This variationist analysis investigates the development and spread of innit as an invariant tag in London English. The sociolinguistic distribution of innit in a socially stratified corpus of ...vernacular speech suggests that the form's emergence and spread were initiated and propelled system-internally through changes associated with grammaticalization. Frequency triggered phonetic reduction of isn't it to innit; loss of syntactic-semantic usage constraints and growing functional versatility enabled innit to seize the range of contexts and functions of grammatically-dependent tags (e.g. didn't you, weren't we), virtually ousting these from the system of negative-polarity interrogative tags. Examination of cross-linguistic data and comparisons with relevant pre- and non-contact varieties indicate multiple language contact and grammatical replication may have played an ancillary role. I flag some challenges of establishing contact effects in discourse-pragmatic change, and propose that the promotion of innit for invariant use was governed by its low salience and social indexicality of localness. (Innit, question tags, (Multicultural) London English, grammaticalization, language contact, grammatical replication)*
Everyday language use overflows with discourse-pragmatic features. Their frequency, form and function can vary greatly across social groups and change dramatically over time. And yet these features ...have not figured prominently in studies of language variation and change. The Structure of Discourse-Pragmatic Variation demonstrates the theoretical insights that can be gained into both the structure of synchronic language variation and the interactional mechanisms creating it by subjecting discourse-pragmatic features to systematic variationist analysis. Introducing an innovative methodology that combines principles of variationist linguistics, grammaticalisation studies and conversation analysis, it explores patterns of variation in the formal encoding of I DON'T KNOW, I DON'T THINK and negative polarity tags in a north-east England interview corpus. Speakers strategically exploit the formal variability of these constructions to signal subtle meaning differences and to index social identities closely linked to the variables' and their variants' functional compartmentalisation in the variety. The methodology, results and implications of this study will be of great interest to scholars working throughout variationist sociolinguistics, grammaticalisation and discourse analysis.
This paper demonstrates the need for a uniform model of discourse variation analysis which is equipped to capture the complex nature of discourse variation and change whilst also ensuring ...generalizability. A review of the literature shows that the current heterogeneity in corpus construction, data quantification and theorizing of discourse variables impedes reliability and intersubjectivity. Suggestions are offered to achieve comparability, and a case is made for a consistent integration of pragmatic function as a factor group in the analysis. The extension of the variationist paradigm to the level of discourse is discussed, and the need for a definition of discourse variables which caters for their flexibility and multifunctionality is demonstrated. It is argued that some methodological consistency is required in variationist discourse analysis in order to advance towards a holistic description of patterns in language variation and change which spans all components of the grammar, and to systematically explore how discourse features are used and manipulated to create social identities. Adapted from the source document
Our analysis of i don't know (IDK) variability in four sub-corpora of sociolinguistic and mental health interviews clarifies the context-dependency of discourse-pragmatic variation, and demonstrates ...the translational potential of socially responsible, linguistic research. Systematic and accountable analysis of over 700 tokens of IDK in these data reveals that while IDK variants, functions and syntactic configurations are differentially distributed across situation, variety and age, form-function correlations in IDK use are robust across these parameters. These results demonstrate that discourse-pragmatic variables such as IDK retain some probabilistic relationships that aid in consistent interpretation across contexts of use, while other aspects of variability are used in stylistically distinct ways across e.g. situations and social groups. Moreover, our analysis of IDK in mental health interviews shows how the variationist analysis of site-particular communicative practices can uncover language variation patterns that have the potential to affect practice, research and teaching outside of the sociolinguistics community.
•Comparative analysis of I DON’T KNOW (IDK) in medical & sociolinguistic interviews.•700+ tokens studied with qualitative & quantitative variationist methods.•Significant intra- & inter-context differences in IDK use (form, function, syntax).•Form (I don't know v. I dunno) and function (cognitive v. other) correlation robust.•Possible applications for improving doctor-patient communication in mental health settings.
The speech of older adults (65+ years old) is a rich resource for a wide range of researchers, including oral historians, developmental psychologists, health communication scholars, speech and ...hearing specialists, and discourse analysts. Yet in variationist sociolinguistics—the study of language variation, language change, and their social motivations—older adults have fallen afoul of a kind of scholarly ageism. Often consigned to the status of a historical benchmark against which the speech of younger people is compared, and with only rare acknowledgment of their biological, psychological and social diversity, old‐age speakers deserve greater attention. This article provides linguists with an overview of relevant conceptualizations of age and ageing in gerontology, explains why a focus on older speakers is critical to the advancement of the study of language variation and change, and offers practical suggestions for overcoming some of the challenges associated with old‐age research.
In this article, we draw on a socially stratified corpus of dialect data collected in northeast England to test recent proposals that grammaticalization processes are implicated in the synchronic ...variability of general extenders (GEs), i.e. phrase- or clause-final constructions such as
and that
and
or something
. Combining theoretical insights from the framework of grammaticalization with the empirical methods of variationist sociolinguistics, we operationalize key diagnostics of grammaticalization (syntagmatic length, decategorialization, semantic-pragmatic change) as independent factor groups in the quantitative analysis of GE variability. While multivariate analyses reveal rapid changes in apparent time to the social conditioning of some GE variants in our data, they do not reveal any evidence of systematic changes in the linguistic conditioning of variants in apparent time that would confirm an interpretation of ongoing grammaticalization. These results lead us to question Cheshire's (2007) recent hypothesis that GEs are grammaticalizing in contemporary varieties of British English. They additionally raise caveats with regard to the assumption that the linguistic conditioning of GE variability in contemporary data sets is the product of change.
This paper explores the functional and social meanings of the formal variants of the expressions i don't know and i don't think. The qualitative analysis of the data shows that i don't know and i ...don't think are highly routinized discourse formulae that perform multiple interpersonal and textual functions. The quantification of their phonetic and grammatical variants across function, age and gender reveals that the occurrence of non-localized and localized variants of i don't know and i don't think is conditioned by different parameters. Non-localized variants show function-specific patterning: variants of i don't know pattern with broad functional categories; variants of i don't think reflect fine-grained functional differences at a micro-level of analysis. Localized variants, by contrast, do not carry a functional load but evince orderly social heterogeneity. The results demonstrate that social variation in discourse extends beyond differential frequencies and strategic uses of discourse markers (DMs) to their formal encoding, and that function plays an important role in accounting for patterns of formal variation in discourse. The paper argues for a fuller integration of qualitative methods in the study of language variation and change in discourse, and calls for the form and function of discourse variables to be studied in greater detail.
Highlights • Analysis of patient “I dont know” (IDK) use in recorded Mini-Mental State Exams. • Contrasts lack-of-knowledge (LOK) IDK functions with non-LOK IDK (hedges, etc.). • Develops a ...qualitative taxonomy for identifying LOK vs. non-LOK IDKs. • Uses multiple logistic regression to identify predictors of LOK vs. non-LOK IDK. • Results show association between LOK IDK and physician-assessed ‘severe’ dementia.
Barriers to effective provider-patient communication take many forms that can be difficult to recognize and appropriately address. This paper offers probabilistic indicators for one such form, ...patient-produced "I don't know" (IDK), distinguishing its use as a cognitive claim and its use as a strategy for resisting discussion of sensitive topics. A total of 95 audio-recorded psychiatrist-child interactions are drawn from a US-wide corpus of physician-patient consultations. From these, 376 patient-produced IDKs are extracted and coded for linguistic/social factors, including form, function, prosody, age, gender, and primary diagnosis. Two multiple logistic regressions are performed to determine the predictors of cognitive and resistive IDK functions respectively. Cognitive IDK uses are associated with the full form (p < 0.01) and unstressed prosody (p < 0.01). Use of resistive IDK is correlated with decreasing patient age (p < 0.01) and emotionally labile mental health diagnoses (p < 0.01). Cognitive and resistive IDK uses have distinctive linguistic and social distributions in psychiatrist-child interactions, where cognitive uses have two objectively identifiable linguistic characteristics and resistive uses are associated with certain patient types. Providers may learn to recognize cognitive and resistive IDK uses, thus acquiring the ability to correctly interpret interactional cues relevant to the diagnosis and treatment of pediatric mental health conditions.
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