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Article published In: Diachronica
Vol. 42:5 (2025) ► pp.555–593

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Learning to be (un)hip in panel data

Exploring quotative be like across the adult life‑span

ORCiD logo with link | Sociolinguistics Lab, University of Duisburg-Essen
ORCiD logo with link | Sociolinguistics Lab, University of Duisburg-Essen
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Duisburg-Essen.

Published online: 16 June 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.24008.moe
Abstract
The quotative system is a highly dynamic domain characterised by competing traditional variants (say, think) and newcomers (be all, be like) (. 2013. Quotatives: New trends and sociolinguistic implications. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Trend and apparent time studies have focused on be like, describing its expansion across the English-speaking world and reporting incrementation amongst the younger age-brackets (D’Arcy, Alexandra and Sali Tagliamonte. 2003. “When people say, I was like” The quotative system in Canadian youth. Paper presented at New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV32). University of Pennsylvania.; . 2021. Be like and the Constant Rate Effect: from the bottom to the top of the S-curve. English Language & Linguistics. 25(2). 281–324. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). “Information on speakers’ loyalty to be like across their lifespan is conflicting”, however (. 2015. Exploring linguistic malleability across the life span: Age-specific patterns in quotative use. Language in Society 44(4). 457–496. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar: 460). We report on a dynamic panel corpus to assess malleability in the quotative system across the adult lifespan. Our findings suggest that the grammar underlying be like remains largely stable across the lifespan. And while most socio-demographic factors do not significantly influence speakers’ quotative choices, we seem to witness the development of socially niched retrenchment in the middle age brackets, turning one of the most vibrant changes in the English language into a gender-differentiated and age-graded pattern.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Changes in the quotative system
    • 1.2Labov’s classic scenarios of change in the individual and the community
    • 1.3Previous research on quotative be like and four relevant scenarios of language change
  • 2.Data and methods
  • 3.Diachronic patterns of be like in panel data
    • 3.1Cohort effects in the use of quotative be like across the lifespan
    • 3.2Gendered effects in the use of quotative be like across the lifespan
    • 3.3Changes in the grammar governing the use of be like across the lifespan
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1The critical period hypothesis
    • 4.2Market-based pressures and speaker gender
    • 4.3Changes in constraint systems across the lifespan
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
References (134)
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Cited by one other publication

Moelders, Anne-Marie
2025. A panel approach to micro and macro perceptions of Tyneside English across the lifespan. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 46:3 ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo

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