Enquoting voices, accomplishing talk: Uses of be + like in Instant Messaging

Based on a comparative study of informal speech and writing practices within comparable samples of American college students in 2003 and 2006, this article charts a dramatic expansion in the use of quotative like, and of reported speech and thought more generally, in Instant Messaging (IM). The spread of be + like from speech, where it was already pervasive, into IM correspondence gives a quotative format once thought exclusively oral new purchase in written language and heralds new strategies of voice representation within a typewritten medium ostensibly limited in its expressive potential. We present this development as evidence of a speech community that recognizes specific quotative forms and functions as constitutive of a preferential conversational style we term ‘polyphonic’, which foregrounds morally and affectively charged voicings.