English World-Wide 28:1 (2007), 23–45. issn 0172–8865 / e-issn 1569–9730 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Older men and younger women A corpus-based study of quotative use in American English* Federica Barbieri Northern Arizona University his article investigates the efect of the external variables speaker age and sex on the use of the quotatives be like, go, be all, and say in present-day spo- ken American English. he study is based on a large computerized corpus of naturally-occurring conversation collected from a wide range of speakers across the United States. he results show that there are striking diferences in the way that men and women under the age of forty use these quota- tives. Young women are in the lead in the use of be like, but the use of this quotative decreases dramatically among women in their late 20s and in their 30s. In contrast, the use of be like increases among men in their late 20s. he patterns of use described here represent a departure from previous indings and suggest that the efect of speaker’s age and sex on quotative use is more complex than has been posited so far. Keywords: quotative, be like, go, be all, sex, age, American English, convergence, accommodation theory, evolutionary psychology 1. Introduction Over the past two decades, exciting developments have taken place in the quo- tative system of American English, which has seen the emergence of at least * A previous version of this article was presented at the AAACL/ICAME joint conference at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, May 12–15, 2005. I am grateful to Doug Biber and Susan Fitzmaurice, whose insightful comments on the indings presented here have greatly improved this manuscript. I would also like to thank the editor, Edgar Schneider, for his constructive criticism on an earlier version of this article.