Browsing by Subject "quantitative analysis"

While there is a plethora of research on intensifiers spanning several decades, the previous research on modern English intensifiers heavily focuses on the most prevalent ones, such as really and very. Therefore, the present study examines eight less studied intensifiers: amazingly, extra, fully, highly, massively, mega, super, and truly. Earlier research suggests that age and gender have an effect on the way we speak and that these social variables also play a role in the use of intensifiers, whether that be the frequency of usage or the choice of a particular intensifier. Thus, the present study investigates how age and gender affect the frequency of intensifier usage and the intensifier choice within the scope of the chosen set of intensifiers in present-day spoken British English. The study falls under the field of sociolinguistics. The research questions are as follows: How frequent are the intensifiers amazingly, extra, fully, highly, massively, mega, super, and truly in present-day spoken British English? What is the relation between the gender and age of the speaker and the frequency of intensifier use? What is the relation between the gender and age of the speaker and the speaker’s choice of intensifier? The study employs a quantitative, corpus-based approach. The data is collected from the core sub-corpus of the Spoken BNC2014. The Spoken BNC2014 consists of spoken interactions in British English in the 2010s. The core sub-corpus includes 6,169,296 words and there are 250 speakers. It has been created for sociolinguistic studies. The data is analyzed by comparing absolute and relative frequencies and by employing a log-likelihood test to determine possible statistical significance of the findings. The absolute frequencies of the chosen intensifiers vary from 10 to 96. While super is clearly the most frequent out of the selected intensifiers, it is still far from the most frequent ones of British English. The results show that females employ more intensifiers than males and that the most frequent intensifier users are the speakers aged 25 to 44. While the same age group dominates intensifier use among the females, for the males, the most frequent user group is the age group 0-24. Gender and age also influence the choice of the intensifier. Amazingly, extra, highly, massively, and super are more frequent in female speech. Fully, mega, and truly are more popular in male speech. Super is popular across all age groups and both genders, but highly is substantially more frequent in female speech. The findings shed light on the usage of less-examined intensifiers. The results support previous research findings in that age and gender seem to affect the frequency of intensifier use and the choice of the intensifier. The findings serve as a base for future research on the eight intensifiers, which can be extended to include, for instance, other social factors and varieties of English.