Variability in the co-occurrence of discourse features

Abstract

Previous research documenting patterns of variation and change in the use of discourse features has tended to focus on isolated forms without considering how their co-occurrence in discourse may exhibit patterns of social differentiation or be implicated in ongoing change. We address these issues by conducting a systematic quantitative analysis of the co-occurrence of general extenders (e.g. and stuff, or something like that) with other discourse features (e.g. like, you know) in a corpus collected in north-east England. Comparison of three age groups revealed a number of habitual co-occurrence patterns in discourse. When viewed from an apparent-time perspective, inspection of the syntagmatic arrangement of these patterns, as well as the discourse features constituting them, suggests that they are implicated in ongoing change or age-grading. An increase in the use of discourse like in these configurations in apparent-time, concomitant with a reduction in the use of you know, additionally indicates that the patterns we have uncovered need to be contextualized with reference to broader discourse-pragmatic changes that are currently underway in English. We conclude by reviewing the utility of our approach for further elucidating patterns of variation and change in discourse. 1