<i>He’s like, she’s like</i>:  The quotative system in Canadian youth

Abstract

Due to the recent and rapid newcomer, be like , the English quotative system is a good place to catch language change in action. However, since most previous analyses target people in their early twenties, little is known about how be like is diffusing. In this paper we conduct an analysis of Canadian youth between ten and nineteen years old and compare the results with an earlier study. There is a dramatic increase in be like in real time. In apparent time, the content of the quote and grammatical person are significant and the constraints are parallel for all ages except one. The effect of content of the quote has reversed among the oldest speakers, aged between 17 and 19. Moreover, there is a clear shift in the social evaluation of be like : sex is significant and strong for 15–16 year olds onwards, revealing that age and sex interact in sociolinguistic change. Furthermore, we establish ongoing grammaticalization of be like .