You're like `why not?' The quotative expressions of Glasgow ...

QUOTATIVES IN GLASGOW 15
Imperatives
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remarks but have a pragmatic and rhetorical force. Golato, in an article dealing
with the new German quotative und ich so/und er so `and I'm like/and he's
like'), claims that this type of quotative `is sensitive to the context in which it is
uttered' 2000: 32). The same would appear to be the case with non-traditional
quotatives in Glasgow.
4. DISCUSSION
Given the recent history of quotatives in the U.S., it is likely that the use of be like
and be as quotatives is a relatively new phenomenon in the speech of
Glaswegians. 6 The ®gures from the present sessions are too slight to provide
®rm evidence of how these forms entered the community, though there is a
possibility suggested by the adult data and the occurrence of mixed forms with
like that the variety of forms re¯ects the historical development of the quotatives
in Glasgow. This would give the following scenario:
Stage one: The quotative go imported from the U.S.?) is adopted by adolescents
for the expression of non-speech sounds the thing that goes `Dong') and strong
emotion and I'm going `Oh no'), later extended to all kinds of quoted speech She
went `I would think so'). It later spreads to adult speech.
Distributional evidence: The form go is most widely found in the adolescent
conversations and for all kinds of quoted speech. It is found fairly frequently in
the conversations with working-class women and is not restricted to the
expression of emotion. It is found rarely in the middle-class conversations and
only for the expression of emotion. This would suggest that the form entered in
the speech of younger speakers and spread to their elders, beginning in the
working-class. Alternatively, it could be an age-graded feature.
# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2001
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Figure 5: Types of quoted dialogue following non-traditional quotatives