Polyfunctional words (often categorized as discourse-pragmatic features) vary in form depending on their discourse functions, prosodic contexts (such as utterance position), and usage across social groups. This study applies dynamic formant analysis to describe the detailed phonetic variation of two polyfunctional words, like and yeah, in a corpus of West Yorkshire English (WYE). Data was drawn from 16 male speakers, and analysis was conducted on F1 and F2 in the sequences /laɪ/ and /jɛ/, across different pause contexts and functions. Dynamic measures were taken to track the trajectory of formant movements across the phonetic sequences, whereas previous research has typically only utilised midpoint measurements of vowel nuclei. Results show that the realisations of these words vary based on pause position and function. It was found that yeah functioning as a feedback particle had less formant movement across /j/ and /ɛ/ and lower F2 at the start of the word, whereas yeah in direct response to a question had a wider range of formant movement. This study expands previous findings of like (Drager, 2011; Schleef & Turton, 2016) showing that there is fine-grained phonetic variation between functional and prosodic variables and showing that a single lexical item can have different phonetic realisations based on functions. There is also an indication that like and yeah have distinct formant trajectories across speakers, and low within-speaker variability. Though tentative, these results suggest that word-specific variation merits further analysis for application to the task of forensic voice comparison and that speakers utilise phonetic resources to indicate pragmatic meaning.

Terms of abuse are words used towards or about others with the intent of causing harm (insulting, offending, name-calling etc.) i.e. (you are a) bitch, cunt, dickhead, wanker, idiot. Drawing on 2000 examples of terms of abuse from Norway and Britain collected via an online self-report sociolinguistic survey in 2021, this paper suggests that the most popular Norwegian terms of abuse are currently undergoing changes, partly driven by the influence of English and the popularity of English culture within today’s globalised youth. Additionally, it is suggested that despite progress towards gender equality in both cultures, terms of abuse still provide evidence of inequalities and discrimination.