I Go "La la la la la" - the Quotative "Go"

Maybe this is an early indication of my soon-to-be-discovered linguistic genius (yeah right, ha ha ha ha), but as a kid I often puzzled over the use of 'go' as a quotative. Obviously it wasn't considered 'proper'. Sure, they put it in songs and things, but you wouldn't write 'goes' instead of 'says' or 'said' in an essay. But I couldn't think of how to better convey that I was about to say what someone else said without sounding too literary and 'fake'.

Besides, half the time I wasn't saying just what someone was 'saying' -- it felt like it was something more than just 'saying', and just using 'say' to convey whatever that was felt strange. "And he said, Whoooaaaa, duuuude, is that a Charizard?" It just didn't sound right. For some reason 'go' sounded much better, but that wasn't proper, right? Maybe I should just say what they said/how they acted without using either...Well, that seemed weird, too.

I never really came to a conclusion, either because I lacked the mental fortitude or because the many horse figurines that I owned were whinnying for me to play with them (probably the latter, because PONIES). But later, as 'like' came into more use, I began to think about the same kind of things. 'Like' seemed kind of inelegant, but what else really (besides go) was so completely convenient? And it seemed so apt! I mean, if I had never actually said 'God, I'm about to up and die of boredom' aloud, why would I use 'say'? Or even 'go', for that matter?

Then yesterday I started reading David Crystal's blog. I don't know why it never occurred to me that he might have a blog, but I just discovered it the other day while looking up the difference between 'three-story' and 'three stories', or 'three-year-old' and 'three years old'. He has an entry from March on using 'go' as a quotative.

"First, the historical point. This use of go has been around for quite a while. The online OED has a draft addition which reflects its recent increase in frequency, but the earliest recorded instances are over 150 years old. It defines it thus: 'to utter (the noise indicated) with direct speech... now often in the historic present'..."

 Hey! And what's more, just as my younger self intuited, 'go' "offers a dramatic alternative to say. Say is used when the language is more factual; go when the speaker in the narrative is more involved in the action." It's also often used when "direct speech begins with an interjection or similar vocal effect."

" In one study, it was found that 76 percent of uses of quotative go occurred with a following vocal effect, often with accompanying gestures or facial expressions. The function is sometimes described as 'mimetic' - the speaker is trying to recreate exactly the audio-visual character of the discourse being reported."

 Like is even more broad, and can encompass 'unspoken' areas of expression like thoughts or emotions.

So now I won't feel so bad when I use 'go' or 'like' and can't think of how properly express myself otherwise without becoming verbose. Yeah! I do what I want!