Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

SALIENCE IN LANGUAGE CHANGE
By contrast, the clause-final discourse marker like (e.g., I did that when
I got home, like) has a very low recognition rate and, we can infer, low
salience – despite the fact that it is present in all three towns, albeit as a
recessive feature. It shares, however, some of the same functions of utterancemedial
focus marker like especially in expressing commitment to the
proposition. In utterances such as Did you see her, like? it has a clear
interactional function. Therefore, it is surprising that it is barely recognised.
Aside from the fact that it is increasingly rare, one reason for its apparent
unfamiliarity may lie in the fact that it occurs in a position that may be both
prosodically and pragmatically non-prominent. Thus, its post-tonic and
utterance-final position leads to less phonetic prominence. Also, the
propositions it modifies have normally not been foregrounded. This
discussion must remain speculative at the moment.
The following summarises this discussion:
Summary for morphological variables and the focus marker like
• These features are likely to be salient because they involve lexical
differences. The generally high level of recognition bears this out
• But certain factors increase salience:
- Localised features, though decreasing in use, remain highly
salient
- Discourse features may be salient if they occur in prosodically
and pragmatically prominent positions (medial like); admittedly
the evidence is unclear on this point
• Salience is not shared across the community:
- Middle-class non-users of the features often do not recognise
local features.
- Middle-class non-users may also resort to stereotyping, resulting
in the reporting of features which are not, in fact, present
• Although strongly localised features are levelled, they may remain
salient
• For morphological and discourse features, the a priori predictors of
salience (phonological and phonetic distinctiveness) combine with
89