DCHP-2

anyways DCHP-2 (October 2016)

• adv., pragmatic marker — in the right periphery of the verb, as in closing a clause.

  performs a turn-taking function in most cases; asking the interlocutor to respond.

  Type: 5. Frequency — As Aijmer (2016: Table 2.2b) has shown, in Canadian discourse anyways (not anyway) is used much more frequently following the main verb. While in British English and New Zealand English, anyways is not as prominent as anyway, in Canadian and Filipino English, anyways is a variant in its own right. Canadian English uses anyways following the verb (in 27 of 53 cases), which makes it stand out compared to BrE and NZE. Aijmer (2016: section 2.2) summarizes the situation as follows based on International Corpus of English data: "Anyway was typically associated with initial position and anyways with final position in Canadian English." Word-initial anyway is common also in NZE, PhilE and, to a lesser degree, in BrE.
  Aijmer's assessment is confirmed in Chart 1, which uses a common phrase to filter out irrelevant hits. The phrase "who are you, anyways" is most common in Canada, followed by Australia, but is rather rare elsewhere.