Left and right dislocation (also called ‘headers’ and ‘tails’)
This involves making a ‘copy’ of an important noun phrase, moving it either to
the start (left) or finish (right) of the clause and leaving a personal pronoun in its
original place:
This film we’re going to see – what’s it about? What’s it about, this film we’re going to see? This is another technique for moving an element around the sentence (see B11) so
that it can be focused on and/or made the topic, or so that a long subject can be
avoided: What’s this film we’re going to see about? In real time the initial position may
be used because the speaker states the topic before being sure what to say about it,
while the final position may be preferred when the speaker starts a question and then
realises the subject will be quite long.
New structures There are some new structures that have become popular in speech recently (but
which are frowned on by some older people). Two examples are the use of go and be like as reporting verbs to introduce direct speech (‘quotes’):
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Activity A12.1
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I N T R O D U C T I O N
And she goes ‘What are you up to?’ He’s like ‘Keep your hands off!’ Be like can also be used for reporting thoughts:
And I’m like ‘What am I doing here?’ This construction can be understood as meaning ‘I’m saying/thinking something
like . . .’. See B12 for more on reported speech.
