Abstract :
It is well known that conversationalists often imitate their own body language as a sign
of closeness and empathy. This study shows that in spontaneous, unplanned conversation,
speakers go as far as emulating each other’s grammar. The use of a family of focusing
constructions (namely, the cleft), such as it was my mother who rang the other day, or
what I meant to say was that he should go Thursday, was investigated in a corpus of
conversation excerpts in New Zealand English. Findings show that clefting is contagious.
In other words, if one speaker uses a cleft, others will be likely to do so too.
