Cover not available
Part of
Corpora and the Changing Society: Studies in the evolution of English
Edited by Paula Rautionaho, Arja Nurmi and Juhani Klemola
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 96] 2020
► pp. 143–168

That’s absolutely fine

An investigation of absolutely in the spoken BNC2014

| University of Gothenburg

This chapter investigates the meanings and functions of the intensifier absolutely, both synchronically and diachronically. The research questions are asked against the background of absolutely becoming more frequent over a short period of time as shown by a comparison of the BNC1994 and the BNC2014. The results show that the developments undergone by absolutely can be described as a trajectory from degree modifier to emphasizer and to discourse marker, as absolutely increases in subjectivity. The description of the semantic and pragmatic developments also requires a sociolinguistic analysis of factors such as age and gender. The analysis shows that young speakers use it less often than older speakers and that it was first used by male speakers and only later by females.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
  • 3.The frequency of absolutely
  • 4.The frequency of absolutely with different syntactic head words
    • 4.1 Absolutely with adjectives
    • 4.2 Absolutely modifying a verb
    • 4.3 Absolutely followed by everything, all, never, nothing, no
    • 4.4 Absolutely with nouns
    • 4.5 Absolutely before preposition phrases
    • 4.6 Absolutely as a discourse marker at the end of the clause
  • 5.The response marker absolutely
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 8 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.96.06aij
References

Corpora and software

BNC1994 = The British National Corpus
[URL]
BNC2014S = The British National Corpus 2014
[URL]
CQP = Corpus Query Processor
[URL]

Other references

Aijmer, Karin
2018 ‘That’s well bad’: Some new intensifiers in spoken British English. In Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech. Sociolinguistic Studies of the Spoken BNC2014, Vaclav Brezina, Robbie Love & Karin Aijmer (eds), 60–95. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Altenberg, Bengt
1991 Amplifier collocation in spoken English. In English Computer Corpora. Selected Papers and Research Guide, Stig Johansson & Anna-Brita Stenström (eds), 127–147. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Athanasiadou, Angeliki
2007 On the subjectivity of intensifiers. Language Sciences 29: 554–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beeching, Kate
2016 Pragmatic Markers in British English. Meaning in Social Interaction. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight
1972 Degree Words. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cacchiani, Silvia
2005 Local vehicles for intensification and involvement: The case of English intensifiers. In Pragmatics Today, Piotr Cap (ed.), 401–419. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Claridge, Claudia
2011 Hyperbole in English. A Corpus-Based Study of Exaggeration. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Denison, David
2001 Gradience and linguistic change. In Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected Papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999, [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 215], Laurel J. Brinton (ed.), 119–144. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fahy, Patrick J.
2002 Use of linguistic qualifiers and intensifiers in a computer conference. The American Journal of Distance Education 16(1): 5–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, Robert
2017 Do women (still) use more intensifiers than men? Recent changes in the sociolinguistics of intensifiers in British English. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22(3): 345–374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hardie, Andrew
2018 Using the spoken BNC2014 in CQP web. In Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech. Sociolinguistic Studies of the Spoken BNC2014, Vaclav Brezina, Robbie Love & Karin Aijmer (eds), 27–30. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hessner, Tanja & Gawlitzek, Ira
2017  Totally or slightly different? A Spoken BNC2014-based investigation of female and male usage of intensifiers. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22(3): 403–428. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.
2004 Lexicalization and grammaticalization: Opposite or orthogonal. In What Makes Grammaticalization?: A Look from its Fringes and Components, Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann & Björn Wiemer (eds), 21–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ito, Rika & Tagliamonte, Sali
2003  Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society 32: 257–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Killie, Kristin
2004 Subjectivity and the English progressive. English Language and Linguistics 8(1): 25–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1990 The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2: 205–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, Robbie, Dembry, Claire, Hardie, Andrew, Brezina, Vaclav & McEnery, Tony
2017 The Spoken BNC2014 – designing and building a spoken corpus of everyday conversations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22(3): 311–318. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Michael
2003 Talking Back: ’Small’ interactional response tokens in everyday conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction 36(1): 33–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macaulay, Ronald
2006  Pure grammaticalization: The development of a teenage intensifier. Language Variation and Change 18: 267–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mendéz-Naya, Belen
2008 On the history of downright . English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 267–287. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Bróna
2010 Corpus and Sociolinguistics. Investigating Age and Gender in Female Talk [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 38]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nevalainen, Terttu & Rissanen, Matti
2002  Fairly pretty or pretty fair? On the development and grammaticalization of English downtoners. Language Sciences 24: 359–380. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Núñez-Pertejo, Paloma & Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M.
2014  That’s absolutely crap, totally rubbish: the use of the intensifiers absolutely and totally in the spoken language of British adults and teenagers. Functions of Language 21(2): 210–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M. & Núñez-Pertejo, Paloma
2012 He’s absolutely massive. It’s a super day. Madonna, she is a wicked singer. Youth language and intensification: A corpus-based study. Text & Talk 23(6): 773–796. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paradis, Carita
1997 Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
2000  It’s well weird. Degree modifiers of adjectives revisited: The nineties. In Corpora Galore. Analysis and Techniques in Describing English, John Kirk (ed.), 147–160. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
2003 Between epistemic modality and degree: The case of really . In Modality in Contemporary English, Roberta Facchinetti, Frank Palmer & Manfred Krug (eds), 197–220. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Partington, Alan
1993 Corpus evidence of language change. The case the intensifier. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds), 177–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti
2008 From ‘quickly’ to ‘fairly’: On the history of rather . English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 345–359. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stenström, Anna-Brita, Andersen, Gisle & Hasund, Ingrid Kristine
2002 Trends in Teenage Talk. Corpus Compilation, Analysis and Findings [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 8]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swales, John & Burke, Amy
2003 ‘It’s really fascinating work’: Differences in evaluative adjectives across academic registers. In Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use, Pepi Leistyna & Charles F. Meyer (eds), 1–18. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali
2008 So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada. English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 361–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.
2016 Teen Talk: The Language of Adolescents. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali & Roberts, Chris
2005 So weird; so cool; so innovative: The use of intensifiers in the television series Friends . American Speech 80(3): 280–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tao, Hongyin
2007 A corpus-based investigation of absolutely and related phenomena in spoken American English. Journal of English Linguistics 35(5): 5–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs
2003 Constructions in grammaticalization. In The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds), 624–647. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006 The semantic development of scalar focus modifiers. In The Handbook of the History of English, Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds), 335–359. Malden: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2008 Grammaticalization, constructions and the incremental development of language: Suggestions from the development of degree modifiers in English. In Variation, Selection, Development: Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change, Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger, & Tonjes Veenstra (eds), 219–250. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wright, Susan
1994 The mystery of the modal progressive. In Studies in Early Modern English, Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 467–485. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xiao, Richard & Tao, Hongyin
2007 A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of amplifiers in British English. Sociolinguistic Studies 1(2): 241–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar