Quotatives over time: A study of ethnic variation

Abstract

Quotatives have garnered much attention in the study of discourse-pragmatic variation, due to the rapid rise of quotative 'be like', which now dominates the system of young English speakers across the globe (e.g., Buchstaller, 2015a; D’Arcy, 2017; Labov, 2018; Romaine & Lange, 1991; Tagliamonte, D'Arcy, & Rodríguez Louro, 2016). Australian English has not been absent from this discussion, having been explored in several studies (e.g. Rodríguez-Louro, 2013, 2016; Winter, 2002). This thesis presents a diachronic analysis of the quotative system in Sydney, Australia, with a particular focus on patterning across ethnicities.

As a variable system, quotatives are theoretically available as an ethnolectal feature (cf. Clyne, Eisikovits, & Tollfree, 2001a). This has not been investigated extensively, but Cheshire and colleagues (2011) propose that a new form 'this is + Speaker' was created from a (language) feature pool, a result of the high linguistic diversity in London and the unguided second-language acquisition by children. Furthermore, Labov’s (1972a) foundational studies found ethnic minorities to lead language change.

The data come from two corpora of sociolinguistic interviews, complied under the umbrella of the Sydney Speaks Project (Travis, 2016-2021): one legacy corpus recorded in the 1970s (Barbara M. Horvath, 1985) with Australian English (AusE) speakers of Anglo, Greek and Italian backgrounds; and a contemporary corpus currently under collection, with AusE speakers of Anglo, Italian and Chinese backgrounds. Both corpora include older and younger speakers, allowing change to be tracked in real and apparent time. These corpora provide over 1,000,000 words of speech, from 200 speakers, and approximately 5,000 quotative tokens for analysis.

In the present study, I observe no qualitative difference between the four ethnic groups, despite the system becoming more varied with the addition of innovative forms ('go' in the 1970s and 'be like' today). Each group has very similar quotative systems; for example, 'be like' is non-existent in the 1970s but is the dominant form for young speakers today. 'Go' is a popular form for the young speakers in the 1970s, accounting for approximately one-fifth of all quotatives used. Nonetheless, there are some differences – young Italian Australians today appear to be leading the expansion of 'be like' from a marker of first-person internal dialogue, to encode third-person direct quotes. Distinct patterning for young Chinese Australians is found in a marginal favouring of 'be like' by men over women, in contrast to all other groups for whom 'be like' is most favoured by women.

Contextualising these findings in relation to literature on ethnolectal variation, I argue that these differences are not best interpreted as “ethnolectal”, but rather, are better situated in the context of broader variation and change. Show more