In spite of a number of studies dealing with syntactic, pragmatic and social aspects of discourse marker like in Irish English (e.g. Nestor & Regan 2015), the sociophonetics of like have not been investigated yet.... [ view full abstract ]
In spite of a number of studies dealing with syntactic, pragmatic and social aspects of discourse marker like in Irish English (e.g. Nestor & Regan 2015), the sociophonetics of like have not been investigated yet. Sociophonetic aspects have been studied for other varieties of English, however: Drager (2009) in particular can show that different phonetic realisations of like can be correlated with both discourse-pragmatic function and social aspects in New Zealand English (cf. Schleef & Turton (2016) for a sociophonetic investigation of like in British English).
This paper addresses this research gap and uses 20 ethnographic interviews with young adults carried out in Dublin from 2015 to 2017 to investigate the connection between the phonetic realisation of like, social indexes, and discourse-pragmatic function. In particular, the following research questions will be addressed: a) Can the different discourse-pragmatic functions of like be correlated with different vowel realisations? b) Can different vowel realisations be correlated with different social factors, including both macro-level factors like gender and class and local factors like positioning within the social structure of Dublin city? c) (How) do discourse-pragmatic function and social indexes interact?
The phonetic analysis of the audio-recorded interviews will use auditory and acoustic methods. A detailed qualitative analysis of the interviews will investigate the social factors that constitute and differentiate a North- and a Southside identity on the one hand and interviewees’ positioning in relation to these identities on the other hand. Preliminary results suggest significant differences in the vowel realisation between quotative, full verb, and discourse marker like. They also suggest that there are correlates between social factors and phonetic realisation.
References
Drager, K. (2009). A sociophonetic ethnography of Selwyn Girls’ High. Doctoral dissertation, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.
Nestor, N. & V. Regan (2015). The significance of age and place of residence in the positional distribution of discourse like in L2 speech. In Amador-Moreno, McCafferty & Vaughan (eds.), Pragmatic markers in Irish English. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 408-432.
Schleef, E. & D. Turton (2016). Sociophonetic variation of like in British dialects: effects of function, context and predictability. English Language & Linguistics 4, 269-293.
