Local vehicles for intensification and involvement: the case of English intensifiers

This paper explores degree intensifiers as local vehicles for expressivity, involvement and speech-act modification. Intensifiers clearly pertain to the discourse-pragmatic dimension and, following on type and degree of expressivity, may contribute speech act modification, both reinforcement, aggravation and mitigation, and signal diverse inner and mental states. Although the degree function of intensifiers has received considerably more attention in the relevant literature, the key role of expressivity cannot be overestimated at this point. Most importantly, different types and degrees of expressivity and involvement obviously originate in the lexico-semantic features of individual intensifiers, hence in their degree, pattern of intensification, extent of grammaticalization, as well as in the natural language-internal tendency towards diversification. This has obvious implications also for their collocational, genre and stylistic preferences. Essentially, two basic equations emerge: the more grammaticalized the intensifier, the less expressive, in the sense of emotionally coloured, the intensifier; the higher the degree expressed, the more expressive the intensifier. In other words, there is room for viewing expressivity as a major scalar property, a surplus value of all intensifiers, by their very nature indexical to the reader. It is clear that rather than attitudes, intensifiers with no connotations at all, like very, represent a still subjective, but much more rational, descriptive choice towards the expression of belief. Still, selecting from among competing intensifiers is most often a choice towards the expression of inner states, attitudes and feelings included. Here, we can distinguish between intensifiers that convey relatively more undifferentiated emotions (e.g. crackingly) and intensifiers that express specific emotions (e.g. desperately).