| dc.description.abstract | Research into priming has shown that it is possible to prime both words and
syntactic structure in speech. Similarly, investigations into audience design
and alignment have shown that language use and speech in general is
designed for audience i.e. changes depending on to whom you are speaking.
Studies in other languages have investigated how discourse marker usage
can vary according to audience. In English, the discourse marker like has
been found to be increasingly prevalent in speech (more so than other DMs)
but its prime-ability and frequency of use when speaking for different
audiences has not been investigated. This study presented participants with
four short stories, verbally accounting an event that the speaker had
experienced such as their first day at University. Each story had a primed and
un-primed version (containing or not containing like). Participants recounted
these stories to one of two audiences: a Student or a Lecturer, with the
number of likes produced tallied per condition. Results showed no significant
effect of audience, which was attributed to the low saliency of the ‘authority’
difference between lecturers and students. This condition may not have
enforced the different levels of audience strongly enough to examine natural
use of the discourse marker like. Priming showed a trend towards a significant
effect, with more likes produced when re-telling primed stories than un-primed
stories. This suggests that like may indeed be prime-able, and should be
investigated further. In addition, results for the individual stories suggested
that other factors such as naturalism and saliency of topic may have affected
the re-telling of stories and priming of like. | en |
