Speakers: Alex, male, 16, White British Black Caribbean mixed; Zack, male, 16, White British
Background
Alex is recorded here talking to his friend Zack. Both boys live in inner London and speak Multicultural London English. Immediately before this extract Alex and Zack had been talking between themselves about going on holiday and ways of bringing banned goods back into the country. In this extract it is Alex who is now holding the floor. Although the interviewer is present, Alex is mainly telling Zack about an incident at the airport in Amsterdam when his friend had hidden drugs in a deodorant spray can. Alex is a lively storyteller and he involves the listeners in the story using a range of different linguistic strategies such as address terms, the conversational historical present tense, kissing teeth, intensifiers and different rhetorical strategies, making the story a kind of performance.
Resources
Transcript
Discussion points
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Linguistics Research Digest links
Quotatives
Was/were in MLE
Man prounoun in MLE
Intensifiers in Tyneside English