Pragmatic "like" in the South African English of Port Elizabeth

Abstract

Investigations into quotative be like focus on its role in introducing reported speech, where like combines with a form of the verb be, for example: "I'm like, 'Get the hell out of here'" (Tannen, 1986:321). Studies also examine the variable use of be like within the English quotative system, comparing it to the use of other quotatives such as go and say as an example of language change in progress. Investigations into discourse-marker like (DM-like), for example, "She like covered the mirror" (Meehan, 1991:45), in turn, question the view that it is merely a filler, instead suggesting that its use is systematic and constrained by internal factors such as its position in the grammar, where it has three basic positions - clause-initial, clause-medial and clause-final. Both quotative be like and DM-like have been studied in terms of the influence that social factors such as sex, age and social class have on their frequency (and position) of use. While these issues have been moderately studied in the major English varieties, limited investigation has been conducted for first language (L1) White South African English (WSAE). This M.A. dissertation aimed to contribute to the variationist study of pragmatic like within WSAE by conducting a statistical analysis using c-trees in R. The data analysed are transcripts of sociolinguistic interviews from 19 native inhabitants of Port-Elizabeth/Gqeberha, aged 18-48. The social factors that were expected to influence the use of be like and DM-like were age, gender and social class, where younger, middle-class female speakers were expected to be the leaders in the use of both types of pragmatic like. In terms of linguistic factors, quotative be like was expected to be used the most with the present tense, reporting thought (as opposed to speech), as well as with first-person subjects (as opposed to the third person). DM-like was expected to be found mostly in clause-medial rather than clause-initial position. The results for this study indicated that younger speakers are the most frequent users of both quotative be like and DM-like, which is similar to results found for international varieties such as American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand English. Middle-class speakers were the most frequent users of both be like and DM-like. However, DM-like was more frequent among uppermiddle class men compared to their female counterparts. Contrary to expectation, be like was used more with the past tense (vs the present tense) while the most frequent tense reported for be like in varieties such as Australian, British and Canadian English were the present tense (which includes the historical present). DM-like was more frequent in clause-medial as compared to clause-initial position.