Diachronic and Dialect Variation of English Intensifying Adverbs in the Film Dialogue Discourse: Corpus-Based Study

Abstract

The article presents a corpus-based study of the diachronic and dialect variations of adverbial intensifiers used as the expression of emotionality that is a key defining feature of interpersonal conversation in the British and American film discourse. Based on the corpora of scripts of British and American feature films released in the 1930–1950s and 1990–2010s, data on the frequency of adverbial intensifiers in the sub-corpora of the English regional varieties of the two periods were obtained and their comparative analysis was carried out to establish the regional specifics and historical dynamics of their use; the collocation profiles of adverbial intensifiers that form syntagmatic units in the dialogic speech of British and American film discourse for each of the studied periods were described; semantic classes and stylistic characteristics of adjectives that form the most frequent collocations with the intensifiers were identified; the pragmalinguistic potential of the intensifiers and adjectives to indicate informality and emotionality in the dialogues of the English film discourse was determined. The diachronic analysis revealed a decline in the occurrences of the standard register intensifiers (terribly, awfully, perfectly, extremely, etc.) with adjectives carrying the semantics of general evaluation, opinion, judgment, and emotionality in both corpora of modern English film discourse. In the 1990–2010s period, the process of renewal is observed in the UK and US film discourse when formerly frequent intensifiers are seen to be replaced by informal adverbs with a maximal degree of emotionality in speakers' attitudes to situations, objects of the surrounding world and the interlocutor, which reflects a trend in preference towards the colloquial and substandard stylistic register. The growth of substandard vocabulary indicates that this trend is in line with the expectations of the English-speaking discursive communities that perceive film discourse as a reflection of authentic face-to-face discursive practices.