You're like ‘why not?’ The quotative expressions of Glasgow adolescents

The sociolinguistic study of discourse features is still at a very elementary stage, so there is very little evidence available on which to trace changes in the use of such features. One feature that has received attention is the use of non‐traditional quotatives in the U.S., particularly by younger speakers, in the past twenty years. The use of be like as a quotative has spread from its presumed origin in California to other parts of the U.S. and also to Canada and England. This paper examines the further spread of non‐traditional quotatives to the speech of adolescents in Glasgow and how these forms might have been transmitted.