The sociolinguistics of a short-lived innovation: Tracing the development of quotative all across spoken and internet newsgroup data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thispaperexaminesashort-livedinnovation,quotativeall,inrealandapparenttime.Weusedatwo-prongedmethodtotracethetrajectoryofalloverthepasttwodecades:(i) Quantitativeanalysesofthe quotativesystem ofyoungCalifornians fromdifferentdecades;thisrevealsastartlingcrossoverpattern:in1990/1994,allpredominates,butby 2005, it has given way to like. (ii) Searches of Internet newsgroups; these confirmthat after rising briskly in the 1990s, all is declining. Tracing the changing usage ofquotative options provides year-to-year evidence that all has recently given way tolike. Our paper has two aims: We provide insights from ongoing language changeregarding short-term innovations in the history of English. We also discuss ourcollaboration with Google Inc. and argue for the value of newsgroups to researchprojects investigating linguistic variation and change in real time, especially whererecorded conversational tokens are relatively sparse. AnearlierversionofthispaperwaspresentedatNWAV35(NewWaysofAnalyzingVariation)atOhioState University in Columbus. We are grateful forcomments from the audience,in particularto John V.SinglerandMaryBucholtz.Allremainingerrorsare,ofcourse,ourown.WearegratefultoJohnSinglerandotherreviewersofthispaperfortheirhelpfulfeedbackon anearlierdraft. WethankGoogleInc.forthe opportunity to collaborate on this exciting project, drawing on their both personnel and facilities.Many thanks go to Thorsten Brants for his enthusiasm for and support of the project as well as forhis enormous input in terms of computational methods. We are also indebted to David Hall fordeveloping and implementing the tools needed to do the searches we requested and for respondingswiftly and extensively to all our queries and suggestions. Thanks are due to Carmen Fought,Rachelle Waksler, and Ann Wimmer for allowing us to use their data on quotative all and otherforms from the 1980s and 1990s as well as to Bob Bayley and Mackenzie Price for guidance withstatistical analysis. Finally, we are grateful to Stanford faculty colleagues for their input and toseveral Stanford students who provided substantial assistance with data collection and analysisbetween 2004 and 2010, especially Zoe Bogart, Crissy Brown, Kayla Carpenter, Tracy Conner,Kristle McCracken, Rowyn McDonald, Cybelle Smith, Francesca Smith, and Laura Whitton.

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