Who said that? Zero/null quotatives to introduce speech.

The quotative system, particularly in teenage speech, has received a lot of attention from linguists in recent years (for other summaries related to this topic click ‘Quotatives’ in the left-hand bar). Much of the research has focused on the frequency rates and the linguistic contexts in which reporting verbs such as SAY, GO and THINK are used, with many studies focusing on the more recent newcomer BE LIKE, which has emerged among English varieties across the globe.

A further competitor within the quotative system, however, is the ‘zero’ or ‘null’ quotative, which is the focus of a study by Ignacio M. Palacios Martinez. These are instances where direct speech is introduced without the use of any introductory verb or attributed speaker. Palacios Martínez provides the following example where Speaker A introduces direct speech without any introductory verb (Ø = zero quotative) but the context and the mimicking voice provide Speaker B with the clue that these are the words of the male protagonist of the film being discussed:

A:       And I’m gonna go and see Sommersby.

B:       <unclear>

A:       Sommersby with Jodie Foster and Richard Gere.

B:       Oh yeah

A:       <mimicking> Ø ‘I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you!’

Palacios Martínez compared the speech of Spanish (mainly from Madrid) and English (mainly from London) teenagers from similar social backgrounds and found that zero quotatives represented 8% and around 18% respectively of all quotatives used, demonstrating that it is a robust competitor within these quotative systems.

Furthermore, the Spanish and English teenagers were found to use zero quotatives in similar ways. The first main context identified as favoring the use of a zero quotative was when a sound or non-lexicalised word was used, as in ‘grrr, grrr, grrr’ to provide a listener with an animal sound when telling a story about a bear.

The second main use of zero quotatives was connected with mimicking a voice (as in the above example) or performing in a new voice, for example for dramatic or humorous effect. Within this category, Palacios Martinez found that the teenagers imitated a wide variety of accents, including African, Jamaican, Chinese, French and Swedish, usually done to criticize or make fun of another person or to sound funny and make their interlocutor laugh. The teenagers also emulated famous people or used voices typical of babies or young children.

An interesting use of the zero quotative was, as Palacios Martínez describes it, to express disgust and disagreement with an interlocutor. He provides an example of a girl repeating a disagreement that she had with a boy in her class about a football team, where she repeats what the boy says and what she says in return but without the overt use of an introductory verb in the case of either speaker.  The fact that conflicting views are presented seems to make it clear that different people are being represented in the narrative.

An interesting observation made by Palacios Martínez is that the more involved a narrator becomes with his/her story and as the story becomes more dramatic, the more likely is the use of explicit quotatives to be abandoned and zero quotatives used. This is perhaps also connected to the fact that as a story progresses the listener comes to know the characters involved and there is not such a need for overt dialogue introducers.

To conclude, Palacios Martínez argues that zero quotatives play an important role in the speech of teenagers, particularly in the construction of their narratives, suggesting that this may be connected to the fact that teenagers are more prone to imitating and mimicking others than adults. He argues that the lack of overt quotatives serves to make the narrative account more fluid and thus also involves the interlocutor more directly.

________________________________________________

Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M. (2013). Zero quoting in the speech of British and Spanish teenagers. A contrastive corpus-based study. Discourse Studies 15(4): 439-462.

DOI: 10.1177/1461445613482431

This summary was written by Sue Fox

Quoting then and now

I was like “they’re coming at eleven o’clock “

I said “they’re coming at eleven o’clock” 

Do you use BE LIKE to report what someone said? Thirty years ago few people had heard be like used this way. For young English speakers today, though, BE LIKE has taken over from SAY as the most frequent quotative form. This means that researchers interested in how language changes spread through a language can compare its use by different generations of speakers.

Mercedes Durham and her colleagues note that the most detailed research of this kind comes from Canada. Researchers there have found a strong sex difference emerging as the frequency of BE LIKE increases, with younger generations of female speakers using the new form more often than male speakers. They also found that the kind of quote that BE LIKE introduces changes over the generations:  the first uses of quotative BE LIKE were with a sound indicating the speaker’s state of mind, as in I was like “ugh”, but it was soon also used to introduce reported thought (what someone was thinking), as in I was like “never again”. Only with later generations of speakers is BE LIKE used more often to introduce what someone said (direct speech) than what someone was thinking. 

Durham and her research team analysed the quotative forms used by different generations of undergraduates at the University of York in the UK, to see whether BE LIKE has followed the same pathways of change in York as in Canada. As in Canada, in York the frequency of BE LIKE had soared in just one generation of speakers. In Canada BE LIKE represented 13 per cent of the different quotative forms used by students in 1995; by 2003, the proportion had soared to 63 per cent. In York, too, there was a dramatic increase in the frequency of BE LIKE across the generations, from 19 per cent in 1996 to 68 per cent in 2006. In both locations, then, BE LIKE had taken over from SAY and other quotative verbs to become the most popular quotative form.

However, these figures hide different trajectories of language change. Unlike Canada, in York the difference in the use of BE LIKE by female and male speakers had decreased between 1996 and 2006 rather than increased.  And in York, students in both 1996 and 2006 used BE LIKE the same way – slightly more often to introduce reported thought than direct speech. Across the generations they also continued to use BE LIKE more often with first person subjects and more often in the present tense. In both 1996 and 2006 students in York used SAY and other quotative verbs more often in the past tense.

The researchers point out that the sex differences between Canada and the UK, though interesting, are unremarkable.  They fit with previous research showing that as BE LIKE spreads around the English-speaking world it acquires different social meanings that reflect local social contexts. This results in different social and stylistic patterns in the use of the form from one community to another.

The differences between Canada and the UK in the linguistic effects on the use of BE LIKE are important, though, for our understanding of how changes spread through a language. What has happened in York is consistent with the findings of many researchers working on other kinds of syntactic change in the history of English: successive generations may use a new form more frequently, but they continue to use it in the same linguistic contexts. This is known as the constant rate effect: in other words, as different generations of children acquire the form BE LIKE they also learn the linguistic contexts associated with its use.

Durham and her colleagues suggest, then, that what has happened to BE LIKE in Canada is an exception. They predict that as BE LIKE evolves and spreads in other English-speaking communities around the world it will follow similar pathways of change to what was observed in York: people will use it with increasing frequency but the linguistic effects that constrain its use will remain the same.

This sets an intriguing challenge, then, for researchers elsewhere in the English-speaking world – we’re like “we want to know what happens to BE LIKE”!

To listen to sound clips featuring BE LIKE and other quotatives go to our English Language Teaching Resources website http://linguistics.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/english-language-teaching/language-materials  

------------------

 Durham, Mercedes, Haddican, Bill, Zweig, Eytan, Johnson, Daniel Ezra, Baker, Zipporah, Cockeram, David, Danks, Esther and Tyler, Louise (2012) Constant linguistic effects in the diffusion of Be Like. Journal of English Linguistics 40 (4): 316-337.

This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire

Quoting others

…and she said ‘hey, come and see this’

…and she was like ‘hey, come and see this’

Which of the above do you think is more formal, said or was like? Why? If you’re telling a story and start reporting what someone else has said, how do you think that you would introduce the quote?  What would influence your choice?

These are the sort of questions Natalia Blackwell and Jean Fox Tree investigated by looking at the speech and opinions of students at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  The focus of their study was the verbs that people use to introduce direct speech (such as said/say, was like/ is like, went/ goes etc.) and it’s these verbs which are known as ‘quotatives’. They explain that there are two main approaches to how previous research has viewed the choice of quotatives.  The first is known as ‘quotation-centred’.  This approach says that it is the content of the quote that determines what quotatives are used.  For example, say is thought to introduce quotes which are more accurate and true to the original, while be like (i.e. she’s like/ I was like), although more emotional and dramatic, indicates that what is reported is more vague in relation to the original event.  In contrast, the ‘social-context-centred’ proposal claims that it is the social relationships between, for example, the speaker and the person being quoted or the speaker and the listener that influences which quotatives are chosen. 

Blackwell and Fox Tree designed 7 experiments to test what factors may influence quotative choice.  The motivation for designing a range of experiments was that, unlike using a corpus of spontaneous speech, conditions could be controlled and, therefore, comparisons would be more valid.  The design of the experiments varied in form and included tests where participants were asked to guess which quotatives (either say or be like) had been bleeped out of recordings (to judge whether it was the content of the quote which guided selection), and the telling of stories to different audiences relating to video clips they watched (to judge whether social factors influenced choice).

The results of the various experiments showed that participants thought there was a distinct difference between say and be like, with be like particularly described negatively as irritating and annoying.  As a result, a comparison of their actual use and their opinions showed that most participants over-estimated their use of say.  They also found little evidence supporting the ‘quotation-centred’ approach to quotative use, as, for example, participants couldn’t select the correct quotation when it was missing from sound clips they were played.  However, they did find evidence supporting the ‘social-context-centred’ approach as participants adjusted their choice of quotative according to who they were quoting and the status of the addressee – the higher the status, the more say was used. They suggested that use of say, in contrast to be like, enabled speakers to signal the relationship status among the person being quoted, the speaker and the addressee. In addition to these observations, Blackwell and Fox Tree suggested that, even though there was little evidence to suggest that say was used instead of be like to reflect the accuracy of the quote, say was used extensively when quoting writing or set phrases.  This, they suggested, indicates that say may be adopting specific functions in the language.

_______________________________________________________

Blackwell, N. and Fox Tree, J. E. (2012) Social Factors Affect Quotative Choice. Journal of Pragmatics 44: 1150-1162.

doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.05.001

This summary was written by Jenny Amos

Quoting across the generations

Would you guess the Newcastle speaker of the extract below to be over or under the age of 40? And what are the clues that help you decide?

One of our governors (…)  phoned the head and he said “there’s a model in the engineer’s department of the Civic Centre.. do you think Patrick would want it?” . so the head rang me up and he said “ring so-and-so in the city engineers and ask about this model . so I rang up and I said “I believe you’ve got a model of the Civic Centre” . he said “aye” . he said “do you want it?”

If you guessed that the speaker was over 40, you’d be right. Apart from the topic of the conversation, using mainly SAY to introduce direct reported speech is typical of older speakers. There are 5 quotative expressions in the extract, and each of them is he said. Young people today might be more likely to introduce the quote with he was like or he went.

If we’d asked you this question back in the 1960s, though, you may have found it harder to decide. Isabelle Buchstaller’s recent research into quotative expressions across the generations shows how the quotative system has changed in Tyneside, north-east England, over the last 50 years from one where all speakers mainly used SAY to introduce direct reported speech (as in the example in the box) to one with a richer set of quotative expressions.

Buchstaller traced the way that two new quotatives, BE LIKE and GO, entered the quotative system. (The system as a whole includes THINK to introduce reported thought as well as other, less frequent, quotatives such as SHOUT and “unframed quotes” where speakers just quote what someone said without any quotative expression at all). She used three separate sets of recorded speech from people in Tyneside, recorded during the 1960s, the 1990s, and in 2007-2009.  Each set was divided into younger speakers (younger than 40) and older speakers.

BE LIKE and GO did not occur at all in the 1960s data. By the 1990s, they were both used, though not very often. SAY was still the quotative expression that occurred most often. When people chose to use BE LIKE it was mainly with first person subjects, to report what the speaker was thinking: for example, I was like “what?” where what is not something the speaker said but shows that they were feeling surprised. Interestingly, research in other places has also found that this is how BE LIKE is used when it first enters the quotative system.

By 2007, BE LIKE had rapidly increased in popularity in Tyneside and was now the favourite form for younger speakers, especially younger women and middle class speakers. They no longer used BE LIKE to report what they were thinking, but mainly to report what had been said, both by themselves and by other people.

 An unexpected finding concerned the tense of the quotative expression. In the 1960s, when SAY was the main quotative, people used it in a wide range of tenses – so, not only he said but also he would say, he was saying, he’d said, he used to say, and more. By 2000, though, young people were using SAY mainly in the ‘conversational present tense’, to refer to something that was said in the past as if it was being said now, and so making their account of what someone said more vivid (saying, for example, he says “do you want it” instead of he said “do you want it”). BE LIKE and GO, on the other hand, were used mainly in the simple past tense (he was like and he went). Not only that, young people used BE LIKE and GO more often in narrative contexts, when they were telling someone about something that had happened, in the form of a little story. They reserved SAY for other contexts, when the speech they were reporting was not part of a story. Older speakers continued to use SAY in all types of context.

Buchstaller’s research shows, then, that the addition of two new quotative expressions can spark off other, more subtle changes to the quotative system.  In Tyneside, as younger speakers juggle with a richer number of choices to report what someone has said, they give each quotative expression a preferred tense and a preferred context.

___________________________________________________

Buchstaller, Isabelle (2011) Quotations across the generations: A multivariate analysis of speech and thought introducers across 5 decades of Tyneside speech. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 7 (1): 59-92

doi: 10.1515/CLLT.2011.004

This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire

Multicultural London English - part 2

This is me ‘I’m from Hackney’

Researchers Jenny Cheshire, Paul Kerswill, Sue Fox and Eivind Torgersen report the use of a new quotative expression to introduce reported speech in spoken discourse. Of course, speakers use a variety of forms to introduce dialogue; the verbs SAY (e.g. she said ‘let’s go to the cinema’), GO (e.g. he went ‘let’s go to the cinema’) and THINK (e.g. I thought ‘Oh no, not the cinema again’) are among the most common introducers. In recent years there has also been an explosion in English varieties around the world in the use of BE LIKE (e.g. they were like ‘Oh, we love the cinema’). However, in inner London, the researchers have also discovered the use of the expression this is + speaker such as those given in the examples below.

this is them ‘what area are you from?’ this is me ‘I’m from Hackney’

this is my mum ‘what are you doing?’

Although the new form only accounts for a small number of the quotatives found in the London data it is nevertheless used frequently enough in young people’s speech generally for it to have been noticed by non-linguists. For example, you can hear it being used in this comedy sketch from the Armstrong and Miller show. The researchers found that the expression this is + speaker is used by adolescents and also by children as young as eight years old but none of the adults in their study used it. This points to the feature as being a fairly recent innovation but in fact there is some evidence to suggest that it has existed in the ‘feature pool’ (see our previous post) for some time; Mark Sebba found three examples in his recordings of London Jamaicans made in the 1980s and there are also examples in the Corpus of London Teenage Speech (COLT) recorded in the 1990s. The researchers say that in language contact situations such as that which exists in London, features which have been in existence for some time (but have perhaps been used infrequently) may get picked up from the feature pool causing the frequency of its use to increase. This seems to be a possibility for the increase in the use of this is + speaker.

Another interesting finding is that there is a difference in the way that the different age groups use this feature. The 12-13 year-olds and the 16-19 year-olds use this is + speaker almost exclusively to introduce reported direct speech (e.g. this is her ‘that was my sister’). However, the 8-9 year-olds use it to introduce both direct speech and non-lexicalised sound and gesture (e.g. this is me <followed by an action>). This function allows the young children to ‘perform’ the actions in the way in which they actually occurred. Furthermore, the 8-9 year-olds also use this is + speaker with non-quotative functions (e.g. he’s sitting on a chair this is him like he’s drunk or something) to describe someone’s state, feeling, action, gesture or expression.

The researchers state that the use of this is + speaker is in its early stages and that, so far, it is confined to inner London. Whether it is a short-lived phenomenon or whether it will continue to increase in frequency and spread to other regions remains to be seen. Comments welcome on the use of or further development of this fascinating language feature!

_________________________________________________

Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. 2011. Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the Emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15/2: 151-196.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00478.x

This summary was written by Sue Fox

It’s like “Oooh, no!”

A closing statement such as It's like 'mmm' often acts as an evaluative comment towards someone or something 

Most people reading this will be familiar with the use of I’m like, he’s like or even constructions such as my brother’s like to introduce reported speech, as in expressions such as I’m like ‘wow, I didn’t know that’ or my brother was like ‘don’t touch my DVDs’. The use of the verb be + like is prevalent, particularly among young people, in spoken language and has been studied extensively by linguists. However, it has been common practice in these studies to exclude instances of be like when it occurs with the neuter pronoun it. The reason for its exclusion is that it does not generally occur with other forms of reported speech introducers (or ‘quotatives’ as linguists call them) such as say or think. There is therefore no basis for comparison and researchers consider that it’s like should be treated separately.

That is exactly what Barbara Fox and Jessica Robles have done. They report solely on what they call the ‘nearly’ quotative use of be like with the non-human subject it and refer to these uses as ‘it’s like-enactments’. They examined over 10 hours of naturally occurring American English speech recorded since the mid-1980s and extracted all instances of it’s like which reported thoughts, feelings and attitudes. They found 22 examples of it’s like-enactments and examined the functions which they performed in the interaction. They found several recurrent patterns.

Firstly, they found that the function of utterances framed by it’s like are what they refer to as ‘affect-laden assessments’; they arise as a responsive attitude, thought or feeling to what has just been said previously and so they often occur at the end of a story as a closing assessment. For instance, the researchers provide an example in which a mother talks about a situation in her home town and closes with it’s like ‘mmm’ as a final closing negative assessment of that situation. The researchers also note that affect is demonstrated by changes in pitch and bodily reactions such as smiles and head movements when uttering it’s like-enactments.

Secondly, they found that the form of many (though not all) of the it’s like- framed utterances tended to be response cries such as oh no, wow, mmm and oh, expressions that generally have very little semantic content but which express feeling. Fox and Robles suggest that these response cries are the prototypical form for it’s like-enactments.

The third pattern which the researchers refer to is the syntax of it’s like-enactments. They argue that the use of the impersonal it pronoun allows for ascribing the response not just to the person speaking but to anyone in that particular situation.

Although the researchers examine only a small number of cases, they provide a first step in understanding why speakers produce a thought, feeling or attitude without actually attributing it to a particular source. Their central finding is that it’s like-enactments are affect-laden responses to an event, action or previous utterance which could be understood as a response which ‘anyone in this situation’ would give.

______________________________________________

Fox, B and Robles, J. 2010. It’s like mmm: Enactments with it’s like. Discourse Studies 12(6): 715-738.

DOI: 10.1177/1461445610381862

This summary was written by Sue Fox