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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Language in Society
- Sprache: Englisch
Quotatives considers the phenomenon "quotation" from a wealth of perspectives. It consolidates findings from different strands of research, combining formal and functional approaches for the definition of reported discourse and situating the phenomenon in a broader typological and sociolinguistic perspective. * Provides an interface between sociolinguistic research and other linguistic disciplines, in particular discourse analysis, typology, construction grammar but also more formal approaches * Incorporates innovative methodology that draws on discourse analytic, typological and sociolinguistic approaches * Investigates the system both in its diachronic development as well as via cross-variety comparisons * Presents careful definition of the envelope of variation and considers alternative definitions of the phenomenon "quotation" * Empirical findings are reported from distribution and perception data, which allows comparing and contrasting perception and reality
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Language in Society
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Figures
Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction: What's New about the New Quotatives?
The History of Innovative Quotatives
Why?
Notes
References
Chapter 2: You Can Quote Me On That: Defining Quotation
Defining Quotation
Direct versus Indirect Quotes
Why Does it Matter? The Ramifications of Variable Definition
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Variation and Change in the Quotative System: The Global versus the Local
Tracing the Global Attestation of Innovative Quotatives
Investigating Models of Diffusion
Investigating the Global Reality of Innovative Quotatives
Putting It All Together
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Quotation across the Generations: A Short History of Speech and Thought Reporting
Tracing Quotation in Tyneside English across the Past 60 Years
Quotations across the Decades: Tracing the Changes in the Variable Grammar
How to Create Variability in a Low Entropy System?
Notes
References
Chapter 5: Ideologies and Attitudes to Newcomer Quotatives
Don't Sound Stupid, Stop Saying like
Language Ideologies: Facts and Fiction
Testing Attitudes towards the Innovative Quotatives
What Type of Person would use such a Form? Testing Associations with Personality Traits
Where do be like and go come from? Investigating the Perceptual Geographies of Innovative Quotatives
Social Perceptions Associated with be like and go
Youth Inarticulateness and the Pedagogical Debate
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Lessons Learned from Research on Quotation
The Innovative Quotatives: A New, Uniform and Unique Phenomenon?
The Elephant in the Room: Situating Quotation in Linguistic Modularity
Tackling Some Illusions
Tracing the Present and Future of Quotative Forms
Conclusion
Notes
References
Appendix 1: Linear Regression Analysis Investigating the Conditioning Factors on the Quotative System in the US and the UK
Appendix 2: Alternative Cross-Tabulations
Appendix 3: Social Attitudes Survey
Index
Language in Society
General Editor
Advisory Editors
This edition first published 2014
© 2014 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Quotatives : new trends and sociolinguistic implications / by Isabelle Buchstaller.—First Edition.
pages cm.—(Language in society)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-65718-8 (hardback)
1. Quotation. 2. Speech acts (Linguistics) 3. Intercultural communication. 4. Semantics. 5. Sociolinguistics. I. Buchstaller, Isabelle, author.
P302.814.Q69 2014
306.44—dc23
2013020968
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover image: The Brooklyn Bridge by Dominic Buchstaller.
Cover design by www.cyandesign.co.uk
Acknowledgements
In 1997, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen handed me a tape recording of her niece to analyse for a graduate seminar on discourse markers. I ended up writing a paper on the use of like, which laid the seed for the research presented in this book. Since then, I have been fortunate to be able to discuss my ideas with many great minds, whose input and contributions to my work have been truly immeasurable. It is in these discussions with colleagues and friends that many of the ideas contained in this book were conceived, debated and refined. Thank you so much for all the fruitful chats, fierce discussions and constructive conversations, the critical and useful comments, the encouragement: Miriam Meyerhoff, Alex D'Arcy, Bambi Schieffelin, Jenny Cheshire, John Rickford, Tom Wasow, Elizabeth Traugott, Kirk Hazen, John Victor Singler, Lesley Milroy, Caroline Heycock, Aria Adli, Anders Holmberg, Adam Mearns, Ingrid van Alphen, Karen Corrigan, Jane Stuart-Smith, Jen Smith, Laura Whitton, Lauren Hall-Lew, Richard Waltereit, Rob Podesva, Daniel Ezra Johnson, Guy Bailey, Gerry Docherty, Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain, Allan Bell, Erez Levron, Sue Fox, Devyani Sharma, Emma Moore, Chris Montgomery, Maggie Tallerman, S.J. Hannahs, Miriam Bakht, Eivind Torgerson, Lynn Clark, Joan Beal, Wim van der Wurff, Anthea Fraser Gupta, Rachelle Waksler, Paul Foulkes, Ghada Khattab, Dominic Watt, Therese Lindström, Patricia Cukor-Avila, Federica Barbieri, Paul Kerswill, Tyler Kendall, John Foreman, Jack Bilmes, David Britain, Peter Patrick, Warren Maguire, April MacMahon, Parick Honeybone, Susanne Wagner, Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, Aldo DiLuzio, Beat Siebenhaar and Doris Schönefeld, with many of whom I have discussed quotatives, corpus linguistics or linguistic theory.
I must acknowledge the intellectual contribution of Ingrid van Alphen and the contributors of our edited volume Quotatives: Cross-linguistic and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives, Lieven Vandelanotte, Tom Güldemann, Andrea Golato, David Oshima, Ingrid Kristine Hasund, Toril Opsahl, Jan Svennevig, Stef Spronck, Shin-ichiro Sano, Annika Herrmann, Markus Steinbach, Sue Fox, Peter-Arno Coppen and Ad Foolen, who have influenced and broadened my thinking on quotation.
I would also like to thank my colleagues at the California All-initiative, John Rickford, Elizabeth Traugott, Tom Wasow and Arnold Zwicky, who have greatly inspired my research, provided me with support, constructive criticism and reality checks whenever necessary. I am grateful for their kind permission to let me use the corpus of recordings from California youth, which we collected together for this project. I would also like to thank Ann Wimmer as well as our student gang, Zoe Bogart, Crissy Brown, Kayla Carpenter, Tracy Conner, Kristle McCracken, Rowyn McDonald, Cybelle Smith, Francesca Marie Smith and Laura Whitton.
I am indebted to a troupe of corpus builders and digitizers, the DECTE team at Newcastle University, Karen Corrigan, Adam Mearns and Hermann Moisl. Thanks especially to them and to Gerard Docherty for their permission to use the Tyneside data in this volume. I would like to thank the AHRC for their generous support, which allowed us to create the DECTE/Talk of the Toon corpus (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/decte/toon and http://research.ncl.ac.uk/decte/). I also need to give a shout out to all the people who helped collect the corpus: Ekaterina Samoylova and Ghada Khattab, the students of the modules SEL3009, SEL2091, SEL8163 and our vacation scholarship students, Jonathan Burrows, Laura Bailey and Dominic Thompson. I am particularly grateful to the students who held a pivotal role in managing the masses of material: Claire Childs, Katie Barnfield, Nick Roberts, Joanne Bartlett and Peter Wilson and to the man who held it all together, Adam Mearns. I would also like to thank Jeff Wilson and Warren Maguire, who have helped me access, store and analyse the data.
Graham Mowl and John Woodward at Northumbria University have allowed me to distribute my survey in their introductory geography classes. John Singler let me collect data in his sociolinguistics course at New York University—thank you all so much! Thanks also to Bambi Schieffelin, who gave me shelter in New York City and provided loads of tips on where to corner unsuspecting suspects for my social attitudes questionnaire.
In the course of collecting material for this book, myself and my colleagues interviewed a great number of people in New York City, on Tyneside, in Edinburgh, and in California. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who was willing to spend an hour or more talking to any of us and also to those who answered my social attitudes questionnaire.
This book was a long time in the making and many of my ideas gestated while I was a student at Konstanz University, at the University of Hawai′i at Mnoa, and at the University of Edinburgh as well as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. I wrote this manuscript while I was employed at Newcastle University and at Leipzig University. I would like to acknowledge the generous support I received at all these institutions. During the writing process, I have had excellent research assistance, particularly from Steff Otte, Daniela Nickel and Nils Rosenthal. I would also like to express my gratefulness to three anonymous reviewers and to Anne Krause, my careful and constructive copyeditor. My thanks to the team at Wiley Blackwell, especially Julia Kirk, Danielle Descoteaux and Tessa Hanford, for their patience in answering my many questions and for their enthusiastic help in putting together this volume.
I would like to thank my husband, Seraphim Alvanides, and my family, Uta Buchstaller, Manfred Buchstaller, Dominic Buchstaller, Bess Alsenz and Wolfgang Neuhuber for their support and patience. And finally I need to express my sincerest gratitude to Miriam Meyerhoff. Miriam, this one's for you.
Figures
Figure 1.1
Partial taxonomy of English direct speech and thought constructions
Figure 1.2
Constructional template for the new quotatives based on a form of
to be
Figure 1.3
Constructional template for the new quotatives based on copular verbs
Figure 2.1
Syntactic embedding of quotation as a direct object
Figure 2.2
A typology of source constructions for quotation
Figure 2.3
Multiple embedded spaces
Figure 2.4
(a) The responsibility for the form of the reported proposition(b) The evaluative stances that hold in a quotative situation
Figure 3.1
Pitch track to
It's like o∼h this is a dess
e:r
t!
Figure 3.2
Taxonomy of the kind and quality of information transferred via language contact
Figure 4.1
Map of Tyneside
Figure 5.1
Don't sound stupid 1
Figure 5.2
Don't sound stupid 2
Figure 5.3
Overall display of Don't sound stupid poster
Figure 5.4
Banished words (from Lake Superior University 1988)
Figure 5.5
Matched guise texts
Figure 5.6
Traits displayed in the questionnaire via the semantic differential technique
Figure 5.7
Correlation between the age of the informant and their rating on the trait ‘fashionable’, US informants
Figure 5.8
Correlation between the self-professed usage frequency of
be like
and rating on the trait ‘extroverted’, UK informants
Figure 5.9
Correlation between the self-professed usage frequency of
be like
and rating on the trait ‘good sense of humour’, UK informants
Figure 6.1
Distribution of
go
across age groups in the Switchboard corpus collected 1988–92
Figure 6.2
Distribution of
be like
and
go
in the Switchboard corpus collected 1988–92
Tables
Table 1.1
Non-canonical quotative forms by date of attestation
Table 1.2
New quotatives and their semantic sources
Table 2.1
Distribution of direct repetition across genres
Table 2.2
Frequency of repetition in the 1960s/70s and the 2000s data
Table 2.3
Raw frequency and overall proportion of unframed quotes in the 1960s/70s and the 2000s data
Table 2.4
Frequency of reporting of speech versus thought in the three corpora using a variationist sociolinguistic approach to quotation
Table 2.5
Frequency of reporting of inner states versus speech across three corpora using a maximally inclusive approach to quotation
Table 2.6
Overall number of quotes in the three corpora
Table 2.7
Distribution of quotatives (narrowly defined) across the three corpora
Table 2.8
Distribution of quotatives (broadly defined) across the three corpora
Table 3.1
Linguistic and social constraints with a significant effect on the occurrence of
be all
Table 3.2
Linguistic and social constraints with a significant effect on the occurrence of
go
Table 3.3
Linguistic and social constraints with a significant effect on the occurrence of
be like
Table 3.4
The quotative system of older and younger speakers in the UK
Table 3.5
The quotative system of older and younger speakers in New Zealand
Table 3.6
Overall occurrence of quotative forms amongst young American speakers
Table 3.7
Overall occurrence of quotative forms amongst young British speakers
Table 3.8a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.8b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.9a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and speaker gender amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of the variant
Table 3.9b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and speaker gender amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.10a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and speaker gender amongst younger UK speakers
Table 3.10b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and speaker gender amongst younger UK speakers calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.11a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and content of quote amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.11b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and content of quote amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.12a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and content of quote amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.12b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and content of quote amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.13a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.13b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.14a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.14b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.15a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.15b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.16a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction of the individual variant
Table 3.16b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.17a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and mimesis amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of the individual variant
Table 3.17b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and mimesis amongst younger US speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.18a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and mimesis amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction out of the individual variant
Table 3.18b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and mimesis amongst younger UK speakers—calculated as a fraction out of all quotative variants
Table 3.19
The diachronic patterning of
be like
across space
Table 4.1
Earliest and latest birthdates for the speakers in the three corpora in DECTE
Table 4.2
Frequency of quotation by corpus
Table 4.3
Quotative distribution in 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.4
Quotative distribution in 1990s PVC
Table 4.5
Quotative distribution in 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.6a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst older speakers—using the variant as the denominator
Table 4.6b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst older speakers—using the variable as the denominator
Table 4.7a
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst younger speakers—using the variant as the denominator
Table 4.7b
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst younger speakers—using the variable as the denominator
Table 4.8
Results of a multinomial analysis for the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.9
The significant constraints on the quotative system in the 1960s/70s TLS data (as selected by a multinomial regression analysis)
Table 4.10
Quotative choices of younger and older speakers in the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.11
Quotative choices of younger and older speakers in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.12
Quotative choices of younger and older speakers in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.13
Two-way interaction effects in a multinomial regression analysis for the 1960s/70s TLS and the 1990s PVC
Table 4.14
Two-way interaction effects in a multinomial regression analysis for the 1990s PVC and the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.15
Distribution of quotative variants by class in the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.16
Distribution of quotative variants by class in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.17
Distribution of mimetic effects in the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.18
Distribution of mimetic effects in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.19
Distribution of mimetic effects in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.20
Distribution of quotative variants by gender in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.21
Distribution of quotative variants by gender in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.22
Quotative variants used with thought and speech by older speakers in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.23
Quotative variants used with thought and speech by younger speakers in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.24
Quotative variants used with thought and speech by older speakers in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.25
Quotative variants used with thought and speech by younger speakers in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.26
Quotative variants used in narratives and other genres in the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.27
Quotative variants used in narrative contexts by older speakers in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.28
Quotative variants used in narrative contexts by younger speakers in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.29
Quotative variants used in narrative contexts by older speakers in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.30
Quotative variants used in narrative contexts by younger speakers in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.31
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst older speakers
Table 4.32
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 1990s PVC amongst younger speakers
Table 4.33
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 2000s NECTE2 amongst older speakers
Table 4.34
Correlation between most frequent verbs and grammatical person in the 2000s NECTE2 amongst younger speakers
Table 4.35
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense in the 1960s/70s TLS
Table 4.36
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense in the 1990s PVC
Table 4.37
Correlation between most frequent verbs and tense in the 2000s NECTE2
Table 4.38
Position of quotative frame across time
Table 4.39
Occurrence of quotatives with sentence types across time
Table 5.1
Attitudes towards
be like
in the US amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.2
Attitudes towards
be like
in the UK amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.3
Attitudes towards
go
in the US amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.4
Attitudes towards
go
in the UK amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.5
Self-professed use of
like
in the US amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.6
Self-professed use of
like
in the UK amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.7
Self-professed use of
go
in the US amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.8
Self-professed use of
go
in the UK amongst older and younger informants
Table 5.9
Personality judgements for
be like
in the US
Table 5.10
Personality judgements for
be like
in the UK
Table 5.11
Personality judgements for
go
in the US
Table 5.12
Personality judgements for
go
in the UK
Table 5.13
US respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think each speaker comes from?’
Table 5.14
US respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think it [
like
] comes from?’
Table 5.15
UK respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think each speaker comes from?’
Table 5.16
US respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think each speaker comes from?’
Table 5.17
UK respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think each speaker comes from?’
Table 5.18
UK respondents' answers to the question ‘Where do you think it [
like
] comes from?’
Table 5.19
US respondents' judgements for the age of the two speakers (mean numbers)
Table 5.20
Associations of
be like
with speaker age, gender, class and education (in % frequency) in the US. Interactions p < .01 as determined by a univariate ANOVA
Table 5.21
UK respondents' judgements for the age of the two speakers (mean numbers)
Table 5.22
Associations of
be like
with speaker age, gender, class and education (in % frequency) in the UK (no interaction effects at p < .01
Table 5.23
US respondents' judgements for the age of the two speakers (mean numbers)
Table 5.24
Associations of
go
with speaker age, gender, class and education (in % frequency) in the US (no interaction effects at p < .01)
Table 5.25
UK respondents' judgements for the age of the two speakers (mean numbers)
Table 5.26
Associations of
go
with speaker age, gender, class and education (in % frequency) in the UK (no interaction effects at p < .01)
Table 6.1
Frequency of
be like
amongst Canadian adolescents between 1995 and 2002
Table 6.2
Frequency of
be like
in York (UK), comparison of Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999) and Haddican et al. (2012)
Table 6.3
Frequency of
be like
in the Switchboard (SWB) data (1988–1992) compared to Singler's (2001) NYU dataset (1995–1999)
Table 6.4
Frequency of
be like
in Newcastle between 1994–95 and 2007
Table 6.5
Percentage of
be like
quotative use by speaker's age in the 1995 and 2003 NYU datasets by age bracket
Table 6.6
Percentage of
be like
quotative use by year of birth in the 1995 and 2003 NYU datasets by year of birth
Table 6.7
Evaluating the relationship of occupation to frequency of
like
use
Table 6.8
Use of
go
by older and younger speakers across different datasets
Table 6.9
Use of
go
by younger speakers across different datasets
Chapter 1
Introduction: What's New about the New Quotatives?
In 1996, the American punk rock band ‘The Mr. T Experience’ released a song entitled ‘I'm Like Yeah, But She's All No’. Its refrain, which is reproduced in the snippet below, showcases three innovations that have recently started to be used for the reporting of one's own or other people's speech, namely be like, be all and go.
‘I'm Like Yeah, But She's All No’ (from the album Love Is Dead)
And I'm like ‘yeah’,
but she's all ‘no’,
and I'm all ‘come on baby, let's go’,
and she's like ‘I don't think so’,
and I'm going ‘…’
Be like, go and be all are the most notorious innovations for reporting speech, thought and activity in the English language. But they are by no means the only novel forms in this linguistic domain which is called quotation. Ever since the 1970s, speakers of English have witnessed a steady stream of innovative forms in this area of the grammar. Table 1.1 lists the wealth of new English quotative variants by date of first mention in the literature.
Table 1.1 Non-canonical quotative forms by date of attestation
The list does not end here. Even newer quotative options, such as kinda, sorta and combinations of variants—all like, go totally, etc.—continue to get picked up in the literature (see De Smedt, Brems, and Davidse 2007; Margerie 2010; Vandelanotte 2012).1 Obviously, quotation is an extraordinarily dynamic domain. However, except for be like and go, these quotative newcomers have received very little attention in the literature. This is probably due to two factors: (i) Most innovative variants are much less frequent than these two forms. (ii) Also, whereas be like and go have been reported from English-speaking communities all over the world (see Singler and Woods 2002), other quotative variants are—as of yet—geographically relatively restricted. Quotative be all seems to be heavily localized to California, where it was used extensively by younger speakers in the early 1990s, but appears to have fallen out of fashion since then (see Buchstaller et al. 2010; Rickford et al. 2007). The form is relatively infrequent in other areas of North America and rare or unattested elsewhere (Singler 2001; see also Chapter 3). This is + speaker has not been mentioned outside of the London area (Cheshire and Fox 2007) and quotative be git has only been recorded in the North East of England, especially in Sunderland (Norton 2008). Other forms that are attested in the literature, such as I'm here (California), I'm sitting here (Alabama), here's + speaker (Ireland), be pure (Scotland) and be just (reported with low frequencies in York and Glasgow) seem to be sporadic in nature.
Importantly, the recent emergence of new ways of re-enacting speech, thought, attitudes or physical activity is not restricted to the English language. Non-canonical quotative innovations have been attested in a range of typologically unrelated languages, such as Hebrew, German and Japanese. Also, the recent expansion in this grammatical domain has not gone unnoticed in the linguistic communities in which these innovative forms have appeared. In fact, their appearance has created quite a stir, not only in the academic literature but also in venues aimed at the general public, especially in the World Wide Web but also in educational circles. In Israel, for example, a whole generation has been named after their use of innovative Hebrew quotatives (the ‘kaze-ke'ilu- generation’), which carry negative connotations and which are associated primarily with the language of adolescents (Maschler 2002: 245; Ziv 1998). In the US, a range of liberal arts colleges have launched study skills programs aimed towards improving students' rhetorical skills and to effectively stamp out be like usage.
The constant incursion of innovative forms into the system of quotation raises a number of questions: Has the domain of speech and thought reporting always been the locus of such abundant creativity? Or is the stream of innovations we observe in Table 1.1 a relatively recent phenomenon? Also, we might want to ask about the outcome of the invasion into the quotative system: Are the newcomers pressing out older, less fashionable forms? Alternatively, the development might be additive, resulting in a richer system that incorporates incoming innovative forms. This would amount to a ‘layering of variants’ (Hopper 1991: 22) where older and younger forms coexist, a situation that has been argued to have occurred in the system of intensification (Ito and Tagliamonte 2003).
The rapid expansion of quotative variants also makes us wonder how exactly these innovations edge their way into the system of speech and thought reporting. Do innovative variants perform any specific linguistic functions that differentiate them from older forms? Or do they intrude into the same functional niches and thereby stand in direct competition with more conservative variants?
Moreover, the attitudes and ideologies attached to these newcomer quotatives are of crucial importance for our understanding of the emergence and promotion of innovative forms. Given that the press and other media outlets voice predominantly hostile attitudes towards these variants (consider Chapter 5), it seems surprising that they have been and continue to be embraced by some speakers. We need to find out more about these innovators, the primary users of emerging quotative forms: What is the social profile of the speakers who first adopted be like, go and other novel forms? Are these the same speakers in different localities? And why is it that people start using these innovative quotative variants? Do they want to tap into positive associations these forms might bear? If yes, what are these associations? And what about the non-users of be like and go, those speakers who choose not to adopt the innovative quotatives in spite of the fact that they hear them being used all around them. Do these people reject the novel quotative variants because of ideological considerations? More generally, we need to ask whether speakers' attitudes towards innovative quotatives are constant across time and space.
Finally, we must not forget to investigate the typological considerations that are evoked by the recent large-scale fluctuations in the quotative system. Why have these new forms of quotatives arisen in several languages simultaneously? Are there any cross-linguistic tendencies at work? One obvious hypothesis is that the innovations are due to repeated borrowing from one language into another. An alternative hypothesis is that the innovative forms of reporting might have arisen due to parallel but autonomous developments in different languages and speech communities. We need to examine innovative quotatives in typologically related and unrelated languages in order to establish whether the process that led to the creation of these quotative forms is the same on a global scale or whether we witness locally independent developments.
This book seeks to provide answers to the above questions. Chapter 1 sets the scene by tracing the recorded history of be like and go—the only two quotative variants about which we have consolidated diachronic knowledge. I will go on to investigate the question to what extent the recent emergence of innovative quotative forms in the English language is an isolated phenomenon or whether the development we witness in English is part of a larger, cross-linguistic trend. Chapter 2 provides a thorough definition of quotation as a phenomenon, drawing on research in a range of linguistic subdisciplines (see also below). In Chapter 3, I examine the global attestation of innovative quotative forms, followed by an investigation of the longitudinal repercussions of their spread in Chapter 4. Attitudes and ideologies attached to newcomer quotatives are discussed in Chapter 5. Finally, Chapter 6 revisits the main findings of this book and puts them into a broader perspective.
Note that the main methodological framework I rely on throughout this book for the analysis of the quotative system is variationist (aka quantitative) sociolinguistics. But the argument will also draw on a range of other approaches, notably on linguistic typology, construction grammar, grammaticalization, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and methods used in social psychology, such as social identity theory. This synthetic approach stems not from a ‘lack of conviction in any method or theoretical framework, but rather out of strong conviction that the full picture … requires explanations that eschew existing orthodoxies and assumptions of excessive modularity in the grammar’ (Meyerhoff 2002: 356).
Furthermore, whereas the focus of the research presented here is on different varieties of English, I will also take into account typological, cross-linguistic considerations, especially in Chapters 1 and 6. Finally, while this book considers a range of innovative quotatives, it predominantly focuses on the two globally available forms be like and go. These two variants are unique in that they have developed into major players in the quotative domain, resulting in a large-scale reorganization of the system. They have also become part of the public consciousness, triggering extensive, often negative evaluative commentary. However, throughout this volume, I will examine these two prolific innovations within the system in which they occur, focusing on the continued interaction and competition between alternative forms within the pool of quotative variants as a whole.
The History of Innovative Quotatives
A widespread hypothesis in the literature on quotation is that the variants in Table 1.1 are recent additions to the quotative pool. The reasoning behind this assumption—apart from the fact that they have only recently been mentioned in the literature—is relatively straightforward: since the main users of these forms are adolescents, the group who tends to be the first to pick up and advance (linguistic) innovations, these quotative variants must be new. However, as we will see below, this hypothesis is only partially accurate. Let us now investigate the history of non-canonical quotative variants.
To the extent that we can trace their diachronic development, most forms in Table 1.1 seem to be relatively recent arrivals in the quotative system. Be all was first mentioned in The Newsletter of Transpersonal Linguistics edited at the University of California at Berkeley (Alford 1982–83), and diachronic research has revealed that it is indeed an innovative variant originating in California (Buchstaller and Traugott 2007; Waksler 2001). This is me seems not to have been around before London adolescents started using it in the early 2000s (Cheshire and Fox 2007). Other low frequency quotative forms have only been attested once or twice (such as here was I or I'm sittin' there, see Table 1.1), which makes it impossible to trace their historical development. The history of go, however, is completely dissimilar, starting a great deal earlier and taking a different, much broader, geographical route. I will turn to the case of quotative go below. But let us first dig into the linguistic history of be like, which, due to its vigorous global spread, has become the poster child for rapid language change phenomena (Tagliamonte and D'Arcy 2009; Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999).
The earliest attestation of be like in quotative function is Butters (1982: 149), who reports that American speakers use ‘to be (usually followed by like) where what is quoted is an unuttered thought, as in And he was like “Let me say something” or I thought I was going to drown and I was (like) “Let me live, Lord”’ (see also Schourup 1982a/b). In an article published shortly after (Tannen 1986), be like amounts to 4 per cent in American English, but we are not told when the data was collected or where the speakers are from. Hence, in all evidence, quotative be like seems to have arisen at some point in the early 1980s in the US. What further corroborates this hypothesis—apart from the fact that the form has not been mentioned in the literature prior to Butters (1982)—is that most authoritative dictionaries have only recently picked up on the quotative use of the lexeme like. For example, the first edition of the Random House Webster does not mention like in this function. But the second edition, which appeared in 1999, incorporates the new use as ‘informal (used esp. after forms of “to be” to introduce reported speech or thought) (3) She's like “I don't believe it,” and I'm like “No, it's true”’ (1999: 768). Also the OED was slow to pick up on the quotative innovation. Before the newest set of additions were added in 2010, the only entry for like in connection with quotation is classified as a ‘less analysable construction’2 and one of the examples features like in a collocate construction with another quotative verb, think.
N. Amer. colloq. Followed by an adj.: in the manner of one who is _______. Cf. like crazy (…), like mad (…). Also in less analysable constructions. (…) 1970 Time 31 Aug. 19 Afterward, a girl came up to me and said, ‘You kinda look interested in this; did you know there are civil rights for women?’ And I thought like wow, this is for me. (OED online, emphasis mine).
The OED entry is correct in pointing out that in quote introductory function, the lexeme like can co-occur with verbs of quotations (such as think like in the citation above). Most frequently, however, like collocates with the verb to be.3 Thus, in this volume, I will refer to the quotative variant as be like, bearing in mind that this is not the only form in which it can be used (the same also holds for quotative be all).
The OED draft addition of June 2010 finally adds an entry that recognizes the quotative use of like. This definition gives examples dating back to 1982 (see 1a–e).
colloq. (orig. U.S.). to be like: used to report direct speech (often paraphrased, interpreted, or imagined speech expressing a reaction, attitude, emotion, etc.); to say, utter; (also) to say to oneself. Also with all. Freq. in the historic present (…). Sometimes also used to introduce a gesture or facial expression evocative of the speaker's feelings.
The OED thus supports Butters' (1982) and Macaulay's (2001) hypothesis that the quotative use of like first appeared in the early 1980s in California: Example (1a) is taken from Frank and Moon Unit Zappa's 1982 song ‘Valley Girl’, a satire of young Californian girls' way of speaking which, apart from be like, features a number of iconic Californian linguistic features such as for sure, totally as well as Oh my God. The OED also illustrates be like in a combined form with all (see 1c) as well as in alternation with quotative go (1d). Note also that the OED captures the global spread of the form since the 2008 citation (1e) stems from an Australian source, hence outside of its American epicentre.
As regards the chronology of the global use of the form, Miller and Weinert (1995) report no quotative be like in Scottish English prior to 1980 and Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999) state that the form is unattested in Britain until the early 1990s. But we know that by 1993, be like has found its way into the use of London teenagers because Andersen (1996) is the first to note its occurrence in the Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT).4 Buchstaller (2004) reports the use of be like in Derby and Newcastle in 1994. Tagliamonte and Hudson (1999) attest be like for their 1995–96 data in York and in Canada and Macaulay (2001) writes that Glasgow Scots speakers use be like in 1997. D'Arcy (2010, 2012) discusses its usage in New Zealand and Winter (2002) in Australia, both with data from the 1990s. In the years to follow, quotative be like was spotted in a multitude of varieties of English world wide (including Singapore, India and South Africa; see Chapter 3; D'Arcy 2013; Singler and Woods 2002). Crucially, the novel form not only extends its remit geographically—it also increases dramatically in frequency. Countless studies have reported the rampant expansion of quotative be like in global varieties of English (see for example Buchstaller 2011; Cukor-Avila 2011; D'Arcy 2012, 2013; Tagliamonte and D'Arcy 2009). Chapter 4 further investigates the diachronic development of be like as well as its impact on the quotative system in the North of England in the past 40 years.
The literature on innovative quotative variants contains an—at times quite fervent—discussion as regards the types of quotes be like tends to introduce. The general consensus seems to be that the variant has entered the system framing reported thought, attitudes or stance. Consider, for example, Butters' (1982: 149; highlighting mine) claim that ‘to be (usually followed by like) where what is quoted is an unuttered thought, as in And he was like “Let me say something”’. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the earliest reported examples of the form (see 1a and 1c above from the OED) tend to frame reported inner monologue, thoughts, attitudes and point of view (see Haddican et al. 2012; Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999). By the early to mid-1990s, however, we find be like introducing speech as well as thought re-enactments. This means that the newcomer must have expanded its functional niche to encode outwardly occurring speech relatively quickly. The examples in (2) and (3) illustrate these two types of speech act. In (2), the speaker expresses his thoughts in a situation in which he felt trapped. He conveys his feelings or attitude towards this situation by uttering a non-linguistic sound effect, ahhhh, which he frames with be like.
(2)
Reported Thought (UK English 1994, Buchstaller 2008: 24)
I mean I was like trapped,
rather like being a rabbit in the headlight you know,
it
was like
‘ahhhh’.
Given that the quote contains no linguistic content and with no one present to whom ahhhh could have been addressed, I would suggest that this quote very likely expresses the speaker's mental state, attitude and opinion rather than an outwardly realized speech act (see also Fox and Robles 2010; Vincent and Dubois 1996; Vincent and Perris 1999). Example (3), on the other hand, demonstrates quotative be like with reported speech. The snippet contains two quotes, one framed by be like and one without a lexical quote-introducer (depicted by the symbol Ø). Both introduce outwardly occurring speech acts.
(3)
Reported Speech (US English 1988–92, Buchstaller 2008: 24)
My daughter'
s like
‘Mommy can I help you with the laundry?’
Ø ‘Of course you can’
Is there any evidence that the quotes in example (3) frame outwardly realized speech rather than unuttered thought or inner monologue? The sequential structure of the mother–daughter conversation gives important clues for our interpretation of the verbal interaction: the two quotes are realized as a question and answer sequence: Question: Can I help you with the laundry? Answer: Of course you can. A key structural characteristic of question and answer combinations is that they are paired action sequences. This means that the second pair part—the answer—is structurally contingent on the occurrence of the first pair part—the question (for the concept of the ‘adjacency pairs’ and the ‘next turn proof procedure’ used in conversation analysis, see Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998 inter alia). What does this mean for the quotes in example (3)? Well, the sequential structure of the interaction supports my claim that the quote framed by be like is reported speech rather than merely inwardly occurring thought: the mother's answer Of course you can is structurally contingent on the occurrence of the daughter's question, Mommy can I help you with the laundry?. This leads me to conclude that the quote framed by be like—namely the daughter's question—must have been an outwardly realized speech act. Note that in example (2), by contrast, no such contingency relationship exists. The exclamatory nature and the lack of an interlocutor to whom ahhhh could have been directed suggest that this quote depicts inner thought rather than outwardly realized speech.
Hence, the available evidence suggests that be like, when it first emerged, predominantly framed thoughts, stances and inner monologues within the English quotative system. But it quickly broadened its remit to introduce quotations of both speech and thought reports. In present-day usage, be like is ambiguous as regards the outward occurrence of the quote. This indeterminacy can be exploited by speakers in real occurring conversations: prefacing a quote with be like, we do not commit ourselves as to whether or not the quoted utterance was actually spoken out aloud or whether what is reported is only a mental commentary on the situation, an inner thought or an expression of stance (see Buchstaller 2011; Jones and Schieffelin 2009). The usefulness of its non-committal nature is illustrated in example (4), which was uttered by a college-age American woman in the mid-1990s reporting on her experience in high school.
(4)
(US English, Buchstaller 1997: 13)
He's [= the teacher] ah he'
s like
‘I've lived in Chinatown
and I know the Chinese’. ha ha
And I'
m like, like, like
‘You do?
Ah sure’
The narrator's You do? Ah sure amounts to a confrontational retort that undermines the teacher's authority. If it had been uttered audibly, we would expect some form of reaction from the teacher, such as a response that puts the student in her place, a witty reply or—alternatively—a comment by the student that the teacher was brushing over her inacceptable behaviour. Given the absence of any reportable reaction to the student's remark, I have previously suggested that what the speaker in (4) is actually doing is presenting her opinion as if it could have been a real speech act ‘in order to verbalise what was in her mind and in order to make the teacher look (…) ridiculous’ (Buchstaller 1997: 13). Hence, while her speech act could have been outwardly realized, the narrative context suggests that it was probably rather inward, ‘a verbalisation of what she thought’ (ibid.).
By leaving open the possibility that she might have in fact confronted the teacher, the speaker portrays herself as audacious and cheeky. However, note that by using be like the speaker does not commit herself as to the outward realization of the speech act at any point. The epistemic stance of the quoted material is left completely unspecified. In doing so, the speaker is hedging her bet, forestalling potential objections such as you didn't say that! (see also Jones and Schieffelin 2009). Surprisingly, maybe, speakers are very seldomly confronted as to whether they actually uttered a quote aloud or not.5 But by framing an utterance with be like, we can avoid committing ourselves as to whether or not a quote was actually uttered aloud. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere that it is exactly because of this ‘wild card’ status that be like has enjoyed such a rapid growth in the quotative system (Buchstaller 2004, 2008). I will further elaborate on this discussion in Chapters 3 and 4.
Let us now turn our attention to quotative go, which tends to be referred to in the literature as the slightly older but equally innovative fellow of be like. Historical evidence, however, suggests that quotative go has been around a while, if largely unnoticed. Looking up go in the OED yields a number of borderline cases, where the construction is ambiguous between a quotative introducer and its older use as a story introducer (as in this is the way the story goes [STORY]). With clearly quotative-introductory function the form is attested from 1791 onwards (see examples 5a–c).
The fact that go has been used in quotative function since at least the eighteenth century means that the variant cannot be described as an innovation per se. Crucially, however, as Butters (1980) points out, the form was initially restricted to mimetic quotes, which refers to the re-enactment of previous events based on voice, sound or gesture (Goffman 1981; Wierzbicka 1974). This hypothesis is corroborated by the OED entry ‘with imitative interjections or verb-stems used adverbially, e.g. to go bang, clatter, cluck, crack, crash, patter, smash, snap, tang, whirr’. Indeed, as examples (5a–c, from 179–1891) demonstrate, in all early citations given by the OED, go occurs exclusively with onomatopoeic sound effects.
The sociolinguistic literature usually refers to Butters (1980) as the earliest attestation of quotative go with linguistic quotes. He notes that ‘in informal narrative, the usage had been commonplace among younger Americans, who seem unconscious that it is in any way new’ (ibid.: 305). Yet, the first study I know of that mentions go as framing reported speech rather than sound or voice effects is Partee (1973: 412), who gives the following example: ‘The parrot went “Molly wants a cracker”’. Partee points out that, for her, go can only frame mimetic re-enactments, even if they are well-formed sentences, such as parrots mimicking speech or tape-recordings. She also suggests that go can frame ‘otherwise normal speech that mimics deviant intonation’ (ibid.). Hence, it seems that Partee's examples capture the link between the reporting of mimetic quotes and the introduction of speech. In a study published in 1981, Schiffrin reports 10 per cent go within the pool of quotative verbs for her American speakers but we do not know how many of these tokens occur with voice or sound effects and how many with linguistic quotes, a problem that is endemic to all early studies that mention the variant.
The 1993–97 addition series to the OED acknowledges the extension of go to non-expressive quotes. The entry now reads as follows: ‘to utter (the noise indicated); with direct speech: to say, utter in speech. Now often in the historic present. colloq’. Contrary to the older examples, the quotes in the new entry are now produced by human speakers (see 6a–c). Note, however, that the only example with a non-sound quote the OED provides is from 1988, hence after Butters' mention of its functional expansion (see 6c).
The available evidence thus suggests that go has only started to occur with non-mimetic quotes in the twentieth century, in all probability in the latter half (see also D'Arcy 2012 for the expansion of go from sound to speech).6 Hence while go as a quotative variant is not an innovation per se, its use with speech representation is. The snippet in (7), illustrates a more recent example of go in this use. Here, the variant introduces linguistic material, such as ‘do you want to dance’, ‘what’ and ‘no, no’, again in question and answer sequences, attributing these quotes to two human agents.
(7)
(US English 1988–1992, see Buchstaller 2004: 150)
A:
the other day I went into a bar,
and this guy asked me to dance.
all he saw was my hair,
and he
goes
‘do you want to dance’?
I turn around and
go
‘what’?
he
goes
‘do you want to dance’?
I
go
‘no no’.
he
goes
‘oh oh I'm sorry’,
I
go
‘yeah, you better be’.
I
go
‘[you better be’.
B:
[that's hilarious,
Crucially, go has not lost its ability to encode mimetic reports. In contemporary data, the variant continues to frame quotes containing non-linguistic material, which for many is considered its more prototypical use (see also D'Arcy 2012; Macaulay 2001; Tagliamonte and Hudson 1999). This function is exemplified in (8–9) below, where go encodes sound effects.
(8)
(US English 1988–1992, Buchstaller 2004: 151)
B:
my kid didn't care,
A:
I know,
B:
He picks up a stick and
goes
‘
bang
’,
(9)
(British English 1994, Buchstaller 2004: 151)
B:
and I have got home and after dinner,
and you are just kind of
going
‘urghhhhh’,
Given its time-depth, it is not surprising that quotative go has been attested in a range of English varieties. The earliest piece of research I could locate that mentions go as a full quotative outside the US is Cheshire (1982) with data collected in Reading, UK in the late 1970s. Andersen (1996) finds it widely used with linguistic quotes in the Corpus of London Teenage Language (COLT) collected in 1993 and Buchstaller (2004), from which example (9) is taken, reports its use in data from Derby and Newcastle collected in 1994. For Scottish English, Macaulay (2001) confirms its existence as a full quotative in 1997 data. In D'Arcy's (2012) New Zealand data collected in the 1990s the form is used with linguistic quotes by speakers born in the first decades of the twentieth century. It is thus an outstanding question how far back we can trace the full quotative function of go in varieties outside of the US.
Crucially, while the form occurs frequently in nursery rhymes or in folklore depicting animals as making onomatopoeic noises (as in the cow went ‘moooo’, or how does the dog go?),7 there is considerable variation as to whether the cow goes moo or whether it actually says moo. A quick Google search reveals 27,800 results for ‘the cow goes moo’ and 293,000 results for ‘the cow says moo’ (on 29 July 2011). Indeed, there is reason to believe that the use of go to enquote animal noises is not universal.8 Gupta (1994) reports on a three and a half year old Singaporean boy with whom she reads the story ‘The Haunted House’ (Cowley and Melzer 1982), in which a series of scary creatures (a ghost, a spook owl and a monster) each give an appropriate noise, using the repeated structure: I am a [X]. A big scary [X]. I live in the haunted house and I go [appropriate sound]. The boy seems to be unfamiliar with the quotative construction, replacing it with a construction that relies on go as a verb of movement (Gupta 1994: 98). The following snippet exemplifies his ‘reading’ of the book:
(10)
(Singapore English, from Gupta 1994: 98)
B:
Haunted House. [4 secs]
Haunted House.
I am the ghost
[laughs] [2 secs]
And I go where?
[turns page]
/u:::::/.
AG:
[gasps]
B:
I am the spook owl [laughs]
And I go where? /u:::::/ [laughs]
I am big monster. [laughs]
AG:
And I go where? [2 secs]
B:
And I go where? [3 secs]
Boooo.
AG:
[gasps]
Gupta (1994) argues that this book has been accurately read aloud to the boy by his mother and his elder brother. However, she surmises that since the use of go to introduce reported speech was not common in Singapore English at the time (neither in Standard Singaporean English nor in Singaporean Creole English), the boy is converting it into the familiar question I go where? plus the appropriate sound (I am (the) [X]. And/then I go where? [sound]). Note that since Gupta's research, quotative go has been attested in Singaporean English (see D'Arcy 2013; Singler and Woods 2002), which means the boy might have told a very different story if we had interviewed him now.
We are left to wonder: Was quotative go with mimetic effects not around at all in Singapore at the time Gupta conducted her research? Or was the boy simply not aware of the construction, possibly due to its low frequency of occurrence in this variety? This question haunts research on quotative go more generally, since, as I will discuss in more detail in later chapters, the form is inherently unstable, fluctuating wildly in terms of frequency of occurrence across age groups as well as localities (see also Buchstaller 2006). Thus, as we will see in Chapter 3, which investigates the patterning of go on both sides of the Atlantic, while the variant certainly goes back several centuries, it is difficult if not impossible to establish overreaching tendencies that capture its use more generally.
In conclusion, the claim that quotative go is ‘new’ holds insofar as the form has only recently undergone an extension of complement type—from para- and non-linguistic quotes to linguistic ones—in some varieties of English. I will henceforth refer to go in its full functional coverage, when it has the potential to encode the whole range of quotative complements, namely voice, sounds, gesture as well as linguistic elements, as a ‘full’ quotative. This effectively means that when I refer to be like and go as ‘new quotatives’, the attribute ‘new’ pertains to slightly different degrees for the two quotative options.
Why?
The flurry of innovative speech, sound and thought introducers that have come to light in the past 20 years begs the question why quotation has recently become the locus of such fervent productivity. In this section I explore a number of hypotheses, drawing on textual, pragmatic, structural as well as typological explanations. I will argue that, most probably, the current productiveness in the quotative frame is the result of a confluence of factors, where different tendencies work in tandem to produce an environment that is conducive to heightened linguistic creativity.
First of all, quotation is a key performance feature in storytelling sequences. Successful narratives capture the listeners' attention and engage the audience. To this aim, good storytellers make use of a range of dramatic features, such as voice and sound effects, reported speech, as well as repetition and rhetorical questions. Quotation is a particularly effective storytelling device since it allows the narrator to give a voice to the stories' protagonists themselves. Consider the following example, in which Zack tells a story about a run-in with his teacher.
(11)
(British English, from Fox 2012: 249)
1
Zack
:
no it was like- it was the end of school yeh so that school's finished yeh
2
and everyone was going home
3
and I was getting my bike from the bike rack
4
and I was going out
5
and I was riding my bike
6
and he stopped my bike.
7
I
was like
‘yeh’
8
and he
goes
‘get off the bike’
9
I
was like
‘why am I getting off the bike I'm going home like I've gotta go home’ yeh
10
he
was like
‘no get off the bike walk the bike outside of school’
11
I
was like
‘what's the point?’
12
yeh cos like it's quite far like to get out the school from the entrance like in the school yeh
13
and he
goes
‘ah no get off the bike’ yeh
14
so like he kind of shoved me off the bike
15
so I dropped it but I didn't fall over like but I kind of stumbled yeh
16
and he put his. he tried to take my bike up to his office like he was gonna keep my bike there.
17
I
was like
‘no’ like
18
and this time everyone was gathering round cos we were shouting at each other yeh
19
he
was like
‘no I'm taking your bike upstairs’
20
I
was like
‘what's the point in that when I'm just gonna take it back downstairs’
21
so I must have pulled the bike off him yeh
22
and I put it. I put it I leant it up against the wall yeh
23
and I walked over to him
24
and
this is me
‘what. what's your. what's your problem?’
25
and he
goes
‘I don't like you’
26
I
was like
‘I don't like you’ yeh
27
so I just swung for him and then we like.
28
but we had a fight though. [S: did you] and I got kicked out of school.
29
like I weren't allowed into any school that's why I came here last year
