Recent accounts of discourse-pragmatic (DP) variation have demonstrated that these features can acquire social indexical meaning. However, in comparison to other linguistic variables, DP features remain underexplored and third-wave perspectives on the topic are limited. In this article, I analyse the distribution, function and social meaning of the ‘attention signals’ – those features which fulfil the explicit function of eliciting the attention of an individual – in just over 35 hours of self-recordings of 25 adolescents collected during a year-long sociolinguistic ethnography of an East London youth group. This leads me to identify an innovative attention signal – ey. Distributional analyses of this feature show that ey is associated with a particular Community of Practice, the self-defined and exclusively male ‘gully’. By examining the discourse junctures at which ey occurs, I argue that this attention signal is most frequently used by speakers to deploy a ‘dominant’ stance. For gully members, this feature is particularly useful as an interpersonal device, where it is used to manage ingroup/outgroup boundaries. Concluding, I link the use of ey and the gully identity to language, ethnicity and masculinity in East London.

中文翻译：

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“哎，等等，等等，沟壑！” 东伦敦青少年演讲中注意力信号的风格、立场和社会意义

最近对语篇语用（DP）变异的解释表明，这些特征可以获得社会索引意义。然而，与其他语言变量相比，DP 特征仍未得到充分开发，第三波对该主题的看法有限。在这篇文章中，我分析了“注意力信号”的分布、功能和社会意义——这些特征具有引起个人注意的明确功能——在超过 35 小时的自我记录中收集了 25 名青少年的自我记录。东伦敦青年团体长达一年的社会语言民族志。这让我发现了一个创新的注意力信号——嗯. 该特征的分布分析表明嗯与特定的实践社区相关联，即自我定义的男性“沟壑”。通过检查话语接合点嗯发生时，我认为这种注意力信号最常被演讲者用来部署“主导”立场。对于沟壑成员，此功能作为人际交往工具特别有用，用于管理内群体/外群体边界。最后，我链接使用嗯以及东伦敦的语言、种族和阳刚之气的沟壑认同。