The Discourse Particle eh in New Zealand English

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of eh in New Zealand English (NZE) and takes a quantitative, variationist approach based on the New Zealand component of the International Corpus of English (ICE New Zealand). The analysis includes both sociolinguistic (ethnicity, age, gender, occupation type) and psycholinguistic variables (priming). A mixed-effects binomial logistic regression model shows that younger speakers use eh more often than older speakers, males use it more often than females, Maori people (indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand) use it more often than Pakeha people (decedents of European settlers), and speakers with academic, clerical and managerial occupations as well as speakers who work in the professions are significantly more likely to use eh compared to speakers who perform skilled manual labour. The analysis neither confirms a significant impact of priming on the use of eh nor significant interactions between predictors, which contrasts with previous studies.