 1985) Giddens (1984 368) rightly reminds us that ldquo[s]pace is not an empty dimension along which social groupings become structured but has to be considered in terms of its involvement in the construction of systems of interactionrdquo This ldquoshaping of the(ir) worldrdquo (Johnstone 2004 67) entails physical activities such as agriculture landscape and urban design but also more abstract symbolic activities such as oral history arts and ldquoformulatingrdquo (Schegloff 1972a) via which space is experienced as meaningful


see also McGrew 1992)5 Until fairly recently the ubiquity of American popular and corporate culture disseminated through cyberspace as well as offline has led researchers to equate globalization with westernization or more specifically with Americanization

However construing globalization as a slippery slope leading towards world-wide homogeneization is obviously an inadequate concept for capturing the whole complexity of global flows we are experiencing Sociologists have brought to our at-tention the ldquorobustness of social and cultural forms and codes and practices which lsquoresist and play back systematicallyrsquo (Featherstone 1990 2)rdquo (Axford 2000 106) In fact a rich array of studies have amply demonstrated that peripheral receptor systems while being caught up in the process of globalization operate with rela-tive independence (see Rogers 2003) Wollons (2000 3) for example has shown that the educational innovation of the kindergarten in the course of its worldwide spread has been reinvented and re-contextualized in a number of countries who each ldquofit the kindergarten to national valuesrdquo such as the teaching of patriotism in the USA of Confucian values in Japan and of Zionist philosophy in Israel Similarly Axford (1995 160 see also Street 2000 104 Featherstone 2000 102) has argued that global commodities (ie McDonalds Coca Cola series like ldquoLostrdquo) are ldquoconsumed around the world [but] their reception is localised and made sense of through local world views and cultural practisesrdquo What these studies demonstrate is that globalizing features are taken out of their original contexts (cf what Giddens 1990 21 calls ldquodisembeddingrdquo) and re-interpreted as they get adopted And even though many cultural technological and economic impulses do in fact have their epicentre in the USA their local reception is adapted to the particularities of the individual place The extent and outcome of globalization mdash far from being a uni-tary process mdash are dependent on locally specific forces and developments A much more useful and appropriate heuristic is therefore that global developments tend to go hand in hand with increasing localization viz local re-appropriation This calls for a view of localized culture as an ldquointerpretive frameworkrdquo (Axford 2000 105) ie a context-dependent emplaced matrix of practices through which people can negotiate the reception and adaptation of (global or non-global) innovations Uncovering these socio-cultural processes can bring to the forefront the work in-volved in the creation and maintenance of spatial particularity (at whatever level) while still being connected to global trends Prominence therefore needs to be given to the creative processes (cultural linguistic economic) that occur in situ during the adaptation of global resources

5 See also Blommaertrsquos useful definition of globalization The process and results of an ldquointen-sified flow of forms mdash movements of objects people and images mdash causing forms of contact and difference Thatrsquos perhaps not new in substance but in scale and perceptionrdquo (2003 615)


3 Globalization and sociolinguistics

The tension between the global spread of linguistic resources and the adaptive mechanisms used by localized speakers is of great importance for the study of language variation and change It raises weighty linguistic questions such as what are the local linguistic consequences when innovations float globally through real or cyber-space Will globalization lead to linguistic homogeneization or can we pinpoint local creative forces that lead to the local adaptation of global processes How do linguistic processes articulate with globalization theories developed in fields such as economics geography anthropology and sociology To what extent do we find that the same results reported there also hold in linguistics

A growing body of sociolinguistic research seeks to investigate the complex relationship between local vs supra-local change Important insights have been gleaned from research on regional dialect levelling a process whereby linguistic features spread outward from their local domain causing reduction of the differ-ences between regional dialects (see eg Watt and Milroy 1999 Kerswill 2003 and many of the papers in Foulkes and Docherty 1999) While little of this literature ex-plicitly investigates global phenomena mdash levelling tends to involve supra-local but intra-national change mdash research on levelling nevertheless provides an important empirical backdrop to the investigation of supra-local spread of global dimension Britain (2002 617) eg points to the renegotiating process that often goes hand in hand with the diffusion of innovations producing locally specific outcomes and practices as ldquolocal structures interact with the incoming ones and produce new but local not universal outcomesrdquo (Britain 2002 617 emphasis in original) Watt (1998) and Foulkes and Docherty (1999) call attention to the agency involved in the adoption process of spreading innovations and point out that young speakers in Newcastle aim to ldquo lsquosound like northerners but modern northernersrsquo [Watt 1998 7] Speakers can achieve these aims by avoiding variants which they perceive to be particularly indicative of their local roots while at the same time adopting some features which are perceived to be non-localrdquo (Foulkes and Docherty 1999 13ndash4) Hence research on levelling supports previously mentioned findings from cul-tural studies and economics that localized communities by routinizing imported (cultural economical linguistic etc) features can develop new and idiosyncratic routines and thereby assert their independence while still participating in global supra-local flows

So what about globally spreading linguistic innovations In 2003 a whole is-sue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics was devoted to the topic of globalizing lin-guistic practices and the methodological frameworks these require Machin and van Leeuwen (2003) for example while pointing out a number of uniform traits in the discourses of femininity beauty and sexuality that are spread globally via


the womanrsquos magazine Cosmopolitan demonstrate that their import is not whole-sale In fact the authors showcase a number of ways in which globally spreading discourse strategies are taking locally specific forms Also Meyerhoff and Niedziel-ski (2003) report that while typical US American linguistic features (t-flapping lexical items such as truck etc) do spread cross-varietally they do not push out indigenous alternatives On the contrary new balances are created in local vari-eties via the entrance of newcomers Similarly in his discussion on global English Kachru (1982 see also Bhaba 1994 Joseph 1999) has argued that when linguistic resources are adopted by new speakers there is always some kind of transforma-tion in meaning and form6 Findings such as these suggest that also global linguis-tic processes are inextricably linked to fundamentally local outcomes

However as Schuerkens (2003) rightly reminds us the exact mapping of glob-al cultural flows on local territory is still at an elementary stage (cf also Johnstone 2004 73) Second or third wave studies focusing on liminal members of communi-ties of practice or on social networks (Eckert 1989 2000 Milroy and Milroy 1992) have proven a good heuristic tool to tap into the way specific groups of speakers exploit supra-locally available resources to very local ends However at present there is still a dearth of detailed micro-linguistic analyses that demonstrate the links between local linguistic mechanisms and global forces and ldquodescribe in hellip detail just how the global and the local intertwine and thereby transform one an-other in the processrdquo (Machin and van Leeuwen 2003 496) In order to account for ldquothe spatiality of hellip [global] sociolinguistic process(es)rdquo (Britain 2002 611) the local adaptation of global innovations therefore needs to be ldquoexplained by ref-erence to [the local environment ie the city region or] state-level dynamics but [also] hellip be set simultaneously against the background of hellip hierarchical relations between the various levelsrdquo (Blommaert 2003 612)

I will now report on a project which aimed to shed light on the linguistic and social reality of two globally available linguistic resources on a micro and macro level After introducing my data and methodology I will investigate which global similarities the two innovative features be like and go share in two discontinu-ous locales I will then point out some local idiosyncrasies these features seem to be developing according to the spatially defined environment in which they have been picked up By focussing on the adaptation and use of two globalizing features at the tension between global and local processes this work aims to contribute to the goal of establishing a ldquosociolinguistics of globalizationrdquo (Blommaert 2003)

6 The study of pidgins and creoles obviously provides many examples of localized adoption of linguistic resources


4 Data and methodology

For the purposes of this study I have chosen to use data from the USA and Eng-land being fully aware that such a broad scope does not cover the whole range of relevant spatial distinctions However I would like to argue that a study which investigates the linguistic reality of global newcomers in two spatially non-contig-uous national varieties can provide an important perspective for the investigation of the global spread of innovations and their localized adaptation Future work will hopefully contribute to the refinement of the findings presented here in order to expand our understanding of the multilayered nature of spatiality7

For the US data I was working with the Switchboard Corpus which is available via the Linguistic Data Consortium online8 This multimillion word corpus was recorded in 1988ndash1993 and spans seven major dialect areas of the USA Of the 542 speakers I used a sociolinguistically balanced sample of 136 speakers The UK cor-pus was collected during a sociolinguistic research project (Milroy Milroy and Do-cherty 1997) in Derby and Newcastle in 1994ndash5 It contains data from 64 speakers and consists of about 2 million words As be like was first mentioned as being used in this variety in 1994 (Andersen 1996) these data made it possible to investigate this variant in situ nascendi in the UK (a point to which I will come back later)9

A locally sensitive investigation of global innovations calls for methods that can capture the linguistic processes at the two (national) levels of spatiality under scrutiny We need to be able to shed light on the creative strategies via which speakers craft and negotiate linguistic spatiality while still taking part in global

7 Buchstaller and DrsquoArcy (2007) are currently exploring the global processes involved in the spread of quotative like in more localities namely the USA the UK New Zealand as well as Canada

8 lthttpwwwldcupenneduCatalogCatalogEntryjspcatalogId=LDC97S62gt

9 This paper focuses on the different patterns of use of newcomer quotatives by larger collec-tivites namely native speakers of English in the USA and in the UK as represented by the two data sets under investigation While the US data mdash due to its nation-wide sampling mdash can be claimed to represent the core variety of American English the British Isles are represented only via recordings from two distinct varieties The issue of scale mdash ldquothe size of the group studiedrdquo (Patrick 2002 576) mdash is obviously relevant here The notion of the speech community and espe-cially that of its delineation in terms of size while often defined is notoriously contentious (see some models in Romaine 1982 Hanks 1996 see also Santa Ana and Parodiacute 1998) Usefully I think Gumperz (1972 463) points out that linguistic communities ldquomay consist of small groups bound together by face-to-face contact or may cover large regions depending on the level of abstraction we wish to achieverdquo For more information on the reception of globalising features in other communities in the UK I therefore refer the reader to Baker et al (2006) Macaulay (2001) and Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999)


processes Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) call for a rigorous multidisciplinary approach to the investigation of globalizing features The method I have opted for in this study is indeed multi-pronged I employ a combinatory approach using variationist sociolinguistic discourse analytic and social psychological methods I will also discuss my findings in the light of markedness considerations

5 The global linguistic similarities

In an important paper on local versus supra-local changes Milroy (2007) poses the question of how we can tell whether changes occurring simultaneously in dis-continuous localities are to be considered ldquothe samerdquo phenomenon or whether we are looking at related but fundamentally different processes Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2002 2003) propose a solution to this problem drawing on the varia-tionist concept of the linguistic variable They suggest that the methodological pre-requisite for a cross-variety comparison should be to ascertain that we are in fact investigating the same variable in both places (cf also Rogers Eveland and Klep-per 1977 Rickford and McNair-Knox 1994)10 Only once we have made sure that we are comparing apples with apples ie that the variable is fundamentally con-strained by the same factors in the localities we are investigating in (Tagliamonte 2002) does a controlled contrastive analysis make sense in the first place11 Using

10 This test should be seen against the backdrop of variationist sociolinguistic methodology which fundamentally relies on the establishment of some sort of equivalence relationship The concept of the sociolinguistic variable as ldquosaying the same thingrdquo first established by Labov (1972) is one of the elementary concepts of quantitative sociolinguistics and the literature is full of discussions about the exact parameters according to which putative variants of a variable should be equivalent For useful discussions see Labov (1978) Lavandera (1978) Dines (1980) Sankoff (1980) Weiner and Labov (1983) Romaine (1984) Cheshire (1987) Winford (1996)

11 Another important methodological prerequisite that Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) point to is the investigation of the typological markedness of the variables under scrutiny If we want to claim that something has spread we have to first rule out the possibility of independent paral-lel development With respect to the variants under investigation here I have found no evidence for a developmental ldquochannelrdquo (Givon 1979 Lehmann 1982[1995] Heine and Reh 1984) that would link go as a verb of movement to its newer function as a quotative The only other lan-guage mentioned in the literature in which the lexeme go can have speech introductory function is Dongala (Guumlldemann 2001) However the development from an approximate-comparative item (such as like) to a quotative is attested in a number of typologically unrelated languages (Underhill 1988 Meyerhoff and Niedzielski 1998 Buchstaller 2004) Therefore an independent parallel development in Britain and the USA cannot be ruled out But even so the first mention of like in the USA precedes the UK by at least 12 years Therefore in the developmental process of like from an approximative-comparative to a quotative we will have to at least assume some


this consideration as an empirical starting point for my investigation my initial research question was Which of be likersquos and gorsquos constraints hold globally

In fact the sociolinguistic literature contains a body of cumulative evidence that in a number of ways the two quotatives are generally used in the same way in both varieties (Ferrara and Bell 1995 Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 Macaulay 2001 Buchstaller 2004 Barbieri 2005)12 Two frequently adduced constraints will serve here as cases in point

Globally both newcomer quotatives are mainly used to introduce expressive or mimetic quotes (ie quotes that contain sounds or voice and gestural effects) Examples (3) and (4) demonstrate the use of be like in the USA and the UK corpus and examples (5) and (6) illustrate the use of go with mimetic quotes in both vari-eties However in the USA as well as in the UK be like and go are also regularly used to frame purely linguistic quotes as examples (7)ndash(10) demonstrate

Reported Mimetic Quote

(3) USA I was just a youngster and I was like ldquooh my goshrdquo (4) UK Irsquom like ldquouuupsrdquo (5) USA He picks up a stick and goes ldquobangrdquo (6) UK Then so then he went he went ldquopfff rdquo

Reported Linguistic Quote

(7) USA And wersquore like ldquowho are you to judgerdquo you know ldquojust report the factsrdquo

(8) UK Irsquom like ldquoyes Irsquoll eat it but Irsquom not enrapturedrdquo (9) USA She goes ldquowell Frank opened his big mouthrdquo (10) UK I went ldquoalright Irsquoll give me a call back in a minuterdquo

In my US corpus 75 of all quotes framed by be like contain sounds or voice effects (the rest occur with less marked quotes that consist of linguistic materi-al only see also Buchstaller 2004) In the UK a similar ratio of be like-framed quotes introduce mimetic enactment namely 69 As for go 73 of all go- framed quotes in the USA and 74 in the UK occur with mimesis The factor ldquovarietyrdquo did not come out in a chi-square analysis (p gt 05) for both be like and go Thus

influence from the variety that has been previously and independently established as hegemonic and where the development is diachronically earlier (the USA) to the other (the UK) I believe that such a scenario does not preclude any consideration in the light of globalization theory Rather it seems to concur with other reported scenarios where emergent indigenous processes are being influenced by hegemonic extraneous global trends (Rogers 2003)

12 Other work has underlined that the two variants assumed comparable functions in other varieties (Tagliamonte and DrsquoArcy 2004 2007 Baker et al 2006)


with respect to the content of the quote the variants under investigation pattern the same in both varieties

The second test case for the variantsrsquo comparability in the two varieties under investigation is the nature of the quote with respect to speech and thought rendi-tion When quoting speakers can choose to report previously outwardly realized verbal action speech They can also report on previous behavior that was not out-wardly occurring but rather inward mental activity such as thoughts attitudes or points of view Prototypically two quotative verbs have been associated with these two modi of reporting say for the rendering of previous speech and think for previous attitudes and opinions The obvious question to ask here is how do be like and go pattern in the two varieties with respect to these two types of quotes13 Will they assume globally the same distribution or will they take on locally idiosyncrat-ic functions of speech and thought reporting I will first exemplify the patterning of be like and go with speech (11ndash14) and then with thought (15ndash18)

Reported Speech

(11) USA My daughterrsquos like ldquoMommy can I help you with the laundryrdquo Oslash ldquoof course you canrdquo14

(12) UK And my mom was going ldquocome on try it onrdquo I was like ldquono Irsquom not trying it onrdquo (13) USA And he goes ldquodo you want to dancerdquo I go ldquono nordquo (14) UK And he just kind of looked at me and he goes ldquoyou all rightrdquo and I said ldquoyeahrdquo

Reported Thought

(15) USA Well I used to make the regular pudding and put it in the pie shell and it would sit in the refrigerator for a day

where you cut the pie it would soak into the the pie shell and it was like red and Irsquom like ldquouuahh this is kind of groedy [sic]rdquo

(16) UK I mean I was like trapped

13 As I have pointed out in Buchstaller (2004) these two kinds of quotes obviously do not form a binary category but should rather be conceptualized as the end-points of an epistemic continuum Intermediate steps are quotes where only some parts (ie an expletive) of the quote was uttered but the rest was merely inner thought or where it is completely unclear (because there is no interlocutor) whether the quote was previously uttered as self-addressed speech or thought (Goffman 1981)

14 The symbol Oslash here marks an unframed quote namely a quote without any overt lexical marking Quotes of this kind are usually signalled by prosodic cues (see Klewitz and Couper-Kuhlen 1999)


rather like being a rabbit in the headlight you know it was like ldquoahhhhrdquo (17) USA The first year the deer ate my garden and I was just so astounded Irsquom going ldquodeer right here in the cityrdquo (18) UK And the third time my hand went like straight through the window and there was gropping plastic smashing down and I went ldquooh shitrdquo

Looking at the distribution that be like and go have assumed with respect to the framing of these types of quotes my corpora reveal that speakers in Britain and the USA use both newcomer quotatives to frame reported speech as well as mental activity Importantly however they do so with similar frequencies across space Of all quotes framed by go 54 in the UK and 63 in the USA occur with reported speech The rest are used to frame reported thought or other previously unspo-ken material Be like on the other hand has a much lesser propensity to frame reported outward speech in both varieties only 22 of all be like-framed quotes in the UK and 27 in the USA occur with quotes of this kind Again the difference between the patterning of the variants in the two varieties is not significant (pgt 05) neither for be like nor for go

Hence employing the comparative exercise proposed by Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) to the data on quotative newcomers in two spatially discon-tinuous varieties has proven useful Comparing their patterning with mimesis and speech thought enquoting across the Atlantic reveals that the linguistic con-straints on the quotative variants are generally equivalent in both varieties This ldquointer-variety parallelismrdquo (Tagliamonte 2002 739) which has been pointed out before by Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999) and Buchstaller (2004) shall suffice here to satisfy the methodological prerequisite of establishing comparable data points and to justify the claim that we are in fact looking at the same variants in both varieties It has also provided empirical evidence that the globalization pro-cess has resulted in the same outcome in Britain and the USA at least with respect to two linguistic constraints As regards the enquoting of mimesis and speech thought rendition the innovative quotative variants have generally taken on the same functional niche in both varieties in the process of their global spread (see Buchstaller 2004 for more global constraints)

6 The locally specific factors

Thus far we have established two globally stable constraints of be like and go How-ever globalization research has shown that instead of simply accepting or rejecting an innovation potential adopters are often active participants in the diffusion


process struggling to give meaning to the new idea as the innovation is applied to their local context (see eg Rogers 2003 17) A fully accountable study of the global reality of these variants should therefore ask whether the adoption of the linguistic innovations goes hand in hand with increasing localization or reinven-tion Blommaert (2003 609) has pointed out that finding the particular local niche on which globalization processes have an impact in different national varieties is an important task of sociolinguistics because it ldquooffer(s) a first clue about what globalized sociolinguistic phenomena mean to identifiable groups of people and about what these people can actually do with itrdquo In order to grasp the full local reality of globally available resources we therefore need to know who uses them to what effect and what perceptions the use of such variants triggers The following paragraphs will address each of these questions in turn starting with their usage

7 The intralinguistic local factors

Careful discourse analytic analysis reveals that the globalization of these two quotatives entails locally specific processes Elsewhere I have shown that be like and go have each assumed a number of major idiosyncrasies in the varieties under investigation (Buchstaller 2004) Here I will discuss two cases in point in which these variants have taken on a locally specific pattern (i) the ability of go to encode a surface addressee and (ii) the collocation of like with verbs of quotation These findings lead me to suggest that speakers in these two localities routinize globally available resources in a localized way I take this to mean that speakers participate in global trends but do so in an idiosyncratic and locally specific manner

71 The encoding of a surface addressee

Individual quotative frames differ with respect to a number of structural proper-ties such as person tense and aspect marking In this paper I will concentrate on the valency of the verb A prototypical quotative frame (Buchstaller 2004) does not encode a surface addressee It usually takes the sequence exemplified in (19)

(19) Speaker Quotative Verb ldquoQuoterdquo ie Mary said ldquohellordquo

An alternative way to report past behavior is to encode the addressee of the quoted speech act in the quotative frame This results in the sequence in (20)

(20) Speaker Quotative Verb Addressee ldquoQuoterdquo ie He told my mum ldquoshersquos crazyrdquo


Here the surface addressee is encoded in the NP my mum Applying these struc-tural parameters to quotative go we note that the sequence Speaker go ldquoQuoterdquo occurs both in the USA and in Britain (21) and (22) exemplify

Speaker Go ldquoQuoterdquo

(21) UK And everybody was going ldquoEmma who are you going on holiday withrdquo shersquos going ldquoher boyfriendrdquo

(22) USA And she goes ldquooh um I was just getting (hellip) some lemonsrdquo

Importantly however the data reveal a locally specific pattern Only the speak-ers in my British data use quotative go in the sequence Speaker go Addressee ldquoQuoterdquo Examples (23) and (24) demonstrate go in this construction with a first and a third person addressee

Speaker Go Addressee ldquoQuoterdquo

(23) A She goes ldquodid you see I went joggingrdquo I said ldquoyeahrdquo B of course yoursquod heard A and shersquos going to me ldquow-well will you speak to her todayrdquo and Irsquom going ldquowell yeahrdquo

(24) X And I mean my brother was terrified in case the police had said you know

Y uh huh X had said anything to me mom and dad Y uh huh X I mean now they would just go to the police ldquoehhhhrdquo you know15

Overall the British English data yields 4 tokens of go with a surface addressee (out of the 291 go-quotations which amounts to 137)16 Three of the tokens are from

15 Note that in (24) the previous context (which I have not depicted here due to its length) makes clear that they are already situated in direct proximity to the police A telic movement towards the officers is therefore ruled out In fact the narrator makes it very clear that they are far too close to the police to be comfortable

16 The other examples of go with a surface addressee in the British data are

X they were saying they knew like like ldquodoesnrsquot doesnrsquot that have to have trainingldquo or anything and ehh we went trsquo Mr Duns whorsquod done the training ldquooh so I was wondering how you like know how good you arerdquo but he says hersquos not bothered about match he says he just give you a half to see if you are any good


(two different) Derby speakers and one is from a speaker from Newcastle In spite of the fact that the US corpus is at least 4 times bigger than the British English corpus it does not contain a single example of go with a direct addressee17 In order to test whether the absence of the sequence go + Addressee is specific to the Switchboard corpus or whether we can generalize this finding I decided to probe other US corpora collected in a range of time-slots neither the Santa Barbara Cor-pus of Spoken English (collected in 1988) nor the Stanford tape recorded corpus (collected in California in 19945 and 20045) revealed any instances of go with a surface addressee Perceptual information underlines the distributional data All speakers of US English I have ever queried about this construction tend to per-ceive go + Addressee as distinctly odd Hence although the numerical difference between the two varieties is obviously not statistically significant I would nev-ertheless like to argue that it is important This is for two reasons both of which are theoretical Firstly any investigation of an innovation mdash linguistic as well as cultural mdash at the stage of its incipient adoption will evidently find that newcomers do not occur at levels that achieve statistical significance and much less do the cross-cutting constraints that govern their use However I am not alone in arguing that only a fully accountable sociolinguistics which claims responsibility for the entirety of our data can lead to a complete understanding of linguistic variability This applies not only to the investigation of incipient linguistic trends but also and maybe even more so to our understanding of the further development of these trends once these have been statistically ratified by reaching our arbitrary self-imposed p-levels (see also Cheshire 1987 2004 Bucholtz 2000 Cheshire Kerswill and Williams 2005)18

X not if I goes in the carB ha ha hababy [((noise))A [maybeB [going to Josh ldquohe has to be out at the weekdaysrdquoA ha ha haX blimey

17 Low token numbers are a problem endemic to studies on morphosyntactic and discourse variants and particularly to variables that have numerous variants (Macaulay 2002) So while there are overall thousands of quotations in the Switchboard corpus only about 8 of them are go (none of which contains a surface addressee neither out of the 80 quotations in the balanced sample nor by the 234 go-quotations in the whole Switchboard corpus)

18 Note eg conversation analytic (CA) methodology where ldquodeviantrdquo cases rather than being set aside from analysis and branded ldquooutliersrdquo are taken seriously and are to be incorporated into an account of more general mdash or global mdash sequences This is because within the theoretical framework of CA it is assumed that low frequency cases can reveal something about the more


Secondly Massey in a critical review of empirical social science after the quantificational revolution contends that one of its shortcomings is that ldquothe general and the neutral took precedence over the specific the individual and the uniquerdquo (1984 5) She argues cogently I believe that in order to appreciate the richness and specificity of spatiality we cannot reduce space ldquoto the simple (but quantifiable) notion of distancerdquo (5) In this particular case at hand I would like to argue that attending to incipient local low frequency patterns of go in a corpus of spoken British English might reveal an interesting routinization process during the emergence of new local routines Go can take an overtly expressed or surface addressee in the British English data whereas it seems that in the US corpus go (still) has co-occurrence restrictions This finding has led me to suggest that the patterning evidenced in the data might be due to a cross-varietal difference in the incipient adoption patterns of go Obviously more research is needed in order to test whether the incipient pattern reported here persists in the UK and whether a parallel form is currently developing in the USA On the basis of the available data however it appears that speakers of different varieties are routinizing glob-ally available linguistic resources in a localized way This outcome will be paral-leled in the following discussion of be like

72 The collocation of like with verbs of quotation

Until now I have referred to the quotative frame as be like mainly because in both varieties quotative like most frequently occurs with a conjugated form of the verb to be (25) and (26) exemplify this construction

Be Like (25) USA And she was like ldquooh God he does this all the timerdquo (26) UK I was like ldquogo away from merdquo

However like also regularly combines with ldquotraditionalrdquo verbs of quotation in the quotative frame Such collostructions (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003) have been commented on in the literature as ldquomixed formsrdquo (Macaulay 2001) or ldquotransitional formsrdquo (Singler 2001) This results in sequences of the form exemplified in (27)

ldquofinegrained aspects of the hellip sequencerdquo (Schegloff 1972b 357) Similarly Johnstone (1987 33) argues for the importance of a microanalytic approach insisting that ldquoquantitative analyses hellip must be supplemented with qualitative microanalyses of what individual speakers do in particu-lar situationsrdquo This is because ldquorhetorical microanalyses of some of the data can explain aspects hellip which quantitative analysis leaves unexplainedrdquo (35)


(27) Subject Quotative Verb like ldquoQuoterdquo19

ie I said like ldquohellordquo

Investigating the patterning of like-collocations across the two spatially discontinu-ous communities yields a localized pattern While speakers in both varieties use collostructions with like the distributional preferences are different across localities Table 1 displays the distribution of these collostructions in the USA and in UK data The last row depicts the proportional rate of collostructions per all quotations framed by like (this count includes all be like frames as well as the combined forms)

Table 1 Collocation patterns of like in two varieties

Collocations US English Collocations British Englishsay like 2 say like 14think like 3 think like 7tell like 1 go like 4feel like 76 feel like 3Σ 82 Σ 28 of all quotes framed by like

3590 of all quotes framed by like

1880

Starting with the last row of the table to ldquodeal with proportions in order to com-pare rates consistently and accountably across data setsrdquo (Tagliamonte 2002 737) we note that like collocates much more frequently with verbs of quotation in the USA where the frequency of collostructions per all produced like-quotes is 359 (vs 188 in the UK) But even the raw numbers reveal important differences in the distribution of like-collocations In the UK where like co-occurs with a variety of verbs of quotation the most prevalent collocant is say (with which it collocates half of the time) In the USA however like seems to very much specialize with feel which makes up 93 of all collostructions (76 tokens)

The following snippets exemplify the prototypical collocations of like and quotative verbs in the two varieties Example (28) shows like with feel in the USA and example (29) demonstrates its combination with say in the UK

19 It has to be pointed out that like can function as a discourse maker as well as a quota-tive (cf Underhill 1988 Romaine and Lange 1991 DrsquoArcy 2005) According to Schiffrin (1987 31) discourse markers are ldquosequentially dependent elements which bracket units of talk and which are independent of sentential structurerdquo (emphasis mine) Due to its inherent ambiguity and multifunctionality a delimitation of the functions of like as it occurs in discourse is beyond the scope of this paper For more details on like in its various functions see the discussions in Buchstaller (2004) and DrsquoArcy (2005) The discussion reported here refers to all instances of like a multifunctional lexeme with quotative potential in the above sequence Subject quotative verb like ldquoQuoterdquo


(28) Prototypical case USA Feel Like Irsquove got a few plants here but Irsquom not really knowledgeable I feel real good if I water them and they continue to grow you know I feel like ldquooh Irsquove accomplished somethingrdquo

(29) Prototypical case UK Say Like They are saying now ldquobut why this this is this and why this is thatrdquo well you see them and then you say like ldquowell what am I supposed to do if I had money in my pocket if I went out and looked for workrdquo

Hence while like can collocate with verbs of saying as well as verbs of mental activity speakers of different varieties seem to prefer one or the other collocation This result is not as unexpected as it first seems As I have demonstrated above (see 11ndash18) quotative like can frame reported speech as well as thought Thus insofar as like has the potential to combine freely with quotes of both modi it is not sur-prising that as localized groups of speakers start using and thereby conventional-izing globally available linguistic resources locally specific collocational patterns boil out in different locales

In sum while some intralinguistic constraints on like and go hold globally (mi-mesis representation speech and thought encoding) the local variety also plays an important role in the incipient linguistic development of these new quotatives (cf also Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 Macaulay 2001) Go shows incipient variety-specific behavior with respect to the encoding of a surface addressee like collocates differently with verbs of quotation These findings give reason to believe that the development of like and go to quotative introducers is starting to assume locally in-dependent forms They furthermore suggest that while the ldquofact of a variantrdquo (Mey-erhoff and Niedzielski 2002) may occur in different localities the details of its re-ception are emergent in the emplaced social networks in which it is used locally

On the intralinguistic sector there is thus evidence for globalization as well as localization Let us now investigate the social reality and the ideological underpin-ning of globalization processes

73 The social factors

The global spread of innovative quotatives opens up a whole range of questions on the social level Who uses these linguistic innovations and where Is the distributional and perceptual social load of traveling resources constant across localities What are the social functions that people assign locally to globally available resources Let us first investigate the social distribution of the quotative


innovations in the two varieties under investigation Table 2 displays the pattern-ing of like and go in the USA data according to three social parameters age20 gender and class

Table 2 Percentage of use of the new quotatives go (N = 80) and like (N = 121) in US English shown by age gender and class of speakers Significant results (as determined by a χ2 analysis p lt 05) are in bold

Age Gender Class young old female male MC WClike 1276 358 996 748 623 1086go 739 375 633 553 624 536

This table is to be read as follows Starting from the left hand side top corner of all quotatives used by young people in the USA 1276 are framed by like of all quotatives used by older people only 358 are framed by like A glance at table 2 reveals that like and go pattern by age in the USA both are mainly used by younger speakers Like does not pattern by gender but it patterns by class it is used much more by the working class speakers (1086 vs 623 p lt 05) Go on the other hand is not significantly constrained by gender or class

Do we find the same social constraints in the British English corpus at the point in time when like was first introduced into the UK in 19945 Let us now consider Table 3

Table 3 Percentage of use of the new quotatives go (N= 264) and like (N= 93) in British English by age gender and class of speakers Significant results (as determined by a χ2 analysis p lt 05) are in bold


As in the USA like and go pattern by age in Derby and Newcastle with young-er speakers being unsurprisingly the main users of the innovations (678 and 1884 vs 04 and 189) However like does not have a gender or class effect in the UK Interestingly go which was not significantly constrained by gender or

20 The Derby and Newcastle corpora came tagged for age in two categories young (16ndash24 years) and old (45ndash65 years) in Newcastle and (14ndash27) and (38ndash69) in Derby The Switchboard provided the birth year of the speakers In order to achieve general comparability with the age range chosen in the Derby and Newcastle corpora the US English speakers were subdivided into two broad age groups +minus 45 (with no speaker between ages 38 and 45)


class in the USA patterns by both in Derby and Newcastle It is used more by the female and the middle class speakers These results are significant at the 01 level

In sum while age is the only factor that consistently holds the two quotatives have a rather different social reality in the two corpora A comparative view of the local social distribution of like and go provides supportive evidence for the find-ings reported above for the linguistic constraints While some constraints hold globally (age in this case) the two globally spreading variants also display variety-specific patterning we cannot generalize social facts across the Atlantic

This finding squares perfectly with Lintonrsquos (1936) early claim that

because of its subjective nature [social] meaning is much less susceptible to diffu-sion than either form or [function] hellip A receiving culture attaches new meaning to the borrowed element of complexes and these may have little relation to the meaning which the same elements carried in their original settings

Bell (1984) has shown in detail that the diffusion and adoption of innovations tend to go hand in hand with a number of important socio-psychological factors Let us now explore the local assignment of perceptual information to like and go focus-ing on the overt attitudes and stereotypes held by locally defined groups of people towards the users of these globally spreading resources21

Research on quotative likersquos perceptual load in the USA reports that ldquoin gen-eral the respondents found hellip the use of like to be indicative of middle class teen-age girls Typical epithets to describe like hellip were lsquovacuousrsquo lsquosillyrsquo lsquoairheadedrsquo lsquoCali-forniarsquordquo (Blyth Recktenwald and Wang 1990 224) Furthermore several studies report that often contrary to the linguistic reality lay informants in the USA tend to perceive like rather as a feature of female speech (Lange 1986 Romaine and Lange 1991 Dailey-OrsquoCain 2000) In a nutshell in the USA like is tied to young middle class women and often associated with California Socio-psychological information on quotative go however is relatively scarce According to the little information we find in the literature in the USA it is clearly and stereotypically as-sociated with lower class male speech style and it is considered a ldquo lsquoblue-collarrsquo fea-turerdquo (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 160 see also Blyth Recktenwald and Wang 1990 Ferrara and Bell 1995) Go also features in the list of all time banished words as early as 1988 where it gets a number one placement for most nominations22 Hence in the USA go tends to be tied to working class men

Let us now compare these findings to the perceptions of like and go after their spread to the UK Table 4 summarizes the overt attitudes or stereotypes towards

21 Elsewhere I have discussed the perceptual load of globally traveling features such as like and go in more detail (Buchstaller 2006)

22 lthttpwwwlssuedubanishedposters1988pdfgt


like and go amongst respondents from Britain and the USA with respect to a num-ber of social traits The chart is based on the findings reported in Blyth Reckten-wald and Wang (1990) Dailey-OrsquoCain (2000) and Buchstaller (2006)

Table 4 Overt attitudes towards like and go in two varieties of English

USA UKLike + young + young

+ MC + WC+ female +ndash female

Go + WC + MC+ ndash young + young+ male +ndash male

A comparison of the stereotypes towards like and go in two localities reveals that the assignment of attitudes to innovative global features is quite complex While some perceptual features hold globally there are also a number of marked differ-ences namely class and gender assignment For example like-users are perceived by both UK and US informants as young But while the US informants associ-ate like rather with middle class and female speakers in the UK it is mainly per-ceived as working class and associated with either gender Go while associated with working class males of any age in the USA is perceived to be used by young middle class speakers in the UK and not assigned to any gender Note that these perceptions do not always tie in with the variantsrsquo distributional patterning (cf Tables 2 and 3)23

In sum one of the folk perceptions carried by like and go is consistent across the Atlantic (namely age) But there are also important differences in how these features are perceived by informants in different locales I take this to mean that British speakers even when taking on innovative features are not simply borrow-ing the social attitudes attached to these quotatives wholesale Rather local and global indexicalities hold simultaneously This finding concurs with Linton (1936) as well as with Blommaertrsquos (2001) and Maryns and Blommaertrsquos (2001) findings

23 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that the assignment of perceptions to these features when they first arrive in the UK is a rather complex affair The association might be either with the (assumed or real) profile of the US user or the profile of the UK adopt-ers However there is also the possibility that the first adopters do not shape the perceptions attached to these imported items because they might not be embedded in the social networks needed to distribute such associations and might not be the ones who do most of the diffus-ing (see Labov 1966 Chambers 2003) Hence the social associations attached to such globally spreading features might be rather short-lived and not necessarily routinized in local networks (see Buchstaller 2006)


that when linguistic resources travel around the globe their evaluation or mean-ing often does not move alongside with them

Taken together the investigation of the global spread of like and go paints a complex but consistent picture While some perceptual and distributional con-straints do hold globally the overreaching finding is that the stereotypes function-al and social constraints on the newcomer quotatives are far from similar across varieties If the innovative quotatives have been borrowed from the USA into Brit-ain as has been claimed in the literature the results presented here suggest that not all of the linguistic and social information has been transferred to the receptor variety Note in this respect Macaulay (2001 17) who questions whether anything more than the mere surface information (ie the fact of the variable itself) spreads in global space Indeed the findings presented here give reason to assume that at least some of the social and functional load of like and go is actively (re)created during the adoption process by speakers in their respective localized variety Note that the above argument is congruous with models that have adduced discontinu-ous intergenerational transmission as the explanatory parameter for diachronic language change (Janda 2001 Hopper and Traugott 2003) There it is assumed that a child hears feature x produced with a frequency of n (and governed by constraints y and z) in its social surround By carrying on the change but reinter-preting it (in terms of frequency host-lexeme andor constraints) young linguistic agents can participate in ambient trends while still asserting their own identity via innovative overextension or reinterpretation In the same vein the inter-local transmission of linguistic trends depends on global participation in a stable core of surface structures (and constraints) that goes hand in hand with local adapta-tion and reinterpretation Conceptualizing participation in global linguistic pro-cesses as acts of conformity as well as rebellion seems advantageous since it affords a better view into the ldquoactive meaning productionrdquo (Barker 2000 107) in which localized speakers are involved during the adoption process of globally available linguistic resources

8 Discussion

The received wisdom within sociolinguistics at least used to be that linguistic innovations do not spread via the media mdash with the notable exception of lexical innovations such as slang words or terms for technical or cultural innovations (see Milroy and Milroy 1985 Trudgill 1986 1988)24 Eckert (2004 395) comments

24 Milroy (2007) has pointed out that long distance diffusion has been observable long before the emergence of the broadcast media or the internet


We have all been told by our non-linguist acquaintances that language change comes from the television The idea that language change could be accomplished in such a trivial fashion is part of the popular lsquobag lsquoo wordsrsquo view of language hellip that wersquore all tired of dealing with However we shouldnrsquot ignore the possibility that not all changes are equal We need to ask ourselves what kinds of changes require the kind of repeated exposure that regular social interactions give and what kind can be taken right off the shelf

Eckertrsquos basic idea mirrors Rogersrsquo (2003 219ndash20) contention that research in the past tended to regard all innovations as equivalent units irrespective of their channel of transmission and trajectory What Eckert and Rogers appear to pro-pose is that it is heuristically advantageous for diffusion research to conceptually differentiate between ldquooff the shelf changesrdquo ie changes that are transmitted with no or relatively little interpersonal contact and ldquounder the counter changesrdquo ie ldquochanges which require repeated exposure provided by regular social interactionrdquo (Milroy 2007)

The data presented here seem to suggest that like and go contrary to the hype in the media are not simple cases of ldquooff the shelf changesrdquo While they have indeed spread to numerous varieties world-wide in a very short time span and through often limited or no interpersonal contact they have not been adopted wholesale by the speakers in the receptor variety And we might be able to explain the local-ized globalization of like and go by drawing on research that investigates different forms of contact and knowledge transfer Britain (2002 see also Hannerz 1992 Eckert 2000) importantly I think has drawn our attention to the necessity of conceptualizing spatiality and therefore the possibility of contact across space as much as possible from the viewpoints of the main innovators namely adolescents Spatial distance he argues is perceived very differently by people with the (fi-nancial infra-structural) means to transverse it So while there is indeed a large amount of intercontinental travel between the USA and the UK which leads to sustained face-to-face contact in spite of the distance in Euclidean space this op-portunity is heavily biased towards the adult population The intercontinental con-tacts of adolescents on the other hand rely almost exclusively on meditated forms of communication (e-mail IM blogs wikis TV etc) And while these forms of contact might well be just as frequent and intense or even more so than interper-sonal communication they remain nevertheless mediated

Social theorists tend to distinguish connections in networks that are based on face-to-face connections from those that are mediated via various ldquomaterial worldsrdquo (Urry 2003 52) establishing important correlations between the form of contact and the amount and type of knowledge transfer (see also Gibson and Rogers 1994


von Hippel 1994 Audretsch 2000 Rogers 2003)25 Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2002 2003) drawing on von Hippel (1994) argue that there is a fundamental difference between mere information transmission and the transfer of what has been called ldquotacitrdquo or ldquohigh contextrdquo knowledge They suggest that while simple information mdash ie the fact of a variant mdash might indeed spread through limited or even without interpersonal contact ldquotacitrdquo or ldquohigh context knowledgerdquo mdash such as the linguistic constraints of the variant and the common ideologies attached to it mdash might not be transferable without sustained local face-to-face networks

The results of this study on the global transmission of like and go might be taken to support this position Information such as the surface form of the variant and some general constraints has been dispersed supra-locally in all probability mainly via the media However more specific ldquohigh contextrdquo knowledge such as their social meaning or the way these innovations are used in discourse is cre-ated in and through the local routinization of the information namely in the UK and the USA This provides a powerful argument for the importance of sustained face-to-face networks in the transmission of high context tacit knowledge about innovations (Meyerhoff and Niedzielski 2002)

9 Conclusion

In an important monograph on global complexity Urry (2003 40) cautions that globally emergent properties tend not to be unified or static Indeed Rogers (2003 183) offers the generalization ldquothe general picture that emerges from studies of re-invention is that an innovation is not a fixed entity Instead people who use an in-novation shape it by giving it meaningrdquo The results of this case study on the global spread of two innovative linguistic variants further underlines this claim The adoption of globally available linguistic resources brings about slightly different effects in specific locally defined circumstances The surface form like or go in-deed globalizes but their social and functional realities are re-created by localized groups of speakers who adopt and routinize the newcomers in a locally specific way I agree with Eckert (2000) Johnstone (2004) and Milroy (2007) that only an ethnographic analysis can reveal who the speakers are that first adopt the innova-tive features in the respective varieties and spread them locally More research needs to be done on how global innovations are adopted in local communities of

25 Note the obvious link to the concept of density in networks studies which also correlates with information transfer (Milroy and Milroy 1985 Milroy 1987) However network studies tend not to focus mdash traditionally at least mdash on differences in medium of communication (see also Bloomfield 1933 Gumperz 1974 47)


various sizes and how and if they get transmitted across social space (Rogers 2003) What this paper has attempted to do was to point out some of the sociolinguistic details of the adaptive process through which one particular global change is cre-atively and actively espoused by speakers (undoubtedly engaged in face-to-face as well as meditated networks) in two spatially discontinuous varieties Interestingly the process and outcomes of globalization parallels findings from levelling which have also shown locally specific results of such contact

More generally findings such as the ones reported here showcase the relativity and negotiability of linguistic resources on the linguistic and social plane (Ramp-ton 1995 2001 Blommaert 2003) Once we are looking at the global displacement of linguistic resources the ldquopresupposability of functions [becomes problematic since] hellip the functions that particular ways of speaking will perform hellip become less and less a matter of surface inspection and some of the biggest errors (and injustices) may be committed by simply projecting locally valid functions onto the ways of speaking of people helliprdquo (Blommaert 2003 615) Furthermore the finding that micro and macro processes are linked together through a dynamic relation-ship suggests that US English does not simply impose itself Rather it offers lin-guistic material that can enter the repertoire of the speakers in another locality as a resource to be filled with linguistic and social meaning

The investigation of linguistic adaptation processes leading to new local rou-tines in two geographically discrete varieties has allowed us a glimpse of the means speakers have at their disposition in order to create negotiate and delimit spatiality linguistically Cumulatively sociolinguistic research on the cusp of global and local tensions will hopefully bring us some way towards understanding of the ldquodifference that space makesrdquo (Sayer 1984 49 see also Massey 1984 1985 Cochrane 1987)

Transcription Conventions

carriage return intonation unit(hellip) pause lengthening according to its duration high rise appeal intonation mid rise continuing intonation low fall final intonationldquo rdquo signals for start and end of quotew-w restart[ overlapping speech


References

Andersen Gisle 1996 ldquoThey like wanna see like how we talk and all that The use of like as a discourse marker in London teenage speechrdquo Magnus Ljung ed Corpus-based Studies in English Papers from the 17th International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora (ICAME 17) Stockholm Rodopi 37ndash48

Audretsch David 2000 ldquoKnowledge globalization and regions An economistrsquos perspectiverdquo In John H Dunning ed Regions Globalisation and the Knowledge-based Economy Oxford Oxford University Press 63ndash81

Axford Barrie 1995 The Global System Economics Politics and Culture Oxford Polity Pressmdashmdashmdash 2000 ldquoThe idea of global culturerdquo In Beynon and Dunkerley eds 105ndash7Baker Zipporah David Cockeram Esther Danks Mercedes Durham William Haddican and

Louise Tyler 2006 ldquoThe expansion of lsquobe likersquo Real time evidence from Englandrdquo Paper presented at NWAV 35 The Ohio State University Columbus

Barbieri Federica 2005 ldquoQuotative use in American English A corpus-based cross-register comparisonrdquo Journal of English Linguistics 33 222ndash56

Barker Chris 2000 ldquoPostmodern popular culturerdquo In Beynon and Dunkerley eds 107ndash9Beynon John and David Dunkerley eds 2000 Globalization The Reader London AthloneBell Allan 1984 ldquoLanguage style as audience designrdquo Language in Society 13 145ndash204Bhaba Homi K 1994 The Location of Cultures London RoutledgeBlommaert Jan 1999 Language Ideologial Debates Berlin Mouton de Gruytermdashmdashmdash 2001 ldquoInvestigating narrative inequality African asylum seekersrsquo stories in Belgiumrdquo

Discourse and Society 12 413ndash49mdashmdashmdash 2003 ldquoA sociolinguistics of globalization Commentaryrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 7

607ndash23Bloomfield Leonard 1933 Language New York HoltBlyth Carl Sigrid Recktenwald and Jenny Wang 1990 ldquoIrsquom like lsquoSay what rsquo A new quotative

in American oral narrativerdquo American Speech 65 215ndash27Britain David 2002 ldquoSpace and spatial diffusionrdquo In JK Chambers Peter Trudgill and Natalie

Schilling-Estes eds 603ndash37mdashmdashmdash 2004 ldquoGeolinguistics mdash Diffusion of languagerdquo In Ulrich Ammon Norbert Dittmar

Klaus Mattheier and Peter Trudgill eds Sociolinguistics International Handbook of the Sci-ence of Language and Society Berlin Mouton de Gruyter 34ndash48

Bucholtz Mary 2000 ldquoLanguage and youth culturerdquo American Speech 75 280ndash3Buchstaller Isabelle 2004 ldquoThe sociolinguistic constraints on the quotative system mdash US Eng-

lish and British English comparedrdquo PhD dissertation University of Edinburghmdashmdashmdash 2006 ldquoSocial stereotypes personality traits and regional perception displaced Attitudes

towards the lsquonewrsquo quotatives in the UKrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 362ndash81mdashmdashmdash and Alexandra DrsquoArcy 2007 ldquoLocalized globalization A multi-local multivariate in-

vestigation of quotative likerdquo Paper presented at NWAV 36 University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia

Butters Ronald 1980 ldquoNarrative Go lsquoSayrsquordquo American Speech 55 304ndash7mdashmdashmdash 1982 Editorrsquos note [on be like lsquothinkrsquo] American Speech 57 149Chambers JK 2003 Sociolinguistic Theory Malden MA Blackwellmdashmdashmdash Peter Trudgill and Natalie Schilling-Estes eds 2002 The Handbook of Language Varia-

tion and Change Oxford Blackwell


Cheshire Jenny 1987 ldquoSyntactic variation the linguistic variable and sociolinguistic theoryrdquo Linguistics 25 257ndash82

mdashmdashmdash 2004 ldquoOld and new cultures in contact Approaches to the study of syntactic variation and changerdquo Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium University of Newcastle Newcastle

mdashmdashmdash Paul Kerswill and Ann Williams 2005 ldquoOn the non-convergence of phonology gram-mar and discourserdquo In Peter Auer Frans Hinskens and Paul Kerswill eds Dialect Change Convergence and Divergence in European Languages Cambridge Cambridge University Press 135ndash67

Cochrane Allan 1987 ldquoWhat a difference a place makes The new structuralism of localityrdquo Antipode 19 354ndash63

DrsquoArcy Alexandra 2005 ldquoLike Syntax and developmentrdquo PhD dissertation University of Toronto

Dailey-OrsquoCain Jennifer 2000 ldquoThe sociolinguistic distribution and attitudes towards focuser like and quotative likerdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 4 60ndash80

Dines Elizabeth 1980 ldquoVariation in discourse mdash lsquoand stuff like thatrsquordquo Language in Society 9 13ndash31

Eckert Penelope 1989 Jocks and Burnouts Social Categories and Identity in a High School New York London Teachers College Press

mdashmdashmdash 1997 ldquoAge as a sociolinguistic variablerdquo In Florian Coulmas ed The Handbook of Socio-linguistics Oxford Blackwell 151ndash67

mdashmdashmdash 2000 Linguistic Variation as Social Practise Oxford Blackwellmdashmdashmdash 2004 ldquoElephants in the roomrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 392ndash7Entrikin Nicolas J 1991 The Betweenness of Place Towards a Geography of Modernity Balti-

more The Johns Hopkins University PressFeatherstone Mike 1990 Global Culture Nationalism Globalization and Modernity London

Sagemdashmdashmdash 2000 ldquoOne worldrdquo In Beynon and Dunkerley eds 100ndash2Ferrara Kathleen and Barbara Bell 1995 ldquoSociolinguistic variation and discourse function of

constructed dialogue introducers The case of be + likerdquo American Speech 70 265ndash90Foulkes Paul and Gerard Docherty 1999 ldquoIntroductionrdquo In Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty

eds 1ndash24mdashmdashmdash and mdashmdashmdash eds 1999 Urban Voices Accent Studies in the British Isles London ArnoldGibson David and Everett Rogers 1994 RampD Consortia on Trial Boston Harvard Business

School PressGiddens Anthony 1984 The Constitution of Society Outline of the Theory of Structuration

Cambridge Cambridge University Pressmdashmdashmdash 1990 The Consequences of Modernity Stanford Stanford University Pressmdashmdashmdash 1991 Modernity and Self-identity Cambridge Polity PressGivon Talmy 1979 On Understanding Grammar New York San Francisco London Academic

PressGoffman Erving 1981 Forms of Talk Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania PressGuumlldemann Thomas 2001 ldquoQuotative constructions in African languages A synchronic and

diachronic surveyrdquo Habilitationsschrift University of LeipzigGumperz John 1972 ldquoTypes of linguistic communitiesrdquo In Joshua Fishman ed Readings in the

Sociology of Language The Hague Mouton de Gruyter 460ndash72


mdashmdashmdash 1974 ldquoLinguistic and social interaction in two communitiesrdquo In Ben G Blount ed Lan-guage Culture and Society Cambridge MA Winthrop

Hanks William 1996 Language and Communicative Practices Boulder CO WestviewHannerz Ulf 1992 Cultural Complexity Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning New

York Columbia University PressHernaacutendez-Campoy Juan Manuel 1999 Geolinguumliacutestica Modelos de Interpretacioacuten Geograacutefica

para Linguumlistas Murcia Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de MurciaHeine Bernd and Mechthild Reh 1984 Grammaticalization and Reanalysis in African Languag-

es Hamburg Buske VerlagHopper Paul and Elizabeth Traugott 2003 Grammaticalization Cambridge Cambridge Uni-

versity PressJanda Richard 2001 ldquoBeyond lsquopathwaysrsquo and lsquounidirectionalityrsquo On the discontinuity of lan-

guage transmission and the counterability of grammaticalizationrdquo Language Sciences 23 265ndash340

Johnstone Barbara 1987 ldquo lsquoHe sayshellipso I saidrsquo Verb tense alternations and narrative depictions of authority in American Englishrdquo Linguistics 25 33ndash52

mdashmdashmdash 2004 ldquoPlace globalization and linguistic variationrdquo In Carmen Fought ed Sociolinguis-tic Variation Critical Reflections Oxford Oxford University Press 65ndash83

Joseph May 1999 ldquoIntroduction New hybrid identities and performancerdquo In May Joseph and Jennifer N Fink eds Performing Hybridity University of Minnesota Press 1ndash24

Kachru Braj 1982 The Other Tongue English Across Cultures Urbana University of Illinois Press

Katz Elihu 1999 ldquoTheorizing diffusion Tarde and Sorokin revisitedrdquo The Annals 566 144ndash55Kerswill Paul 2003 ldquoDialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British Englishrdquo In David

Britain and Jenny Cheshire eds Social Dialectology In Honour of Peter Trudgill Amster-dam Philadelphia Benjamins 223ndash43

Klewitz Gabriele and Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen 1999 ldquoQuote-Unquote The role of prosody in the contextualization of reported speech sequencesrdquo Journal of Pragmatics 4 459ndash85

Labov William 1966 The Social Stratification of English in New York City Washington DC Center for Applied Linguistics

mdashmdashmdash 1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Pressmdashmdashmdash 1978 Where Does the Linguistic Variable Stop A Response to Beatrice Lavandera

(Working Papers in Sociolinguistics 44) Austin TX Southwest Educational Development Library

Lange Deborah 1986 ldquoAttitudes of teenagers towards sex-marked languagerdquo Unpublished manuscript Georgetown University

Lavandera Beatrice 1978 ldquoWhere does the sociolinguistic variable stoprdquo Language and Society 7 171ndash82

Lehmann Christian 1982 Thoughts on Grammaticalization A Programmatic Sketch Vol I Koumlln Universitaumlt zu Koumlln Institut fuumlr Sprachwissenschaft [expanded version 1995 Muumlnchen Lincom Europa]

Linton Ralph 1936 The Study of Man New York Appleton-CenturyMacaulay Ronald 2001 ldquoYoursquore like lsquowhy notrsquo The quotative expression of Glasgow adoles-

centsrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 5 3ndash21mdashmdashmdash 2002 ldquoDiscourse variationrdquo In Chambers Trudgill and Schilling-Estes eds 283ndash305Machin David and Theo van Leeuwen 2003 ldquoGlobal schemas and local discourses in Cosmo-

politanrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 493ndash512


Maryns Katrijn and Jan Blommaert 2001 ldquoStylistic and thematic shifting as a narrative re-source Assessing asylum seekersrsquo repertoiresrdquo Multilingua 20 61ndash84

Massey Doreen 1984 ldquoIntroduction Geography mattersrdquo In Doreen Massey and John Allen eds Geography Matters Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1ndash11

mdashmdashmdash 1985 ldquoNew directions in spacerdquo In Derek Gregory and John Urry eds Spatial Relations and Spatial Structures London Macmillan 9ndash19

McGrew Anthony 1992 ldquoConceptualizing global politicsrdquo In Anthony McGrew and Paul Lewis eds Global Politics Globalization and the Nation State Cambridge Polity Press 1ndash28

Meyerhoff Miriam and Nancy Niedzielski 1998 ldquoThe syntax and semantics of olsem in Bisla-mardquo In Matthew Pearson ed Recent Papers in Austronesian Linguistics Los Angeles UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics 235ndash43

mdashmdashmdash and mdashmdashmdash 2002ldquoStandards the media and language changerdquo Paper presented at NWAVE 31 Stanford University Palo AltoCA

mdashmdashmdash and mdashmdashmdash 2003 ldquoThe globalization of vernacular variationrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 534ndash55

Milroy Jim and Lesley Milroy 1985 ldquoLinguistic change social network and speaker innovationrdquo Journal of Linguistics 21 339ndash84

Milroy Lesley 1987 Language and Social Networks Oxford Blackwellmdashmdashmdash 2004 ldquoThe accents of the valiant Why are some sound changes more accessible than

othersrdquo Paper presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 15 University of Newcastle Newcastle

mdashmdashmdash 2007 ldquoOff the shelf or over the counter On the social dynamics of sound changesrdquo In Christopher Cain and Geoffrey Russom eds Studies in the History of the English Language 3 Berlin New York Mouton de Gruyter 149ndash72

mdashmdashmdash and James Milroy 1992 ldquoSocial network and social class Towards an integrated sociolin-guistic modelrdquo Language in Society 21 1ndash26

mdashmdashmdash mdashmdashmdash and Gerard Docherty 1997 ldquoPhonological variation and change in contempo-rary spoken British Englishrdquo Final Report to the Ecomic and Social Research Council R00 234892

Patrick Peter L 2002 ldquoThe speech communityrdquo In Chambers Trudgill and Schilling-Estes eds 573ndash97

Rampton Ben 1995 Crossing Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents London Longmanmdashmdashmdash 2001 ldquoCritique in interactionrdquo Critique of Anthropology 21 83ndash107Reed John Stelton 1982 One South An Ethnic Approach to the Regional Culture Baton Rouge

Louisiana State University PressRickford John and Faye McNair-Knox 1994 ldquoAddressee and topic-influenced style shift A

quantitative sociolinguistic studyrdquo In Douglas Biber and Ed Finegan eds Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register New York Oxford Oxford University Press 235ndash76

Rogers Everett M 2003 Diffusion of Innovations New York London Free Pressmdashmdashmdash JD Eveland and Constance A Klepper 1977 The Innovation Process in Public Organiza-

tions Mimeo Report Department of Journalism University of Michigan Ann ArborRomaine Suzanne ed 1982 Sociolinguistic Variation in Speech Communities London Arnoldmdashmdashmdash 1984 ldquoOn the problem of syntactic variation and pragmatic meaning in sociolinguistic

theoryrdquo Folia Linguistica 18 409ndash37mdashmdashmdash and Deborah Lange 1991 ldquoThe use of like as a marker of reported speech and thought

A case of grammaticalization in progressrdquo American Speech 66 227ndash79


Rose Mary and Lauren Hall-Lew 2004 ldquoLinguistic variation and the rural imaginaryrdquo Paper presented at NWAV 33 University of Michigan Ann Arbor

Sankoff Gillian 1980 ldquoAbove and beyond phonology in variable rulesrdquo In Gilian Sankoff ed The Social Life of Language Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 81ndash93

Santa Ana Otto and Claudia Parodiacute 1998 ldquoModeling the speech community Configuration and variable types in the Mexican Spanish settingrdquo Language in Society 27 23ndash51

Sayer Andrew 1984 ldquoThe difference that space makesrdquo In Derek Gregory and John Urry eds Social Relations and Spatial Structures London Macmillan 49ndash66

Schegloff Emmanuel 1972a ldquoNotes on a conversational practise Formulating placerdquo In David Sudnow ed Studies in Social Interaction New York Free Press 75ndash119

mdashmdashmdash 1972b ldquoSequencing in conversational interactionrdquo In John Gumperz and Dell Hymes eds Directions in Sociolinguistics New York Holt Rinehart and Winston 346ndash80

Schiffrin Deborah 1987 Discourse Markers Cambridge Cambridge University PressSchuerkens Ulrike 2003 ldquoThe sociological and anthropological study of globalization and lo-

calizationrdquo Current Sociology 51 209ndash22Seamon David 1979 A Geography of the Lifeworld Movement Rest and Encounter New York

St MartinSingler John 2001 ldquoWhy you canrsquot do a VABRUL study of quotatives and what such a study can

show usrdquo University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 7 257ndash78mdashmdashmdash and Laurie Woods 2002 ldquoThe use of (be) like quotatives in American and non-American

newspapersrdquo Paper presented at NWAVE 32 Stanford University Palo AltoCAStefanowitsch Anatol and Stefan Th Gries 2003 ldquoCollostructions Investigating the interaction

of words and constructionsrdquo International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8 209ndash43Street John 2000 ldquoThe myth of globalizationrdquo In Beynon and Dunkerley eds 103ndash4Stuart-Smith Jane 2002ndash5 ldquoContributory factors in accent change in adolescentsrdquo Economic

and Social Research Council Grant R000239757Tagliamonte Sali 2002 ldquoComparative sociolinguisticsrdquo In Chambers Trudgill and Schilling-

Estes eds 729ndash63mdashmdashmdash and Alexandra DrsquoArcy 2004 ldquoHersquos like shersquos like The quotative system in Canadian youthrdquo

Journal of Sociolinguistics 8 493ndash514mdashmdashmdash andmdashmdashmdash 2007 ldquoFrequency and variation in the community grammar Tracking a new

change through the generationsrdquo Language Variation and Change 19 199ndash217mdashmdashmdash and Rachel Hudson 1999 ldquoBe like et al beyond America The quotative system in British

and Canadian Youthrdquo Journal of Sociolinguistics 3 147ndash72Trudgill Peter 1986 Dialects in Contact Oxford Blackwellmdashmdashmdash 1988 ldquoNorwich revisited Recent linguistic changes in an English urban dialectrdquo English

World-Wide 9 33ndash49Underhill Robert 1988 ldquoLike is like focusrdquo American Speech 63 234ndash46Urry John 2003 Global Complexity Cambridge UK Polity Pressvon Hippel Eric 1994 ldquo lsquoSticky Informationrsquo and the locus of problem solving Implications for

innovationrdquo Management Science 40 429ndash39Walters Keith 2002 ldquoHow and why media language has altered the nature of variation in Ara-

bicrdquo Paper presented at NWAVE 31 Stanford University Palo AltoCAWatt Dominic 1998 ldquoVariation and change in the vowel system of Tyneside Englishrdquo PhD

dissertation University of Newcastlemdashmdashmdash and Leslie Milroy 1999 ldquoPatterns of variation and change in three Newcastle vowels Is

this dialect levelingrdquo In Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty eds 25ndash46


Weiner Judith and William Labov 1983 ldquoConstraints on the agentless passiverdquo Journal of Lin-guistics 19 29ndash58

Winford Donald 1996 ldquoThe problem of syntactic variationrdquo In Jennifer Arnold Reneacutee Blake Brad Davidson Scott Schwenter and Julie Solomon eds Sociolinguistic Variation Data Theory and Analysis Selected papers from NWAV 23 Stanford California CSLI Publica-tions 177ndash92

Wollons Roberta 2000 Kindergarden and Cultures The Global Diffusion of an Idea New Ha-ven CT Yale University Press

Authorrsquos address

Isabelle BuchstallerPercy BuildingSchool of English Literature Language and LinguisticsNewcastle UniversityNewcastle NE1 7RUEngland

e-mail IBuchstallernclacuk


Hudson 1999 Walters 2002 Milroy 2004 2007 Tagliamonte 2002 Stuart-Smith 2002ndash5 and many others) Meyerhoff and Niedzielski (2003) call for a coherent theory of language variation and change that captures linguistic processes on a mi-cro as well as on a macro scale They demonstrate the need to incorporate variation-ist findings within broader empirical issues pointing in particular to the tension between global flows and their local consequences (see also Blommaert 2003)

This paper sets out to explore the nexus between global linguistic processes and their local underpinnings I will discuss the results of a case study on two globally spreading linguistic resources the new quotatives be like and go as in (1) and (2) in two spatially discontinuous locales1

(1) Some of the best food I have ever had was out of a mdash outside or inside of a place that we drove up and I was like ldquoIrsquom not eating in thererdquo2

(2) Some girl goes ldquodo you dares want to go picnicrdquo

The spread of be like and go is a global process in the sense that younger speakers of a number of varieties of English are now using these features for the introduc-tion of verbal quotation but did not do so previously (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 Singler 2001 Buchstaller 2004 Tagliamonte and DrsquoArcy 2004)3 Much has been written about these newcomers and their attestation in many varieties of English (such as the USA Canada Singapore South Africa the UK etc see Sin-gler and Woods 2002) Sociolinguists commonly assume that quotative be like and go have spread outwards from an assumed epicenter in the USA in all probability propelled by the mass media (Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999 with reservations Macaulay 2001) However much less is known about the adaptive processes used by speakers in varieties other than the United States when appropriating such in-novations Britain (2002 618) points out that in cases of contact between a (global or supra-local) innovation and local traditional norms we have to reckon with a whole range of possible outcomes which include at least (i) wholesale adoption of the innovation (ii) flat rejection or (iii) interaction between the local system and the innovative features which leads to transformation through interpretation

1 According to Giddens (1991) a locale is an explanatory framework Johnstone (2004 70) writes ldquoa locale can be defined as the meaningful elements of the temporal and spatial context of the interaction locale is setting but as seen from the perspective of human actorsrdquo

2 Examples are taken from the Switchboard Corpus to be discussed in the ldquoData and method-ologyrdquo section below

3 With respect to quotative go the literature concurs that the variant has only recently broad-ened its functional scope to full quotative function so as to include speech as well as sounds Quotative go with reported speech was first mentioned by Butters (1980) in the US Be like was first attested in 1982 in the US (Butters 1982)



















































Reported Speech



Reported Thought






















































1880












































8 Discussion











9 Conclusion










References




































































































































































Reported Speech



Reported Thought






















































1880












































8 Discussion











9 Conclusion










References


































































































































































1880












































8 Discussion











9 Conclusion










References


























































































































































8 Discussion











9 Conclusion










References


























































































































9 Conclusion










References

























































































































References


















































































































The localization of global linguistic variants

Documents

Transcript of The localization of global linguistic variants