Alexandra D'Arcy
Biographic Data
| ID | 4532676 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexandra D'Arcy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexandra |
| FAMILY NAME | D'Arcy |
| SIGNATURE | ARCY A D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Victoria |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 269 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Settler Colonial Englishes
Colonialism is a broad term that encompasses a spectrum of sociopolitical realities for colonized peoples and places. An important distinction operates within this constellation, separating settler colonial states on the one hand from other colonial settings on the other. Linguistically, Settler Colonial Englishes are characterized by four aspects that set their evolutionary trajectories apart from those Englishes that emerge in other contexts. T…
Peer Review in Linguistics Journals
We present new data on peer review practices in linguistics journals, reporting the results of an online survey of editors. This paper aims to increase understanding of the processes and practices of peer review for everyone involved—editors, authors, reviewers, and readers. Apprehending concretely how peer review happens from beginning to end and how editors think about it should help to demystify the process, especially for graduate students an…
Hedge Words
Despite popular conceptions of hedges as small, meaningless words that detract rather than add to the meaning of a conversational exchange, they take many forms, from words such as just to full clauses and utterances. As a discursive strategy, hedging serves two main functions: accountability and politeness. That is, hedging lessens the speaker's commitment to the truth of an utterance's content, and it softens otherwise face‐threatening acts. Th…
Deconstructing variation in pragmatic function
Despite recent advances (e.g. Cheshire 2007; Pichler 2010; Denis 2015), discourse-pragmatic variables continue to challenge variationist theory and methods. An overarching dilemma concerns multifunctionality, raising difficulties for semantic equivalency and the circumscription of the variable context. In this article we present a case study to illustrate that deconstructing a discourse-pragmatic marker into its composite parts reveals clear crit…
Stability, stasis and change
Intensification is prone to invention and renewal, rendering it ideal for delving into mechanisms of variation and change. Recycling (via lexical replacement) is a putative longitudinal constant, yet grammatical change (via grammaticalization) is regularly invoked in the literature. It is not clear how these complement each other. To probe this issue, this paper operationalizes variationist methods to examine intensification in the Origins of New…
Not always variable
Written and spoken language are known to differ substantially (Biber, 1988; 1995; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). Standard written language is highly uniform and governed by prescription, whereas the vernacular is most revealing of structured heterogeneity (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968). We focus on four English morphosyntactic variables that problematize assumptions about the nature of variation in the vernacular: the geni…
Asymmetrical trajectories
The set of English [+human] pronominal quantifiers has been variable for at least 500 years, with the compound forms – body and – one competing since Middle and Early Modern English. This change has still to run its course (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003:78). Using corpora of historical texts, we track the development of these variants alongside the demise of the earlier variant – man . Then, drawing on contemporary and regionally diver…
The diachrony of quotation
Much recent work on English direct quotation assumes that the system is undergoing rapid and large-scale change via the emergence of “innovative” forms such as be like . This view is supported by synchronic evidence, but the dearth of diachronic evidence forces reconsideration of this assumption. Drawing on data representing the full history of New Zealand English, this paper presents a variationist analysis of the quotative system, providing a c…
Social work and linguistic systems
The system of stative possession has been subject to variation and change since at least the Early Modern period, with have got rising in frequency in British and Antipodean varieties of English. In Canadian English, as represented by data from the largest city, Toronto, have predominates. Nonetheless, the full set of constraints previously reported for this variable are operative, corroborating the longitudinal maintenance of linguistic factors …
Quoting ethnicity
Within the system of direct quotation, speakers have a number of resources at their disposal from which they can select to construct dialogue. This article presents an investigation of the ways in which Maori and Pakeha English speakers deploy these resources. The analysis reveals extensive differences in the construction of dialogue between Maori and Pakeha which include, but are not limited to, quantitative differences in the use of individual …
Prestige, accommodation, and the legacy of relativewho
This article presents a quantitative variationist analysis of the English restrictive relative pronouns. However, where previous research has largely focused on language-internal explanations for variant choice, the focus here is the social meaning of this erstwhile syntactic variable. We uncover rich sociolinguistic embedding of the relative pronouns in standard, urban speech. The only productivewh-form iswho, which continues to pattern as a pre…
Localized globalization
We conduct a multi‐local, multivariate analysis of be like in comparable datasets from three discontinuous geographic settings (the U.S.A., England, and New Zealand). Previously, comparative cross‐variety analysis of this form has been fundamentally hampered by key methodological differences. A methodologically coherent analysis reveals that the ‘classic factors’ ( Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2007 : 203) grammatical person and content of the quote, as…
Peaks Beyond Phonology
What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic) and discourse-pragmatic changes. Our results provide a striking validation of the incrementation model…
Frequency and variation in the community grammar
In this article we perform a quantitative analysis of verbs of quotation in a cohesive speech community. The incoming form be like overshadows all other quotative verbs among speakers under 30. This telescoped rate of change provides an opportunity to investigate the actuation problem as well as to probe the underlying mechanism of change in the contrasting variable grammars across generations. Multivariate analyses of factors conditioning be lik…
The modals of obligation/necessity in Canadian perspective
The modal verbs of English have been undergoing change since the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods. Recent research suggests dramatic recent developments, particularly in American English. In this paper, we focus on the encoding of obligation/necessity, which involves the layering of must , have ( got ) to , got to , and need to . Building on a longitudinal research program on (spoken) English dialect corpora, the present investig…
Likeand Language Ideology
The selective attention paid to the language of adolescents has led to the enduring belief that young people are ruining the language and that, as a consequence, the language is degenerating. One feature of contemporary vernaculars that is often held up as exemplification of these ideological principles is like, the “much-deplored interjection... that peppers the talk of so many of the unpliant young these days” (Wilson 1987, 92). There is, in fa…
Lexical Replacement and the Like(s)
This article investigates the function of like when it occurs in numerically quantified contexts. The pragmatic literature espouses two distinct positions on this topic, though neither has yet been tested empirically. On the one hand, like is argued to be a genuine pragmatic particle, indistinguishable from other discourse uses of this lexeme. Alternatively, others argue that in numerical contexts like carries propositional content and in this re…
Peaks Beyond Phonology
What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic) and discourse-pragmatic changes. Our results provide a striking validation of the incrementation model…
Localized globalization
We conduct a multi‐local, multivariate analysis of be like in comparable datasets from three discontinuous geographic settings (the U.S.A., England, and New Zealand). Previously, comparative cross‐variety analysis of this form has been fundamentally hampered by key methodological differences. A methodologically coherent analysis reveals that the ‘classic factors’ ( Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2007 : 203) grammatical person and content of the quote, as…
Frequency and variation in the community grammar
In this article we perform a quantitative analysis of verbs of quotation in a cohesive speech community. The incoming form be like overshadows all other quotative verbs among speakers under 30. This telescoped rate of change provides an opportunity to investigate the actuation problem as well as to probe the underlying mechanism of change in the contrasting variable grammars across generations. Multivariate analyses of factors conditioning be lik…
Likeand Language Ideology
The selective attention paid to the language of adolescents has led to the enduring belief that young people are ruining the language and that, as a consequence, the language is degenerating. One feature of contemporary vernaculars that is often held up as exemplification of these ideological principles is like, the “much-deplored interjection... that peppers the talk of so many of the unpliant young these days” (Wilson 1987, 92). There is, in fa…
The diachrony of quotation
Much recent work on English direct quotation assumes that the system is undergoing rapid and large-scale change via the emergence of “innovative” forms such as be like . This view is supported by synchronic evidence, but the dearth of diachronic evidence forces reconsideration of this assumption. Drawing on data representing the full history of New Zealand English, this paper presents a variationist analysis of the quotative system, providing a c…
Quoting ethnicity
Within the system of direct quotation, speakers have a number of resources at their disposal from which they can select to construct dialogue. This article presents an investigation of the ways in which Maori and Pakeha English speakers deploy these resources. The analysis reveals extensive differences in the construction of dialogue between Maori and Pakeha which include, but are not limited to, quantitative differences in the use of individual …
The modals of obligation/necessity in Canadian perspective
The modal verbs of English have been undergoing change since the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods. Recent research suggests dramatic recent developments, particularly in American English. In this paper, we focus on the encoding of obligation/necessity, which involves the layering of must , have ( got ) to , got to , and need to . Building on a longitudinal research program on (spoken) English dialect corpora, the present investig…
Prestige, accommodation, and the legacy of relativewho
This article presents a quantitative variationist analysis of the English restrictive relative pronouns. However, where previous research has largely focused on language-internal explanations for variant choice, the focus here is the social meaning of this erstwhile syntactic variable. We uncover rich sociolinguistic embedding of the relative pronouns in standard, urban speech. The only productivewh-form iswho, which continues to pattern as a pre…
Lexical Replacement and the Like(s)
This article investigates the function of like when it occurs in numerically quantified contexts. The pragmatic literature espouses two distinct positions on this topic, though neither has yet been tested empirically. On the one hand, like is argued to be a genuine pragmatic particle, indistinguishable from other discourse uses of this lexeme. Alternatively, others argue that in numerical contexts like carries propositional content and in this re…
Not always variable
Written and spoken language are known to differ substantially (Biber, 1988; 1995; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). Standard written language is highly uniform and governed by prescription, whereas the vernacular is most revealing of structured heterogeneity (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968). We focus on four English morphosyntactic variables that problematize assumptions about the nature of variation in the vernacular: the geni…
Social work and linguistic systems
The system of stative possession has been subject to variation and change since at least the Early Modern period, with have got rising in frequency in British and Antipodean varieties of English. In Canadian English, as represented by data from the largest city, Toronto, have predominates. Nonetheless, the full set of constraints previously reported for this variable are operative, corroborating the longitudinal maintenance of linguistic factors …
Asymmetrical trajectories
The set of English [+human] pronominal quantifiers has been variable for at least 500 years, with the compound forms – body and – one competing since Middle and Early Modern English. This change has still to run its course (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003:78). Using corpora of historical texts, we track the development of these variants alongside the demise of the earlier variant – man . Then, drawing on contemporary and regionally diver…
Deconstructing variation in pragmatic function
Despite recent advances (e.g. Cheshire 2007; Pichler 2010; Denis 2015), discourse-pragmatic variables continue to challenge variationist theory and methods. An overarching dilemma concerns multifunctionality, raising difficulties for semantic equivalency and the circumscription of the variable context. In this article we present a case study to illustrate that deconstructing a discourse-pragmatic marker into its composite parts reveals clear crit…
Lexical Replacement and the Like(s)
This article investigates the function of like when it occurs in numerically quantified contexts. The pragmatic literature espouses two distinct positions on this topic, though neither has yet been tested empirically. On the one hand, like is argued to be a genuine pragmatic particle, indistinguishable from other discourse uses of this lexeme. Alternatively, others argue that in numerical contexts like carries propositional content and in this re…
Frequency and variation in the community grammar
In this article we perform a quantitative analysis of verbs of quotation in a cohesive speech community. The incoming form be like overshadows all other quotative verbs among speakers under 30. This telescoped rate of change provides an opportunity to investigate the actuation problem as well as to probe the underlying mechanism of change in the contrasting variable grammars across generations. Multivariate analyses of factors conditioning be lik…
The modals of obligation/necessity in Canadian perspective
The modal verbs of English have been undergoing change since the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods. Recent research suggests dramatic recent developments, particularly in American English. In this paper, we focus on the encoding of obligation/necessity, which involves the layering of must , have ( got ) to , got to , and need to . Building on a longitudinal research program on (spoken) English dialect corpora, the present investig…
Likeand Language Ideology
The selective attention paid to the language of adolescents has led to the enduring belief that young people are ruining the language and that, as a consequence, the language is degenerating. One feature of contemporary vernaculars that is often held up as exemplification of these ideological principles is like, the “much-deplored interjection... that peppers the talk of so many of the unpliant young these days” (Wilson 1987, 92). There is, in fa…
Localized globalization
We conduct a multi‐local, multivariate analysis of be like in comparable datasets from three discontinuous geographic settings (the U.S.A., England, and New Zealand). Previously, comparative cross‐variety analysis of this form has been fundamentally hampered by key methodological differences. A methodologically coherent analysis reveals that the ‘classic factors’ ( Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2007 : 203) grammatical person and content of the quote, as…
Peaks Beyond Phonology
What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic) and discourse-pragmatic changes. Our results provide a striking validation of the incrementation model…
Social work and linguistic systems
The system of stative possession has been subject to variation and change since at least the Early Modern period, with have got rising in frequency in British and Antipodean varieties of English. In Canadian English, as represented by data from the largest city, Toronto, have predominates. Nonetheless, the full set of constraints previously reported for this variable are operative, corroborating the longitudinal maintenance of linguistic factors …
Quoting ethnicity
Within the system of direct quotation, speakers have a number of resources at their disposal from which they can select to construct dialogue. This article presents an investigation of the ways in which Maori and Pakeha English speakers deploy these resources. The analysis reveals extensive differences in the construction of dialogue between Maori and Pakeha which include, but are not limited to, quantitative differences in the use of individual …
Prestige, accommodation, and the legacy of relativewho
This article presents a quantitative variationist analysis of the English restrictive relative pronouns. However, where previous research has largely focused on language-internal explanations for variant choice, the focus here is the social meaning of this erstwhile syntactic variable. We uncover rich sociolinguistic embedding of the relative pronouns in standard, urban speech. The only productivewh-form iswho, which continues to pattern as a pre…
The diachrony of quotation
Much recent work on English direct quotation assumes that the system is undergoing rapid and large-scale change via the emergence of “innovative” forms such as be like . This view is supported by synchronic evidence, but the dearth of diachronic evidence forces reconsideration of this assumption. Drawing on data representing the full history of New Zealand English, this paper presents a variationist analysis of the quotative system, providing a c…
Asymmetrical trajectories
The set of English [+human] pronominal quantifiers has been variable for at least 500 years, with the compound forms – body and – one competing since Middle and Early Modern English. This change has still to run its course (cf. Nevalainen & Raumolin-Brunberg, 2003:78). Using corpora of historical texts, we track the development of these variants alongside the demise of the earlier variant – man . Then, drawing on contemporary and regionally diver…
Stability, stasis and change
Intensification is prone to invention and renewal, rendering it ideal for delving into mechanisms of variation and change. Recycling (via lexical replacement) is a putative longitudinal constant, yet grammatical change (via grammaticalization) is regularly invoked in the literature. It is not clear how these complement each other. To probe this issue, this paper operationalizes variationist methods to examine intensification in the Origins of New…
Not always variable
Written and spoken language are known to differ substantially (Biber, 1988; 1995; Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999). Standard written language is highly uniform and governed by prescription, whereas the vernacular is most revealing of structured heterogeneity (Weinreich, Labov, & Herzog, 1968). We focus on four English morphosyntactic variables that problematize assumptions about the nature of variation in the vernacular: the geni…
Deconstructing variation in pragmatic function
Despite recent advances (e.g. Cheshire 2007; Pichler 2010; Denis 2015), discourse-pragmatic variables continue to challenge variationist theory and methods. An overarching dilemma concerns multifunctionality, raising difficulties for semantic equivalency and the circumscription of the variable context. In this article we present a case study to illustrate that deconstructing a discourse-pragmatic marker into its composite parts reveals clear crit…
Hedge Words
Despite popular conceptions of hedges as small, meaningless words that detract rather than add to the meaning of a conversational exchange, they take many forms, from words such as just to full clauses and utterances. As a discursive strategy, hedging serves two main functions: accountability and politeness. That is, hedging lessens the speaker's commitment to the truth of an utterance's content, and it softens otherwise face‐threatening acts. Th…
Peer Review in Linguistics Journals
We present new data on peer review practices in linguistics journals, reporting the results of an online survey of editors. This paper aims to increase understanding of the processes and practices of peer review for everyone involved—editors, authors, reviewers, and readers. Apprehending concretely how peer review happens from beginning to end and how editors think about it should help to demystify the process, especially for graduate students an…
Settler Colonial Englishes
Colonialism is a broad term that encompasses a spectrum of sociopolitical realities for colonized peoples and places. An important distinction operates within this constellation, separating settler colonial states on the one hand from other colonial settings on the other. Linguistically, Settler Colonial Englishes are characterized by four aspects that set their evolutionary trajectories apart from those Englishes that emerge in other contexts. T…
Linguistics (14 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (12 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (9 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (9 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Political science (6 works)