Non-Standard Functions of Like in Spoken Discourse

The present study is concerned with non-standard functions of the word like in spoken American English. The aim was to gather all the non-standard functions that have been described in the past 30 years, to create a comprehensive overview serving as the basis for the analysis of a sample of 100 instances of non-standard like excerpted from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The sample was analysed and sorted according to the function of like (focus marker, hedge, quotative marker, and discourse marker), while also examining the position and collocations of each instance. The conclusions of the study were validation of the proposed overview and its extension by an additional quotative construction, a more detailed description of the „hedge“ and the focus marker like and also the confirmation that the non-standard like is not an empty intrusive word but a multifunctional, ever-developing device which allows speakers to modify the pragmatic meaning of their utterances.456