The Use of like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress

It can be seen here that like functions much in the same way as the verb say does in introducing reported speech. In both these examples a form of the verb be followed by like alternates with say, and where be + like occurs, it appears paraphrasable by say with no apparent change in referential meaning. However, we will qualify this considerably in the course of our analysis, because in many, if not most cases, discourses introduced by be + like can also represent internal thought, as Butters (1982) noted. In (3), for example, it is not certain that the speaker actually SAID no. Rather, the hearer is invited to infer that this is what the speaker was thinking or saying to himself as the girl approached.