Intensifiers in late Modern English : a sociopragmatic approach to courtroom discourse / Claudia Claridge, University of Augsburg, Ewa Jonsson, Mid Sweden University, Merja Kytö, Uppsala University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Claridge, Claudia, author.

Jonsson, Ewa, 1968- author.

Kytö, Merja, author.

Series:

Studies in English language

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Intensification.

English language.

Law--Language.

Law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 330 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"The development of intensifiers has long been identified as an area of vibrant change in Late Modern English. This groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive study of intensifiers in this period, and shows how they have changed over time. It uses speech-based and interactive data from the Old Bailey courthouse in London, enriched by extralinguistic information in the Old Bailey Corpus, to investigate an unprecedented range of intensifiers, including downtoners, boosters, and maximizers. The courtroom acts as a social microcosm of the period, providing unique insights on gender, class, and courtroom roles, and their effects on language use. The usage of intensifiers is illuminated from a lexico-grammatical angle, focusing on their formal and semantic features, as well as those of the items they modify. These perspectives are linked to temporal developments from 1720 to 1913, to offer a complete picture of variation and change in the intensifier area"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

1. Introduction : pleading the case

2. Theoretical and methodological considerations

3. Intensifiers : forms, features, and functions

4. Corpus methodology and overview of data

5. Maximizers

6. Boosters

7. Downtoners

8. Multivariate analysis : intensifiers in a bird's-eye view

9. Intensifiers across time

10. The pragmatics of intensifiers

11. The sociolinguistics of intensifiers

12. Conclusion : summing up the evidence

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Mar 2024).

ISBN:

9781108583923

110858392X

9781108590495

1108590497

9781108560627

1108560628