Eh Across Englishes: A Corpus-Pragmatic Analysis of the Corpus of Global Web-Based English

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the pragmatic marker eh, which is typical of spoken discourse, in written online discourse from nine varieties of English using the Corpus of Global Web-based English. The analysis focuses on sentence-final eh and considers variation in terms of variety, punctuation, text type, and function. This paper also includes a variationist analysis of eh in contrast to huh. Although there are cross-variety differences, eh is used across all nine varieties in similar ways. Eh is mostly combined with a question mark, it is more frequent in blogs than in general websites, and emphatic functions dominate over narrative and interrogative uses. A qualitative analysis of the indexicalities demonstrates that eh mainly signals orality and informality in online writing but also has specific local meanings. The variationist analysis shows that eh is preferred over huh in the Canadian and New Zealand components. This preference is even more pronounced for the British and Philippine components. In contrast, huh dominates in the US component. These results show that eh is well integrated into online writing and can be characterized as a translocal pragmatic marker as it is used globally but has developed local characteristics.