Discourse Studies

0 downloads 0 Views 666KB Size Report
Dec 5, 2010 - might never have been actually uttered in this form. .... 34 Moll: We should write a book (out) for how to respond to people. .... examples the speakers deliver the punchline of the story in the turn containing the it's ..... In this fragment, Donna answers Laura's teasing question at line 15 in the negative and.
Discourse Studies http://dis.sagepub.com/

It's like mmm: Enactments with it's like Barbara A. Fox and Jessica Robles Discourse Studies 2010 12: 715 DOI: 10.1177/1461445610381862 The online version of this article can be found at: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/12/6/715

Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Discourse Studies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://dis.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://dis.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://dis.sagepub.com/content/12/6/715.refs.html

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

Article

It’s like mmm: Enactments with it’s like

Discourse Studies 12(6) 715–738 © The Author(s) 2010 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1461445610381862 http://dis.sagepub.com

Barbara A. Fox

University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

Jessica Robles

University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

Abstract This article explores the distribution and use of a relatively new grammatical format in English, it’s like + enactment. We propose that it’s like utterances are used to enact thoughts, feelings and attitudes which are internal and affect-laden assessments of a prior utterance or event, produced as assessments that anyone in the same situation might have had. As such they tend to occur within stories, typically during the closing of a story. The enactments are often ‘response cries’ (Goffman, 1978) such as oh, mm, wow, and man. Because of the highly indexical nature of this grammatical format, it represents a fascinating site for participants to work out a ‘world known in common’ (Goodwin, personal communication).

Keywords assessment, be like, enactments

1. Introduction The discourse marker like in English has received extensive attention from linguists in the last 20 years, a response no doubt to the explosion in frequency of tokens of like in everyday conversation (Barbieri, 2005; Blyth et al., 1990; Buchstaller, 2004; Buchstaller and D’Arcy, 2009; Clark and Gerrig, 1990; Cukor-Avila, 2002; Dailey-O’Cain, 2000; Ferrara and Bell, 1995; Fox Tree and Tomlinson, 2008; Miller and Weinert, 1995; Romaine and Lange, 1991; Streeck, 2002; Tagliamonte and D’Arcy, 2004; Tannen, 1986; Underhill, 1988). This explosion has occurred in many dialects of English, including dialects in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as, of course, in the United States. But the excitement regarding like is not just about token frequency; it also concerns the Corresponding author: Barbara Fox, Department of Linguistics, 295 UCB, University of Colorado, Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Email: [email protected]

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

716

Discourse Studies 12(6)

fascinating spread of types of uses of like (Labov, personal communication). The current study reports on what appears to be one of the newer syntactic collocations with like: a nearly quotative use of be like with the non-human subject it. We refer to this new construction as it’s like-enactment. The canonical syntactic form can be depicted schematically as: it’s like + response cry + (clause). In our collection these cases re-enact the thought, feeling or attitude presented rather than describing it (see Golato, 2000; Streeck, 2002). An example of an it’s like-enactment is given in (1) below. Just prior to this fragment the participants, three women friends in a doctoral program, have been discussing strategies for getting through the program. At line 1 Felicia introduces a strategy that is important to her, and at line 9 she produces an it’s like-enactment, in which she enacts her own self-talk: (1)   1  2   3   4  5   6   7   8   9 10 11

Fel: .hhh But (n) but having: thee the support. (.) Lis: Mhm= Fel: =from your friends is very important. (0.3) Lis: Right. (.) Fel: And that’s what keeps me going. Y’know every time I.hhh I get à together it’s like ok Felicia, you can £do it£. (0.3) Mol: Mm

This use drew our attention because of the apparent contradiction of a quotative-like enactment which is not attributed to a human speaker. Quotations with be like that are attributed to human speakers are, of course, extremely common; consider example (2) below: (2) Housemates Jenn: .hhh And um, (0.2) then he’s like Well- I know you’re not open yet, but I would really just want a cup of coffee. I’m like, (0.6) Alright, but you still have to wait ↑til se~ven o~clock.

Just prior to the fragment in example (2), Jennifer had been talking about someone who had come to the café where she works wanting to be served several minutes before the café opened. In the fragment given here, Jennifer reports the conversation between this person and herself with be like (he’s like, I’m like). Attributed quotatives of this sort, with a human subject, are extraordinarily frequent in our data. However, enactments with it’s like are much less common. While be like in general has received quite a bit of attention (see Buchstaller, 2004; Buchstaller and D’Arcy, 2009; Ferrara and Bell, 1995; Romaine and Lange, 1991;

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

717

Fox and Robles

Singler, 2001, 2005; Tagliamonte and D’Arcy, 2004; Underhill, 1988), the specific format it’s like remains relatively unexamined. Romaine and Lange (1991), for example, do not distinguish it from other quotative uses of be like. Tagliamonte and D’Arcy (2004) exclude it from their multivariate analysis. It is mentioned in Singler (2001, 2005), but only in passing. Ferrara and Bell (1995) discuss its function, but only in one paragraph. The current study aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining a small collection of instances of it’s like-enactments. In addition, while prior studies of be like have focused on larger corpora, the current study explores the sequential environment in which it’s like-enactments are found (see Golato, 2000, for German und ich/er so).1 In our exploration of it’s like-enactments, we have found that this new collocation enacts an affect-laden internal response to an event, action, or utterance. This response is very often in the form of a ‘response cry’ (Goffman, 1978) such as mmm, oh, wow, sometimes followed by an elaborating sentence (Goodwin, 1996). The impersonal syntax allows the speaker to shift epistemic authority for assessments toward a more impersonal, and therefore perhaps more general, authority. Many of our examples indicate a ‘reasonable person’ perspective, suggesting that anyone in that situation would have had the same response. Further, we suggest that it’s like is oriented to enactments that produce a kind of ‘shared world’ among participants (see Shourup, 1985). This shared world is simultaneously ‘natural’ and highly context-dependent: it’s like-enactments are presented as natural, generic responses that anyone in the same circumstances would have, yet at the same time, uncovering their interactional meaning requires careful attention to the situated instances in which they occur. It’s like-enactments share many features with other formats of be like. For example, Singler (2001) and Romaine and Lange (1991) note that ‘expressive’ quotes are the main domain of be like; Meehan (1991) proposes that ‘their purpose is to express affect’ (p. 48). Ferrara and Bell (1995) find that many be like examples function as ‘response cries’, in Goffman’s use of that term (Goffman, 1978): like response cries, the prototypical case of be+ like is a theatrical, highly conventionalized utterance which makes the inner state transparent to the audience. (p. 283)

Tagliamonte and D’Arcy (2004) say that be like ‘introduces non-lexicalized sounds’ (p. 495). And Buchstaller and D’Arcy (2009) note that ‘mimetic re-enactment may also be a universal constraint on be like’ (p. 307). Nonetheless, while sharing many features of be like quotatives, it’s like-enactments are unique in their impersonal syntax and the resulting affordances of more generalized attribution, or non-attribution, of the feeling, thought, attitude, or speech enacted. In addition, while personal uses of be like have moved strongly into the reporting of purportedly actual dialogue (Tagliamonte and D’Arcy, 2004), it’s like-enactments do not have this function. They primarily enact internal responsive attitudes, often those dealing with speaker accountability, situational explanations, and/or experiential assessments (Barnes and Moss, 2007).2 Moreover, given their lack of grammatical attribution, they require even greater work from recipients for working out the meaning of the utterance, as well as its sequential relevance. It’s like-enactments thus represent a unique manifestation of the be like form.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

718

Discourse Studies 12(6)

In the next section, we discuss our data. Section 3 outlines a characterization of the functions of it’s like-enactments, and presents examples illustrating each. Section 4 looks at the complex work that speakers do with it’s like-enactments to create a world known in common (Goodwin, personal communication). Section 5 provides concluding remarks.

2. Data It’s like-enactments are not frequent in our American English data. In over 10 hours of interaction recorded since the mid-1980s we have found just 22 examples.3 Instances of it’s like which clearly do not report thoughts, feelings, or attitudes were not included in our collection. For example, uses such as the one given in (3) below were excluded: (3) Housemates Bett: Jenn: Bett: Jenn: Bett: Jenn: Bett: Jenn:

(Does he have) saucer eyes? .hh Saucer, but not, (0.2) I don’t think it’s drug induced. (0.4) Really? (0.3) à Yeah, I think it’s like (0.3) ( ?) à alien induced. O::h. Maybe [not.

In this example, Betty and Jennifer have been talking about a person who came to the café early that morning, before the café had opened. While Jennifer affirms that the person’s eyes were ‘saucer’, she contradicts the assumption behind the term with a contrast – not drug induced but it’s like alien induced. Here like appears to delay the production of alien induced, possibly in a word search. It does not introduce alien induced as a thought, feeling, or attitude. Instead, like here takes on a focusing or highlighting function (Underhill, 1988) as well as an approximating function (the eyes ‘look like/look as if’ they were alien induced or alien-like). After searching all of our naturally occurring American English conversational data, we found 22 instances of it’s like-enactments. Eleven of those instances are from data recorded in 1997–8; one instance was recorded in 1987, in a tutoring session. Seven were found in our corpus of post-2000 data. We found no instances of it’s like-enactments from before 1987 (however, Romaine and Lange, 1991, cite an instance from 1985). Though be like originated in usage among younger (usually college or teenage) speakers, the ages of speakers in these data (20–50) reflect research on its gradual spread to other age groups over time, and the retention of be like among people who started using it in their teens in the early 1990s (Barbieri, 2009). In the next section we examine the functions of it’s like-enactments.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

719

Fox and Robles

3. It’s like According to the Oxford English Dictionary, like arises historically from the Old English form gelic, from ge- ‘with’ and lic ‘body or form’ (compare modern German gleich and modern Dutch gelijk). One of the oldest uses of like is its prepositional use (the OED calls this an ‘adjectival’ use). According to the OED, the meaning was ‘having the same characteristics or qualities as some other person or thing; of approximately identical shape, size, colour, character, etc., with something else; similar; resembling; analogous’. What is important for our discussion here is the sense of ‘approximately’ or ‘resembling’ – in other words, not an exact replica. Many of the modern discourse-marker functions of like carry this sense strongly, indicating that what follows is an approximation, not to be taken literally (see Meehan, 1991; Schourup, 1985). Consider example (4), in which Jennifer describes the long line of people who were waiting to get into the café where she works even before it was open. It is not necessary that the number be exact, just that the recipients know that it was an unusually long line. This use thus illustrates the approximator function outside of quotation: (4) Housemates Jenn: tsk But when I went there, there were like Bett: ((laugh)) Jenn: fi:ve people waiting to get in.

The sense of approximation and non-literalness almost certainly drives, at least in part, the quotative function of be like, especially in its earlier forms of performing thoughts, attitudes and feelings (see Underhill, 1988). Streeck (2002) sees these utterances as ‘body quotations’ (p. 581), in which embodied performances of attitudes, thoughts and feelings are constructed. Streeck views these utterances as public performances: Be like . . . allows for a discursive enactment of someone’s inner state and is particularly apt at introducing the speaker’s feelings . . . note . . . that this inner state is displayed in the mode of public interactive behavior: Even if cast as a reenactment of thought, a quote such as I’m like ‘Oh no::!’ displays internal as public behavior. In other words, when thought is reanimated in this fashion, it is reanimated as an inner version of public discourse. (p. 590)

Be like thus introduces an utterance as not necessarily to be taken literally, that is, it might never have been actually uttered in this form. Though much reconstructed dialogue or reported speech is not presented verbatim, be like is especially ambiguous, compared to quotatives that present quoted speech as more likely to have been uttered (for example, with quotatives go and said; see Barbieri, 2009, and Buchstaller, 2004, for examples). In our data it appears that it’s like-enactments expand on the non-literal function of be like: they allow speakers to display a thought, feeling, or attitude which is so non-literal as to not even be necessarily attributable to a particular speaker. Meehan (1991) suggests that quotative be like also arises historically from the ‘as if’ meaning of like. In grammaticalization theories, this retention of an earlier meaning is called ‘persistence’, and this meaning can remain a core meaning even as the grammaticalized

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

720

Discourse Studies 12(6)

item takes on other uses and connotations (Hopper and Traugott, 2003). Buchstaller (2004) proposes that the persistence of this core meaning is part of what gives like the tendency to grammaticalize, since grammaticalization is itself a metaphorical process. Furthermore, the ‘as if’ uses of be like, like, and it’s like quotatives seem to capitalize on this core meaning in order for speakers to de-emphasize, or make more ambiguous, the nature of their quoted utterances as ‘actually uttered’. Our central finding is that it’s like-enactments are affect-laden internal responses, or responsive attitudes, to an event, action, or hypothetical utterance, which remain unattributed and could be understood as belonging to the speaker or ‘anyone in this situation’. In analyzing our data, we have found several recurrent patterns which support this larger view: • Function: The it’s like-framed utterances are affect-laden assessments, enacting a responsive attitude, and as such are often produced at the end of the story, as closing-relevant assessments. • Form: It’s like-framed utterances tend to be response cries, such as Oh no, wow, mmm, oh, man, although full clauses are also possible. • Syntax: It’s like provides impersonal syntax for producing affective assessments. The remainder of section 3 discusses and illustrates each of these patterns in turn.

3.1. Function: It’s like-framed utterances are affect-laden assessments It’s like-framed utterances are designed to be affect-laden assessments, producing responsive attitudes, thoughts, or feelings to a prior event, action, or utterance, typically one that has just been produced in the unfolding narrative. Consider the following example, in which Donna, who lives in Colorado, recounts her experience to three friends in Colorado regarding a recent trip she took to St Louis: (5) Farmhouse   1 Donna:   2   3   4   5 Laura:   6 Donna:   7 Donna:   8   9 Mom: 10 Donna: 11 Mom: à 12 à 13 Michelle: 14 Mom: 15 Donna: 16 Mom:

[But you know when I was in St Louis last weekend, (0.3) áthere are s:o many more overweight people- (0.4) out there, (.) Re[ally? [than here.= Yea:h. I could just tell tha:t. (.) And in the Midwest, don’t you think? °M[hm° [When we go back to Minnesota and Wisco:nsin it’s like m:::::.= =Rea:lly.= =M[::hm::. [Yeah. I thi[nk it’s the long winte:rs

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

721

Fox and Robles

At the beginning of this fragment, Donna presents a noticing about overweight people in St Louis (in contrast to here, where the conversation takes place). In line 9 Mom elaborates on this noticing, shifting the locus from St Louis to the Midwest, a common ground for all the participants, including Donna (as they are all from ‘the Midwest’). Mom then continues with a narrative-like format, which shifts time and place from the current conversation to the recurrent visits back (note the present tense); here she presents her own inner response, not to going back itself but to what is observed there. It’s like m:::: is an affect-laden negative assessment, here of the noticing that many people in ‘the Midwest’ are overweight.4 Because assessments can be agreed with or disagreed with, their uptake by conversational recipients ratifies their use as assessments, as when Michelle says Rea:lly. (line 13), seeking a confirmation, and Donna responds with Yeah. (line 15), which both agrees with Mom’s assessment and confirms it for Michelle. The next example illustrates a strongly affect-laden responsive assessment to a hypothetical prior utterance from a hypothetical other speaker. This interaction takes place between three women friends who know each other from a doctoral program. One of them, Molly, has recently finished her PhD; the other two are still in the program. For all three of them there has been a concern about the length of time in the program. Before this fragment begins, Lisa has related a conversation she had with a friend outside the program in which the friend asks her why she has been in the program so long: as our fragment begins, her recipients display strong disaffiliation with the friend, aligning with Lisa as teller. (6) Three gals 16 Moll: [You know how easy it is for people to say well (0.2) it 17 only átook you twenty year[s, or: um:: what’[s 18 Lisa: [(uh huh uh huh) 19 Feli: [HEHE 20 Moll: No what’s e- what’s taking you so long.= 21 Feli: =.hhh I hate that.= 22 Moll: =( [ my older brother [) 23 Feli:    [I hate that. 24 Lisa: [(Oh:: [ ) 25 Moll: [(Oh Molly) 26 Lisa: Uh hu[h 27 Moll: [(Why such a court drama)= 28 Lisa: =Right, 29 Moll: =(Mm?) 30 Moll: Aren’t you done áyet? 31 Lisa: JRight, right.J.hhh An and what are you going to do with it 32 àJwhen you get it,J and it’s like o:::::hh, 33 Feli: ( ) 34 Moll: We should write a book (out) for how to respond to people.

At line 16 Molly continues the aligning talk by constructing hypothetical talk from people to a hypothetical recipient who has been in a doctoral program for an extended time; the hypothetical talk is produced in three sequential utterances, each displaying a problematic stance

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

722

Discourse Studies 12(6)

(it only took you twenty years, what’s taking you so long, aren’t you done yet). At line 31 Lisa agrees with this characterization of such people, and extends the hypothetical conversation by adding a fourth comment from the hypothetical speaker (and what are you going to do with it when you get it); she then produces the it’s like-framed utterance, which (re)produces a response (and it’s like o:::hh). Lisa’s it’s like-framed utterance produces a strongly affective hypothetical responsive attitude towards the hypothetical complaint. Based on the visual and prosodic displays, the affect appears to be one of shame or embarrassment. Lisa’s assessment is taken up by Molly at line 34 with a suggestion for a future project for the three of them, addressing perhaps the lack of articulate defense (o::::hh) presented by Lisa. Example (7) below illustrates an affective assessing response. In this example, Felicia tells an extended story about a ‘scary experience’ coming down her very long, steep driveway on a winter night. Her husband, Mike, was driving, and the truck skidded on ice in the driveway. As they approached the bottom of the driveway, they could see that another vehicle was coming on the road: (7) Three gals, pp. 24–5   9 Feli: =And we hd da- Tha:t’s one scary experience. ((clears throat)) 10 We wer- (0.3) we were in the tru:ck, and we were- coming down the 11 driveway, 12 (.) 13 Moll: Mm 14 (0.4) 15 Feli: and we skidded on ice (0.5) in the driveway itself. ((40 lines omitted)) 56 Feli: hehe.hhh And closing my eyes at the bottom, .hh just waiting for 57 the crunch he[he hehe 58 Lisa: [uh huh 59 Feli: .ihh But we made it. [We didn’t hit him. 60 Lisa: [That’s great. 61 (.) 62 Lisa: That’s [great. 63 Feli: à [But that idiot.=I mean he just stopped there.=It’s like 64 à continue going!= 65 Lisa: =( ) áWe can’t move back, (we can’t control this thing ).ihhh 66 (0.2) 67 Lisa: O:h. 68 (0.3) 69 Feli: That was so scary. I remember that.

Although a crash is avoided, Felicia describes the less-than ideal behavior of the other driver (he just stopped there) and produces an it’s like-framed response to that behavior, in the form of what is hearable as an utterance addressed to the driver (it’s like continue going!). Note the strong affective assessment in Felicia’s utterance, foreshadowed in the earlier TCU at that line (that idiot), and produced with emphatic prosody (captured in the transcript with an exclamation mark). Lisa signals her alignment with this response to the event by building on it with her own response (line 65). Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

723

Fox and Robles

Pitch (Hz)

500

0

0

Time (s)

1.409

Figure 1.  Pitch track of It’s like o~h this is a desse:rt!

Linguistically, affect is indexed lexically, prosodically, and bodily in it’s like-enactments. Large increases in pitch on the response cry, or on the first word of the it’s likeframed utterance, are common, as are large changes in pitch during the it’s like-framed utterance, as illustrated by the pitch track in Figure 1, of the utterance It’s like o~h this is a desse:rt! (from an example not discussed in the article). As can be seen in the pitch track, the pitch range is quite large in this utterance, moving from roughly 145 Hz to roughly 268 Hz (a difference of approximately 10.6 semitones). In the next example, and it’s like o::::h (from example 6), the pitch is remarkably level, especially on the word oh; however the length of the response cry is striking – roughly 720 ms (Figure 2).

Pitch (Hz)

500

it’s like

0

oh

0

1.061 Time (s)

Figure 2.  Pitch track of and it’s like o::::h

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

724

Discourse Studies 12(6)

Laugh-relevant phonetic practices also occur, such as local modulations of loudness, breathiness, and laryngealization or pharyngealization (see Ford and Fox, forthcoming). In the following fragment, for example, both it’s and yes are produced with small local modulations of loudness: (8) Sports Kyle: Dan: Kyle:

They had a great interview today on ESPN2 with an u:h fa:n (.) and he’s a:ll, they were talking about the j- the Niners s:omehow they started comparing the Niners and the Jets and this (.) and this guy was a total Jets fan but at the end he goe:s, .hhh he goes yea: he goes the Niners move up and make this brilliant move and the Jets draft (.) y’know (.) Brady. He’s all well I guess that’s why the Niners are the Niners and the Jets are the Jetshh°he°= =Go:d that’s so true Kyle= à=hh I~t’s like ye~s=

Embodied displays of affect, such as smiles and movements of the head, may also enact affect in these utterances. Consider for example the following still of the utterance it’s like oh no (from example 9), in which the speaker displays broadly spread lips, lowered head, and averted gaze:

Still #1

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

725

Fox and Robles

In the following still, the speaker produces it’s like hey- (from an example not discussed); note the wide eyes, open mouth, and spread lips:

Still #2

Bodily displays are thus clearly an important part of it’s like-enactments (Golato, 2000, makes a similar point for the use of ich/er so in German). In all but one of our examples it is clear that the it’s like-enactment indexes an attitude or inner response rather than something that was actually said. While person-marked uses of be like have shifted in the last 10 years (at least in the United States) to reporting direct speech (see Fox Tree and Tomlinson, 2008), it’s like-enactments favor internal attitudes and responses (see Vasquez and Urzua, 2010, for an interesting parallel). In all of these examples, the it’s like-utterance occurs towards the end of a story. In our examination of it’s like-enactments, we find that they mostly occur towards the end of the multi-unit turn. In some fragments the it’s like-utterance is the final utterance of the turn, and in others it is followed by a closing-relevant assessment. In fact, in many of the examples the speakers deliver the punchline of the story in the turn containing the it’s like-enactment (see Holt, 2000; Niemalä, 2005). How is this ending placement achieved? We have argued so far that it’s like-constructions enact affect-laden responsive attitudes, often in extended telling or stories. As such, they are well suited to coming back to the main event of the story and producing an assessing response, which can begin a closing or pre-closing to the telling. As Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) say: Such a shift from Description to Assessment of Described Events in fact constitutes one of the characteristic ways that speakers begin to exit from a story. (p. 21)

If we re-examine example (8), we see this phenomenon clearly:

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

726

Discourse Studies 12(6)

(8) Sports   1 Kyle:   2 Dan:   3 Kyle:   4 Dan:   5   6 Kyle:   7   8   9 10 11 12 13 14 Dan: 15 Kyle: 16 Dan:

.hhhh[hhh [I have so much contempt for it but at the [same time like you [hhhhhh said I have to like it cause that’s how the u:h.hhh how the Niners got him. [but (anyway) [They had a great interview today on ESPN2 with an u:h fa:n (.) and he’s a:ll, they were talking about the j- the Niners s:omehow they started comparing the Niners and the Jets and this (.) and this guy was a total Jets fan but at the end he goe:s, .hhh he goes yea: he goes the Niners move up and make this brilliant move and the Jets draft (.) y’know (.) Brady. He’s all well I guess that’s why the Niners are the Niners and the Jets are the Jetshh°he°= =Go:d that’s so true Kyle= à=hh I~t’s like ye~s= =It’s funny ths guy, last night the[re was this guy who:

At line 6 Kyle begins an extended telling about an interview he saw on television earlier in the day. He reports the talk of someone first described as a fan, and then as a total Jets fan; the final reported talk from the fan is an assessing tautology that’s why the Niners are the Niners and the Jets are the Jets (see Drew and Holt, 1995; Schegloff, 2007, for a discussion of proverbs, tautologies, etc. as closing relevant), and the final word is produced with laugh-relevant phonetics (see Ford and Fox, forthcoming). This assessment from the fan is thus a possible closing for the story, and it gets positive agreement uptake from Daniel. The story could be possibly complete at line 14. However, at line 15 Kyle extends the story by producing a teller’s assessment (rather than a ‘character’s’ assessment), i~t’s like ye~s, with laugh-relevant phonetics within it’s and yes. At line 16, Daniel displays his understanding that the telling is again possibly complete by beginning his own next story. In examples where it’s like introduces something closer to reported speech, the it’s like-utterance provides a response to the immediately preceding event or utterance, and thus is not typically closing the entire story. However, it may serve to close the final element of the story, which can then be followed by a more global assessment of the story, which in turn can serve as a possible closing of the story, as happened in (7) above, reproduced below: (7) Three gals, pp. 24–5 1 Feli: .ihh But we made it. [We didn’t hit him. 2 Lisa: [That’s great. 3 (.)

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

727

Fox and Robles   4 Lisa: That’s [great.   5 Feli: à [But that idiot.=I mean he just stopped there.=It’s like  6 à continue going!=   7 Lisa: =( ) áWe can’t move back, (we can’t control this thing ).ihhh   8 (0.2)   9 Lisa: O:h. 10 (0.3) 11 Feli: That was so scary. I remember that. 12 Lisa: Yeah yeah 13 Lisa: Well I just imagine y’know sliding from one side to the other 14 you have that wall on either side, right? (I mean) rrrrrr Woops. 15 Feli: ((laugh)) 16 Feli: Yeah. I(ve) nixed my car before.

At line 1, Felicia produces the upshot of the story – But we made it – which is taken up by Lisa with a positive assessment at line 2. Felicia produces another component of the upshot, We didn’t hit him, which once again gets a positive assessment from Lisa. At this point, the story is possibly complete. However, the uptake from Lisa is relatively minimal, there is no uptake from Molly, and neither recipient orients at this moment to the ‘scariness’ of the events narrated. It is possibly because of this lack of full uptake that Felicia extends with another piece of the telling, which is an it’s like-enactment (It’s like continue going!). This is taken up by Lisa with a continuation of the hypothetical dialogue, spoken, apparently, by Felicia: We can’t move back (we can’t control this thing). Felicia now produces an assessment that returns to the original framing of the story (that’s one scary experience), and the story is treated as possibly complete, with appreciation from Lisa of the dangers of sliding in that driveway. As mentioned earlier, this instance of an it’s like-enactment produces something close to speech, and is a response to the behavior of the other driver. It would thus not be an appropriate final closing for the story, but as Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) suggest, it may begin the story exit. In summary, it’s like-framed utterances enact affect-laden assessing responses to a (narrated) event, action, or hypothetical utterance. As such they tend to be story-closing relevant.

3.2. Form: It’s like-framed utterances are often response cries As noted above, many – though not all – of the examples in our collection contain response cries (Goffman, 1978). Response cries, according to Goffman, are ‘non-lexicalized . . . interjections’ (p. 800). Response cries typically have little semantic content, and may serve largely as carriers of prosody. In our collection we have instances of m:::, oh no, wow, man, hey, and o::::h. Some of them are followed by what Goodwin (1996) has called an elaborating sentence, while others occur alone. Example (5) above illustrated the use of m:::; example (9) below illustrates oh no:

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

728

Discourse Studies 12(6)

(9) Physics tutoring Marsha: So we could just do the- like the problems I’ve done done most- I’ve done all my homework, Ha ha ha (I’ve been [good) heh:= Debra: [Ha ha ha. That’s good. Marsha: =And I’ve been doing extra problems. And- I brought- the ones that- I’ve been having a hard time figure[ing out. Debra: [Great. (1.1) Debra. Great. Marsha: So: (0.7) let’s see (0.6) let’s just start with- chapter fiftee:n Debra: This is like a little quiz for me ha [ha ha it’s-= Marsha: [Ha ha ha Debra: à=☺it’s like oh [no☺ Marsha: [How much can you do in one hour. Tsee. Number seven is the one I was going [to do Debra: [How close must two electrons be if the electric force between them is equal to the weight, (0.7) of either at the earth’s surface

In this example, taken from a physics tutoring session, the tutor, Debra, says This is like a little quiz for me, followed by laughter (which is overlapped by laughter from the student), and then the tutor produces the it’s like-enactment: it’s like oh no. The whole utterance is produced with spread lips, and oh no is higher in pitch than it’s like (see still #1). As Goffman (1978) suggests, although in actuality highly fitted to their interactional environment, response cries are viewed by participants as ‘pure’ emotion: We see such ‘expression’ as a natural overflowing, a flooding up of previously contained feeling, a bursting of normal restraints . . . (p. 800)

We suggest that response cries are the prototypical form for it’s like-enactments: they enact affect-laden responsive attitudes to events in the most basic form. There is little to no lexical content. And, as we will see in section 4, the deeply contextual nature of these utterances is one of the resources participants use to create a ‘world known in common’ (Goodwin, personal communication).

3.3. Syntax: The syntax of It’s like-enactments It’s like-enactments are a form of impersonal syntax, in that they exhibit an indefinite anaphoric subject. While contextually the one thinking, feeling, imagining, or hypothetically speaking the utterance could be the speaker of the it’s like-enactment, this format appears to provide a vehicle for ascribing the response not just to the speaker but to ‘one

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

729

Fox and Robles

in this situation,’ or ‘anyone’.5 Thus, while the speaker is clearly a locus for the responsive assessment, the impersonal syntax affords a ‘reasonable person’ interpretation as well. Consider example (5), repeated below: (5) Farmhouse (22:07)   1 Donna:   2   3   4   5 Laura:   6 Donna:   7 Donna:   8   9 Mom: 10 Donna: 11 Mom: 12 13 Michelle: 14 Mom: 15 Donna: 16 Mom:

[But you know when I was in St Louis last weekend, (0.3) áthere are s:o many more overweight people- (0.4) out there, (.) Re[ally? [than here.= Yea:h. I could just tell tha:t. (.) And in the Midwest, don’t you think? °M[hm° à [When we go back to Minnesota and Wisco:nsin it’s like à m:::::.= =Rea:lly.= =M[::hm::. [Yeah. I thi[nk it’s the long winte:rs

Mom’s utterance at line 11 is built to parallel Donna’s utterance at line 1 (when I was in St Louis . . .), and interestingly in her own utterance Donna does not at first claim the observation of overweightness as a personal noticing; she states it instead as a fact: There are so many more overweight people. At line 7, after a news receipt from Laura, Donna does produce an evidentiary source (I could just tell that), but line 3 has no evidential or personal marking of any sort. Mom’s it’s like m::::: mirrors that pattern in providing a response that could be her personal response, or the response of the members of ‘we’, but could also be a more generalized response for ‘anyone like us seeing this situation’. Although Mom’s utterance is not stated as a fact about people in the Midwest, it could be heard as building on the fact introduced by Donna at line 3 through the and in And in the Midwest, and offering a ‘reasonable person’ response to that fact (which could be seen as ‘impersonal’ in nature). In fact, in response to Michelle’s news receipt at line 13, Donna agrees with the assessment in Mom’s utterance, as would a co-teller. In example (6), the hypothetical dialogue started by Molly at line 16 and continued by Lisa at line 31 contains a hypothetical response (it’s like o:::::hh). While in context this response could be heard as possibly attributable to Lisa, given that the dialogue is hypothetical, with a hypothetical speaker and no clearly mentioned recipient, and it’s like o::::::hh could be heard as the kind of response anyone in this situation would have to the question what are you going to do with it when you get it. And it’s like o::::::hh could thus be interpreted as impersonal:

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

730

Discourse Studies 12(6)

(6) Three gals 15 (): 16 Moll: 17 18 Lisa: 19 Feli: 20 Moll: 21 Feli: 22 Moll: 23 Feli: 24 Lisa: 25 Moll: 26 Lisa: 27 Moll: 28 Lisa: 29 Moll: 30 Moll: 31 Lisa: 32

=( [ ) [You know how easy it is for people to say well (0.2) it only átook you twenty year[s, or: um:: what’[s [(uh huh uh huh) [HEHE No what’s e- what’s taking you so long.= =.hhh I hate that.= =( [ my older brother [) [I hate that. [(Oh:: [ ) [(Oh Molly) Uh hu[h [(Why such a court drama)= =Right, =(Mm?) Aren’t you done áyet? JRight, right.J.hhh An and what are you going to do with it à Jwhen you get it,J and it’s like o:::::hh,

In this regard it is interesting to examine an instance of it’s like-enactment cited in Romaine and Lange (1991: 238), repeated below: She goes ‘Mom wants to talk to you.’ It’s LIKE, ‘Hah Hah. You’re about to get in trouble.’

Of this example the authors say: A son is reporting to his mother a fight he had with his sister. The mother already knows of this dispute from a call her daughter made to her while it was taking place. While on the phone with her daughter, the mother told her that she wanted to speak to her son. In reporting to his mother what his sister said, the words ‘Hah hah. You’re about to get in trouble,’ are not directly attributed to any particular speaker. It is as if the remark introduced by it’s like is intended as a gloss of the sister’s tone of voice … (p. 238)

Although the authors do not comment further on this facet of it’s like-enactments, their comment that the words ‘are not directly attributed to any particular speaker’ captures something of what we mean by impersonal syntax. It’s like-enactments are not the only way in which quotatives can depersonalize. Use of the generic you (e.g. you’re like) as well as the null quotative (quoted utterances which are introduced with no subject or verb at all) seem to serve a similar function (Mathis and Yule, 1994). The null quotative especially is ubiquitous in most varieties of English (Buchstaller, 2004; Tagliamonte and Hudson, 1999; Winter, 2002), while you’re like remains even rarer than it’s like. Despite overlap in this impersonal function, each of

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

731

Fox and Robles

these quotative choices serves a slightly different interactional function. You’re like, for example, can be used to respond to a particular person’s experience or story as well as serving as a general comment. The null quotative, on the other hand, encompasses an even greater range of functions, including enacting dialogues between particular narrative characters, giving general comments, and offering personal reflections. Furthermore, null quotatives are far less likely to be used with gestures, facial expressions, or response cries, at least in American English (Singler, 2001; Winter, 2002). Thus, it’s like seems to have a more specialized impersonal purpose in embodied, generalizeable assessments. While most of our examples clearly carry an ‘anyone in this situation’ impersonal possibility, the extent of the generalizability for each example remains to be worked out by the participants. Consider example (10), in which Donna reports her reaction to seeing a live snake: (10) Farmhouse (11:40) Donna: Mom: Michelle: Donna: Donna: Michelle: (): (): Donna: Laura: Donna: Laura: Michelle: Laura: Donna: Laura: Donna: Mom:

There was a sna:ke on the way here.=It’s first I’ve seen a li:ve one. (0.2) Eo::h[. [Wh:at ki:nd. by the golf course (0.3) ↑I don’t know (.) Gardener?= =.hhh (0.2) hhh I would think so[:. [Dju cross the road,’n (0.5) ru[n the other wayhh?=hehehe [No:: I sto:pped,= =.ihheh =hehh[heh [khehhhehe.ihhh= =↑It was goin’ one certain wa:y.=It wasn’t gonna- (0.2) [deviate, [hnhnhnhn àbut it was like (0.4) ma:n, I don’t like that. (.) Like a big one?=A bull snake you think? or

In this fragment, Donna answers Laura’s teasing question at line 15 in the negative and provides an account (It was goin’ one certain wa:y), followed by a second account (It wasn’t gonna- (0.2) deviate) and then the affect-laden responsive assessment but it was like (0.4) ma:n, I don’t like that. Here the event is a particular instance of Donna seeing

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

732

Discourse Studies 12(6)

her first live snake, and thus the it’s like-framed response ma:n, seems grounded in her particularized experience rather than in a more impersonal experience; this sense is heightened by her personalization in the very next clause (I don’t like that). However, Mom’s response seeks more information about the particular snake (line 25, Like a big one?= A bull snake you think?), which may demonstrate that Mom is working towards fully aligning with Donna’s story – if it were a big snake that Mom might also see as frightening, for example, then it might change the generalizeability of Donna’s negatively framed assessment in line 23. Thus, while it’s like-enactments are syntactically impersonal, and clearly provide an opportunity for speakers to present the it’s like-enacted assessment as applicable to anyone in this situation, they may also be used for more personalized responses. The extent to which the impersonal use predominates in any particular instance is worked out by the participants. In this section we have provided evidence that the impersonal syntax of it’s likeenactments affords the possibility of construing the response as attributable to ‘anyone in this situation’ rather than to just the speaker. In the next section we explore the interactional work of it’s like-enactments in building a ‘world known in common’ (Goodwin, personal communication).

4. Building a shared world Emotional responses to events, actions, and prior utterances can be treated as unusual or unique to the responder, or they can be ‘naturalized’ to embody a commonly shared world of reasonable and expectable responses. In this section we suggest that it’s likeenactments are designed, in part through their impersonal syntax, through the frequent use of response cries, and through the use of minimal forms, to build a ‘world known in common’ (Goodwin, personal communication).6 Charles and Marjorie Goodwin’s research has served as an important resource for us in understanding the work that speakers and recipients do with it’s like-enactments. Central to the perspective offered by the Goodwins’ research is that participants work together to create a shared world: ‘Participants build action by secreting diverse semiotic structure into a public environment where others build subsequent action through practices that include systematic transformations of the semiotic materials provided by their predecessors’ (Goodwin, in preparation). It’s like-enactments provide a valuable resource to participants building a shared world. They provide fully fluent speakers, who could have produced a lexically and syntactically elaborate TCU, the tools for constructing a highly context-dependent utterance, whose interpretation by recipients can display a close alignment to the speaker and the world of the speaker. Consider example (5) once again: (5) Farmhouse   1 Donna:   2   3

But you know when I was in St Louis last weekend, (0.3) áthere are s:o many more overweight people- (0.4) out there,

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

733

Fox and Robles   4   5 Laura:   6 Donna:   7 Donna:   8   9 Mom: 10 Donna: 11 Mom: 12 Michelle: 13 Mom: 14 Donna: 15 Mom:

(.) Re[ally? [than here.= Yea:h. I could just tell tha:t. (.) And in the Midwest, don’t you think? °M[hm° [When we go back to Minnesota and Wisco:nsin it’s like m:::::.= =Rea:lly.= =M[::hm::. [Yeah. I thi[nk it’s the long winte:rs

As noted above, at line 1 Donna positions herself in St Louis, and then produces a fact about the people out there. As Donna is producing there at the end of line 3, Mom does a vertical head nod, performing agreement with Donna’s news and claiming equal epistemic authority to Donna (see Heritage and Raymond, 2005; Stivers, 2008). Just as Donna begins Yea:h at line 7, Mom opens her mouth, apparently as a pre-beginning to an utterance. During the second TCU at line 7 Mom produces two more vertical nods. At line 9 Mom builds on Donna’s signs by extending the location from St Louis to the Midwest, and during the last syllable of Midwest Donna produces a vertical nod, performing agreement. During the tag don’t you think? Donna produces a highly marked vertical nod, before producing the verbal agreement marker at line 10. Mom and Donna thus display a high degree of alignment and affiliation with one another, done in such a way as to indicate equal epistemic access to the information. At line 11, Mom, in a syntactically parallel format to Donna’s line 3, positions herself in Minnesota and Wisconsin, which are hearable to the participants present as instantiations of ‘the Midwest’. Through the use of go back to, she builds on and recreates the known-incommon fact of her personal history, which refers to these states. It’s like m:::: is wonderful in the work it affords: it provides absolutely no lexical information and from a traditional linguistics perspective has no possibility for meaning whatsoever. In this context, however, Mom uses it as a resource for producing an affective response whose meaning must be worked out entirely by the participants. The recipients can hear that it’s like frames an affective response to something, and the ‘something’ here is positioned to occur in Minnesota and Wisconsin as instantiations of the Midwest, which is an elaboration of St Louis and the fact of heaviness of the people. By this thread of interactive reasoning, the recipients can hear that m::::: is the affective response that Mom and others like her have to the heaviness of people in those places. Michelle’s Rea:lly and Donna’s Yeah display the results of that reasoning as these two recipients position themselves with differential epistemic access to the information Mom presents – Michelle positioning herself as an unknowing recipient, and Donna positioning herself as almost a co-teller. Mom’s prosody on m::::: suggests a negative, or at least not highly positive, reaction. The assessment could thus be worked out by recipients to be negative, or disapproving. The social action accomplished by this utterance is also to be worked out by the participants: Mom’s utterance is positioned after Donna’s news/statement of fact, and after an

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

734

Discourse Studies 12(6)

agreeing – though location-shifted – utterance from Mom. Line 11 gives Mom’s experience, parallel to Donna’s, and as such acts as an evidential grounding, an account. Michelle’s news receipt, Really, claims an understanding of Mom’s utterance, as does Donna’s confirming response, Yeah. Through these claims to understanding they display close alignment to Mom’s world of experiences and understandings, and thus re-enact and reproduce the close friendship relationships that form the basis of the interaction. We can see in this example the interactive and situated building up of meaning, and the working through by participants of the meaning of an utterance. It’s like-enactments are striking examples of this interactive process, in that they have little conventionalized lexical meanings of their own, and thus rely even more strongly than many other kinds of utterances on the semiotic work of co-participants for their interpretation. How exactly they build on prior utterances and what exactly they mean in a particular context are achievements of all parties involved.

5. Discussion and conclusions In this article we have offered an initial exploration of it’s like-enactment utterances in American English. These utterances are different from other person-marked be like quotatives in that there is no human subject that could be the agent of the enactment. Their existence in everyday conversation thus provides a puzzle for scholars of language in use. Why would speakers produce a thought, feeling, or attitude without clearly attributing that element to a particular source? Through careful examination of a small collection of cases, we have found a possible solution to the puzzle. Our data suggest that it’s like-enactments are a resource for introducing an affect-laden, responsive attitude to a prior event, action, or hypothetical utterance. They do so without attributing the response syntactically to a particular human agent, and thus offer a sense of ‘anyone in this situation’. Thus, although at one level they offer the response of a particular person (typically the speaker), at another level they generalize the response beyond the particulars of the speaker. In this way speakers can normalize their own affective responses to various happenings.7 It’s like-enactments nicely exemplify this tension between ‘natural’ and culturally produced. For example, we note the interesting apparent contradiction between the ‘naturalness’ and ‘transparency’ of response cries on the one hand and their extraordinary context-dependence on the other. That is, although culturally response cries are believed by everyday ‘folks’ to be transparent overflowings of emotion (e.g. ouch for pain, oops for making a mistake; see Goffman, 1978), in these data we have seen that they are clearly underspecified and require extensive semiotic interpretive work for their meaning. In situations of relating past events or attitudes, there are always multiple contextual orientations at work – what Goffman (1974) might call laminations. In a narrative, for example, there is the past context of the related event and the particular speaker’s experience of it; the context of the telling, and the way in which it is co-constructed by the conversational participants; and a more abstract context which situates the experience among general human experiences and to which any reasonable kind of person might respond in a certain fashion. It’s like-enactments are poised to capture all of these contextual orientations in subtle ways that are highlighted and responded to across the ongoing interaction in which they are produced.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

735

Fox and Robles

Perhaps in part because of this rich tension, it’s like-enactments do important work in building a ‘world known in common’ among participants (Goodwin, personal communication). Although speakers produce them as enactments of ‘natural’ responses, recipients must do the seen-but-unnoticed work of finding their interpretation, given the highly context-dependent nature of at least some of the enactments. In finding a possible interpretation, the recipients display their close alignment with the speaker, and at the same time normalize the response as one needing no interpretation. As with much conversational work, the ‘work’ of interpreting it’s like-enactments is hidden and the interpretation is made to appear ‘effortless’ (see Schegloff, 1986). As scholars of language use we often explore the grammatical resources provided by a language and the uses to which those resources are put in interaction. We also explore the ways in which interactional use shapes language organization. However, we rarely have a chance to observe new syntactic forms as they come into a language. Thus, it’s like-enactments, as a relatively recent innovation in American English, provide a rich naturally occurring experiment in the kinds of syntax that speakers create to fill an interactional need. English speakers have created, related to the personal be like quotatives, an impersonal enactment marker. The great usefulness of this device has been seen throughout the article. According to Streeck (2002), part of the usefulness of be like is the growing trend in American culture (and certain other societies) towards speaking as performance: What seems to have happened is that, for reasons difficult to determine, the mimetic mode of representation has gained new popularity in the US and other societies, a mode of reporting experiences and events that favors re-enactments, however stylized and brief, over descriptions. How massive this trend is – even how real it is – is difficult to ascertain. We would probably agree, however, that speakers are more likely to say ‘and I was like ‘‘what is this?’” instead of ‘and I wanted to know what it was,’ than they were, say, 20 years ago. (p. 595)

Ferrara and Bell (1995) make a similar connection between be like quotatives and modern American culture, citing Carbaugh (1988) in seeing ‘a general American tendency towards lionization of self-revelation as a preferred cultural mode’ (p. 283). Be like quotatives provide a grammatical mechanism through which this self-revelation can be performed. Given this greater tendency towards ‘performance’, the it’s likeenactment can be seen as an ideal construction for accomplishing modern ‘culture’. At the same time, it provides the participants with finely tuned devices for building a known in common world among themselves, rather than just among culture-mates at large. It is thus a locus of macro- and micro-culture, a creation of modern (or perhaps postmodern?) speakers as they describe events and put forth what they take to be culturally appropriate responses to those events. Acknowledgments We are grateful to Kaley Sutton for introducing us to this phenomenon and for sharing her insights into it with us. We also thank Chuck Goodwin for comments and suggestions on our data, and Paul Drew, Andrea Golato, Sandy Thompson, and Traci Walker for their helpful comments on a prior draft.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

736

Discourse Studies 12(6)

Notes 1. Golato’s und ich/er so utterances are intriguingly different from our it’s like-enactments. First, half of her examples are prefaced with und ‘and’; in our collection only two instances are prefaced with and. Second, in most of her examples the recipients produce uptake with appreciation or laughter; in our data, it’s like-enactments are likely to get agreements/disagreements next (or nothing at all). This second difference arises no doubt from the difference in actions that the two formats enact: while und ich/er so produces the punchline or climax of a (typically) funny story, it’s like produces an affective responsive attitude towards an event, and thus agreement/ disagreement rather than appreciation or laughter may be relevant next. 2. This dual purpose of displaying emotions, thoughts, or feelings, and at the same time conveying them as morally reasonable seems to be part of why be like and variations are increasingly used in instant messaging where visual cues are lacking (Jones and Schieffelin, 2009). 3. Sixteen of the clear instances were produced by women, but that is almost certainly because most of our data are conversations among women. 4. Several of our examples were produced by middle-aged speakers, including this one. If it’s like-enactments started with young adults, they have clearly made their way into the speech of middle-aged speakers by the late 1990s. 5. We are reminded of the ‘missing person’ construction in Finnish (Hakulinen, 1987). 6. See also Schegloff (1972). 7. It’s like-enactments represent an interesting device with regard to footing (Goffman, 1979). They allow speakers to be the animator of an utterance which they do not have to take personal responsibility for, thus possibly distancing themselves from the role of author and principal.

References Barbieri, F. (2005) ‘Quotative Use in American English: A Corpus-based, Cross-register Comparison’, Journal of English Linguistics 33: 222–256. Barbieri, F. (2009) ‘Quotative Be Like in American English: Ephemeral or Here to Stay?’, English World-Wide 30: 68–90. Barnes, R. and Moss, D. (2007) ‘Communicating a Feeling: The Social Organization of ‘‘Private Thoughts’’’, Discourse Studies 9(2): 123–148. Blyth, C., Recktenwald, S. and Wang, J. (1990) ‘I’m Like, ‘‘Say What?!’’ A New Quotative in American Oral Narrative’, American Speech 65: 215–227. Buchstaller, I. (2004) ‘The Sociolinguistic Constraints on the Quotative System – US English and British English Compared’, unpublished, University of Edinburgh. Buchstaller, I. and D’Arcy, A. (2009) ‘Localized Globalization: A Multi-local, Multivariate Investigation of Quotative Be Like’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 13: 291–331. Carbaugh, D. (1988) Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Clark, H. and Gerrig, R. (1990) ‘Quotations as Demonstrations’, Language 66: 764–805. Cukor-Avila, P. (2002) ‘She Say, She Go, She Be Like: Verbs of Quotation Over Time in African American Vernacular English’, American Speech 77: 3–31. Daily-O’Cain, J. (2000) ‘The Sociolinguistic Distribution and Attitudes towards Focuser Like and Quotative Like’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 4: 60–80. Drew, P. and Holt, E. (1995) ‘Idiomatic Expressions and Their Role in the Organization of Topic Transition in Conversation’, in M. Everaert, E.J. v. d. Linden, A. Schenk and R. Schreuder (eds)

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

737

Fox and Robles

Idioms, Structural and Psychological Perspectives, pp. 117–132. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Ferrara, K. and Bell, B. (1995) ‘Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed Dialogue Introducers: The Case of Be+Like’, American Speech 70: 265–290. Ford, C. and Fox, B. (forthcoming) ‘Multiple Practices for Constructing Laughables’, in E. Reber, D. Barth and M. Selting (eds) Prosody in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fox Tree, J. and Tomlinson, J., Jr (2008) ‘The Rise of Like in Spontaneous Quotations’, Discourse Processes 45: 85–102. Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goffman, E. (1978) ‘Response Cries’, Language 54: 787–815. Goffman, E. (1979) ‘Footing’, Semiotica 25: 1–29. Golato, A. (2000) ‘An Innovative German Quotative for Reporting on Embodied Actions: und ich so/und er so ‘‘and I’m Like/and He’s Like’’’, Journal of Pragmatics 32: 29–54. Goodwin, C. (1996) ‘Transparent Vision’, in E. Ochs, E. Schegloff and S. Thompson (eds) Interaction and Grammar, pp. 370–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C. (in preparation) ‘Building Action with Diverse Semiotic Resources in a Public Environment’. Goodwin, C. and Goodwin, M. (1987) ‘Concurrent Operations on Talk: Notes on the Interactive Organization of Assessments’, Papers in Pragmatics 1: 1–55. Hakulinen, A. (1987) ‘Avoiding Person Reference in Finnish’, in J. Verscheuren and M. PertolucciPapi (eds) The Pragmatic Perspective, pp. 140–153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Heritage, J. and Raymond, G. (2005) ‘The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Assessment Sequences’, Social Psychology Quarterly 68: 15–38. Holt, E. (2000) ‘Reporting and Reacting: Concurrent Responses to Reported Speech’, Research on Language and Social Interaction 33(4): 425–454. Hopper, P. and Traugott, E. (1993) Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jones, G.M. and Schieffelin, B.B. (2009) ‘Enquoting Voices, Accomplishing Talk: Uses of ‘‘Be’’ + ‘‘Like’’ in Instant Messaging’, Language & Communication 29(1): 77–113. Mathis, T. and Yule, G. (1994) ‘Zero Quotatives’, Discourse Processes 18: 63–76. Meehan, T. (1991) ‘It’s Like, What’s Happening in the Evolution of Like?’, Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 16: 37–51. Miller, J. and Weinert, R. (1995) ‘The Function of Like in Dialogue’, Journal of Pragmatics 23: 365–393. Niemalä, M. (2005) ‘Voiced Direct Reported Speech in Conversational Storytelling: Sequential Patterns of Stance Taking’, SKY Journal of Linguistics 18: 197–221. Romaine, S. and Lange, D. (1991) ‘The Use of Like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress’, American Speech 66: 227–279. Schegloff, E. (1972) ‘Notes on a Conversational Practice: Formulating Place’, in D.N. Sudnow (ed.) Studies in Social Interaction, pp. 75–119. New York: Macmillan, The Free Press. Schegloff, E. (1986) ‘The Routine as Achievement’, Human Studies 9: 111–151. Schegloff, E. (2007) Sequence Organization in Interaction: A Primer in Conversation Analysis, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schourup, L. (1985) Common Discourse Particles in English Conversation. New York: Garland.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010

738

Discourse Studies 12(6)

Singler, J. (2001) ‘Why You Can’t Do a VARBRUL Study of Quotatives and What Such a Study Can Show Us’, University of Pennsylvania Working Papers 7: 257–278. Singler, J. (2005) ‘Like, Quote Me’, PBS.com, available online at: [http://www.pbs.org/speak/ ahead/change/change], accessed 8 August 2005. Stivers, T. (2008) ‘Stance, Alignment and Affiliation during Storytelling: When Nodding is a Token of Affiliation’, Research on Language in Social Interaction 41: 31–57. Streeck, J. (2002) ‘Grammars, Words, and Embodied Meanings. On the Evolution and Uses of So and Like’, Journal of Communication 52: 581–596. Tagliamonte, S. and D’Arcy, A. (2004) ‘He’s Like, She’s Like: The Quotative System in Canadian Youth’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 8: 493–514. Tagliamonte, S. and Hudson, R. (1999) ‘Be Like et al. Beyond America: The Quotative System in British and Canadian Youth’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 3: 147–172. Tannen, D. (1986) ‘Introducing Constructed Dialogue in Greek and American Conversational and Literary Narrative’, in F. Coulmas (ed.) Direct and Indirect Speech, pp. 311–332. The Netherlands: Mouton de Gruyter. Underhill, R. (1988) ‘Like is, Like, Focus’, American Speech 63: 234–246. Vasquez, C. and Urzua, A. (2010) ‘Reported Speech and Reported Mental States in Mentoring Meetings: Exploring Novice Teacher Identities’, Research on Language and Social Interaction 42: 1–19. Winter, J. (2002) ‘Discourse Quotatives in Australian English: Adolescents Performing Voices’, Australian Journal of Linguistics 22: 5–21.

Barbara A. Fox is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her interests center on grammar in its reflexive relationship to interaction, as well as on grammar in use more generally. She also works on philosophies of language-in-use. She is the author of Discourse Structure and Anaphora and The Human Tutorial Dialogue Project, and the (co)-editor of several volumes, including The Language of Turn and Sequence and Studies in Anaphora. She has also published articles on grammar and interaction, and grammar and use. Jessica Robles (MA, University of Essex) works in Language and Social Interaction and takes a discourse analysis approach to interpersonal communication. Her research interests include interpersonal and institutional conflict, how people talk about conflict, metadiscourse, and how moral issues are addressed in communication. She has done work on discursive strategies such as reported speech, emotion, facework, positioning, identitywork, questioning, intersubjectivity practices and argument in contexts related to healthcare, local governance, political bodies, and friendship and family talk. She is currently writing a dissertation on discourse and morality for a doctoral degree in communication at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Downloaded from dis.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITY COLORADO on December 5, 2010