Quotativebe likein Trinidadian English

Abstract

This paper studies the sociolinguistics of quotative be like in Trinidad and its relation to Trinidadian English Creole (TrinEC). Corpus evidence shows a significant association of be like use and young age as well as female gender, in line with global trends. Questionnaire data reveal that it does not detract from the perception of a speaker as educated and of high social status as long as utterances are grammatically standardized English (StE). TrinEC grammar triggers contrasting perceptions but the data also point to traditional social prejudice against TrinEC being transcended. This ties in with the finding that be like users tend not actually to be averse to using TrinEC. Overall the sociolinguistics of be like in Trinidad is shaped by global trends as well as the local sociolinguistic configuration.

Variation in the imperfective in Bahamian English

“…Similar findings have been reported for Trinidad, where Deuber et al. (2020, p. 9) find that be like is favored by younger speakers and ‘tends to be more common when speakers opt for stylistic levels along the […] continuum’ toward the creole. <$A><#> no he is be like like when we Ø doing derivatives right<$B><#> mh<$A><#> he's be like well this now is just a<$A><#> this is an exercise of arithmetic<$A><#> you should have mastered arithmetic by now so you don't particularly need to do this (ICE‐Bah:con_058) <$B><#> they is sound funny<$A><#> okay so we sound funny to them<$A><#> when they Ø playing people online they's be like what the fuck Ø you talking about<$B><#> laughter[…]<$B><#> I wanna hear them<$A><#> they's they's be like they be like who you are kid what are you talking about honestly like what the fuck Ø you talking about (ICE‐Bah:con_052) …”

“…Evidently, this formerly US American feature has spread throughout the English‐speaking world by now and has surely arrived on the neighboring Caribbean islands. Recently, be like has been attested and studied in Jamaican (Bogetić, 2014) and Trinidadian English (Deuber et al., 2020), and younger Bahamian speakers use it very frequently in informal contexts (Laube, forthcoming). While previous studies of language in The Bahamas have not reported any instances of quotative be like and, in fact, Hackert's (2004) set of sociolinguistic interviews recorded in the late 1990s does not contain a single instance of the form, we find extensive use of both past and non‐past be like in the more informal registers in ICE Bahamas and might, in fact, be seeing a ‘true case of change in progress’ (Barbieri, 2009, p. 87) here.…”

Language Ideologies and Identities on Facebook and TikTok

“…A second group whose language comes under scrutiny in the memes is Convent and Naps Girls, treated in this analysis as Convent Girls. The 'convent accent' phenomenon has been documented in several recent studies on Trinidadian English/Creole (see Ferreira and Heitmeier 2015;Deuber, Hänsel, and Westphal 2021;Meer and Fuchs 2022) and is strongly associated with standardised Trinidadian English (Deuber et al 2021: 449). Though the accent is yet to be fully described, it is clear that Convent Girls are stereotyped as a distinct speech community within the larger Trinidadian community.…”

Quotation in earlier and contemporary Australian Aboriginal English

“…Comparatively little is known about quotation patterns in postcontact English varieties beyond African American Language. For Trinidadian English, Deuber, Canan Hänsel, and Westphal (2021:450) found that 30% of the quotative verbs extracted from their corpus of conversational interactions were instances of quotative be like , which is favored by young women, in line with global trends. Similarly, Höhn (2012:288) concluded that be like “has successfully spread to Jamaican English.”…”