Multiple negation

Eisokovits’ (2011) research in Sydney examined the speech of teenage boys and girls over two years to understand ways young men and women negotiate their marginalised status in different ways. Students (10 girls and 10 boys) from a working class area of inner city Sydney were interviewed in year 8 (at about age 13) and again in year 10 (at about age 15). One of the linguistic features of this group (among many others) is multiple negation. Multiple negation refers to the use of more than one negative morpheme or lexeme in an utterance. For example, instead of saying ‘I didn’t do anything’, multiple negation is used by including another negative word as in ‘I didn’t do nothing’. Multiple negation is part of non-standard English and often stigmatised by prescriptivists.

Table 8.1 shows Eisokovits’ results for the use of ‘multiple negation’ by age and sex. The first number shows how many times multiple negation was used compared with the number of times it could have been used.

Table 8.1 Percent of multiple negation, according to gender and age in Sydney (adapted from Eisokovits 2011: 41)

Younger girls Older girls

56/115; 48.7% 42/192; 21.7%

Younger boys Older boys

We can see that for the younger students, levels of multiple negation are roughly the same. The older students, however, demonstrate a difference in their pattern of use. Older girls use multiple negation less frequently than younger girls while older boys and younger boys use multiple negation at roughly the same rate.

In the case of other non-standard features Eisokovits examined, the older girls showed reduced use of other non-standard linguistic features while the boys did not. The boys increased their use of some non-standard variables. Example 8.2 from Eisokovits’ interview data suggests a reason why this pattern is found among these Sydney adolescents. In this example, a female and a male respondent both correct their own usage. Both correct themselves, but in entirely different directions; the female repeats herself using a more prescriptively correct form but the male does so using a more prescriptively incorrect form.

Example 8.2

a. Female respondent: ‘An me an Kerry – or should I say, Kerry and I – are the only ones who’ve done the project’ (Eisokovits 2011: 45). b. Male respondent: ‘I didn’t know what I did – what I done’ (Eisokovits

2011: 46).

Eisokovits argues that these choices are related to perceptions of what it means to be an adult woman or man in their society. As we saw in Chapter 6, expectations about how women should speak relate to ideas about how women should behave (e.g. they should use ‘correct’ language). The same is of course true of men; it is simply that these expectations are rather differ- ent (e.g. they may use ‘correct’ language less frequently), resulting in differ- ent use of language. Eckert (2009) also investigated multiple negation use among adolescents in Detroit, Michigan, US and found similar results (see Chapter 9).

8.4.3 ‘Like’ as a discourse marker

A common linguistic feature that people mention when they criticise young people’s use of language is the discourse marker ‘like’ (D’Arcy 2007). A discourse marker structures utterances and provides important cues about the attitude of the speaker with regard to what they are saying or respond- ing to. With regard to the meaning of this discourse marker Underhill (1988:234) explains that ‘this discourse marker is neither random nor mindless. Instead, it functions with great reliability as a marker of new infor- mation and focus’ (see also D’Arcy 2007, Laserna, Seih & Pennebaker 2014). Sali Tagliamonte (2005) studied how young Canadians use this discourse marker as shown in Examples 8.3 a–c (2005: 1897).

Example 8.3

a. I’m just like so there, you know? b. Like, that’s what I like told you. c. I just decided and just went.

Tagliamonte found that, among the Canadians she studied, the youngest and oldest speakers in the sample used ‘like’ the least. There was a concen- tration of more usage of ‘like’ among the 15–16-year-olds. Figure 8.1 shows this distribution of use.

10-12 year olds 13-14 year olds 15-16 year olds age group

17-19 year olds

P

roportion of use of ‘like’

6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Figure 8.1 Usage of ‘like’ as a discourse marker among Canadian youth. Numbers reflect proportion of total words (adapted from Tagliamonte 2005: 1903)

What characteristics of life stages might account for the difference in usage among these age groups?

Activity 8.4

Tagliamonte suggests that the pattern of higher usage of ‘like’ among 15–16-year-olds reflects innovative use of language often found among adolescents, as described by Eckert (1999) (see also Wagner 2008). This is followed by a reduction in the 17–18-year-olds, reflecting ‘linguistic change towards standard (mainstream) norms as adolescents enter young adulthood’ (Tagliamonte 2005: 1910). This sort of pattern of change across the lifespan can be referred to as age grading, a change in the use of language that correlates with life stages and does not reflect change of community norms.

As Tagliamonte and other linguists have shown (e.g. D’Arcy 2007), ‘like’ used as a discourse marker is a strategic functional use of language. However, as we have already seen with regard to other non-standard features, this use is highly criticised.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distrac- tion at the way the weed-style growth of ‘like’ has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

(Hitchens 2010)

Hitchens’ (2010) comments reflect the marginalised position of adoles- cents described previously.

The sociolinguistic competence that teenagers acquire and exploit depends very much on the environments in which they live and the identities they want to communicate. This development of identity is also connected to styles of dress, hairstyles and leisure activities.