Cover not available
Article published In:
Compiling and analysing the Spoken British National Corpus 2014
Edited by Tony McEnery, Robbie Love and Vaclav Brezina
[International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22:3] 2017
► pp. 345–374

Do women (still) use more intensifiers than men?

Recent change in the sociolinguistics of intensifiers in British English

| Hong Kong Baptist University

This study investigates how age, gender, social class and dialect influence how frequently speakers of British English use intensifiers (e.g. very) in private conversations and whether this has changed over the last two decades. With data drawn from over 600 speakers and 4M words included in the Spoken British National Corpus (1994 and 2014 Sample), it is the most comprehensive study of intensifier usage to date, taking into account 111 intensifier variants. Results show that, in most age groups and social classes, men use intensifiers less frequently than women, and gender differences have diminished to a very limited extent, notably for the middle class. Moreover, intensification rate has increased across the board over time. This could be due to a shift towards a stereotypically more feminine communicative style as the perception of gender roles has changed, a process by which the middle class might have been particularly affected.

Keywords: gender, diachronic change, intensifiers, social class, age
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sociolinguistic approaches to intensifier usage
    • 2.1Language and gender
    • 2.2Intensifiers
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Intensification rate
    • 4.2Rise in intensification rate or increase in informality?
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.03fuc
References
Akaike, H.
(1974) A new look at the statistical model identification. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 19(6), 716–723. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Fine, J., & Shimoni, A. R.
(2003) Gender, genre, and writing style in formal written texts. Text, 23(3), 321–346. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Pennebaker, J. W., & Schler, J.
(2007) Mining the blogosphere: Age, gender and the varieties of self-expression. First Monday, 12(9). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, P.
(2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality. London: Equinox.Google Scholar
(2014) Using Corpora to Analyze Gender. London/New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Barbieri, F.
(2007) Older men and younger women: A corpus-based study of quotative use in American English. English World-Wide, 28(1), 23–45. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2008) Patterns of age-based linguistic variation in American English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 12(1), 58–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., & Bolker, B.
(2013) lme4: Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using S4 Classes, R package version 0.999999-2. Retrieved from [URL]
Biber, D.
(1991) Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E.
(1999) Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bradac, J. J., Mulac, A., & Thompson, S. A.
(1995) Men’s and women’s use of intensifiers and hedges in problem-solving interaction: Molar and molecular analyses. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 28(2), 93–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brezina, V., & Meyerhoff, M.
(2014) Significant or random. A critical review of sociolinguistic generalisations based on large corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cameron, D.
(2000) Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(3), 323–347. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Language, gender, and sexuality: Current issues and new directions. Applied Linguistics, 26(4), 482–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2006) Theorising the female voice in public contexts. In J. Baxter (Ed.), Speaking Out. The Female Voice in Public Contexts (pp. 3–20). Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
(2007) Unanswered questions and unquestioned assumptions in the study of language and gender: Female verbal superiority. Gender & Language, 1(1), 15–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Theoretical issues for the study of gender and spoken interaction. In P. Pichler & E. Eppler (Eds.), Gender and Spoken Interaction (pp. 1–17). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) Gender and language ideologies. In S. Ehrlich, M. Meyerhoff & J. Holmes (Eds.), The Handbook of Language, Gender, and Sexuality (pp. 281–296). Chichester: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cheshire, J.
(2002) Sex and gender in variationist research. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill & N. Schilling-Estes (Eds.), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (pp. 423–443). Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Christie, C.
(2002) Politeness and the linguistic construction of gender in parliament: An analysis of transgressions and apology behaviour. Working Papers on the Web, 31. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed June 2017).
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S.
(1999) New generalizations and explanations in language and gender research. Language in Society, 28(2), 185–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fahs, B.
(2011) Dreaded “Otherness”. Heteronormative patrolling in women’s body hair rebellions. Gender & Society, 25(4), 451–472. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferrara, K., & Bell, B.
(1995) Sociolinguistic variation and discourse function of constructed dialogue introducers: The case of be + like . American Speech, 70(3), 265–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, R., & Gut, U.
(2016) Register variation in intensifier usage across Asian Englishes. In H. Pichler (Ed.), Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change: Insights from English: New Methods and Insights (pp. 185–210). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gong, W.
(2009) Linguistic variation and identity representation in personal blogs: A corpus-linguistic approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). National University of Singapore, Singapore.Google Scholar
Gray, J.
(1992) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. New York, NY: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Griffin, P.
(2007) Sexing the economy in a neo-liberal world order: Neo-liberal discourse and the (re)production of heteronormative heterosexuality. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9(2), 220–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Günther, U.
(2003) What’s in a Laugh? Humour, Jokes and Laughter in the Conversational Subcorpus of the BNC (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed June 2017).
Hancock, A. B., Stutts, H. W., & Bass, A.
(2015) Perceptions of gender and femininity based on language: Implications for transgender communication therapy. Language and Speech, 58(3), 315–333. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hansen, B.
forthcoming). The ICE metadata: A window to the past? An exploratory study of Hong Kong English. World Englishes.
Hardie, A.
(2012) CQPweb: -Combining power, flexibility and usability in a corpus analysis tool. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 17(3), 380–409. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J.
(1995) Women, Men and Politeness. London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
(1998) Response to Koenraad Kuiper. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2(1), 104–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2000) Women at work: Analysing women’s talk at New Zealand Workplaces. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 22(2), 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Power and discourse at work: Is gender relevant? In M. Lazar (Ed.), Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (pp. 31–60). Basingstoke: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holmes, J., Vine, B., & Johnson, G.
(1998) The Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English: A Users’ Guide. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington.Google Scholar
Holmes-Elliott, S.
(2016) Ladies first? Adolescent peaks in a male-led change. U. Penn Working Papers in Linguistics, 22(2), 80–90.Google Scholar
Hopper, P. J., & Traugott, E.
(2003) Grammaticalization (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hothorn, T., Bretz, F., & Westfall, P.
(2008) Simultaneous inference in general parametric model. Biometrical Journal, 50(3), 346–363. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hovy, D., Johannsen, A., & Søgaard, A.
(2015, May). User review sites as a resource for large-scale sociolinguistic studies. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web (pp. 452–461). ACM. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hussey, K. A., & Katz, A. N.
(2006) Metaphor production in online conversation: Gender and friendship status. Discourse Processes, 42(1), 75–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ito, R. & Tagliamonte, S.
(2003) Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society, 32(2), 257–279. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Janssen, A., & Murachver, T.
(2004) The relationship between gender and topic in gender-preferential language use. Written Communication, 21(4), 344–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jespersen, O.
(1922) Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Korobov, N.
(2005) Ironizing masculinity: How adolescent boys negotiate hetero-normative dilemmas in conversational interaction. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 13(2), 225–246. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Labov, W.
(1990) The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change, 2(2), 205–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2001) Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: External Factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Leech, G., Hundt, M., Mair, C., & Smith, N.
(2009) Change in Contemporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, R., Dembry, C., Hardie, A., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T.
this issue). The Spoken BNC2014: Designing and building a spoken corpus of everyday conversations. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(3). DOI logo
McEnery, A., & Xiao, Z.
(2004) Swearing in modern British English: The case of fuck in the BNC. Language and Literature, 13(3), 235–268. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maltz, D. J., & Borker, R. A.
(1982) A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In J. Gumpertz (Ed.), Language and Social Identity (pp. 196–216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mehl, M. R.
(2004) The sounds of social life: Exploring students’ daily social environments and natural conversations (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.Google Scholar
Mills, S.
(2006) Gender and performance anxiety at academic conferences. In J. Baxter (Ed.), Speaking Out (pp. 61–80). Basingstoke: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011) Communities of practice and politeness. In B. Davies, M. Haugh & A. Merrison (Eds.), Situated Politeness (pp. 73–87). London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Mulac, A., Bradac, J. J., & Gibbons, P.
(2001) Empirical support for the gender‐as‐culture hypothesis. Human Communication Research, 27(1), 121–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murphy, B.
(2010) Corpus and Sociolinguistics. Investigating Age and Gender in Female Talk. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nemati, A., & Bayer, J. M.
(2007) Gender differences in the use of linguistic forms in the speech of men and women: A comparative study of Persian and English. Language in India, 7(9), 1–16.Google Scholar
Newman, M. L., Groom, C. J., Handelman, L. D., & Pennebaker, J. W.
(2008) Gender differences in language use: An analysis of 14,000 text samples. Discourse Processes, 45(3), 211–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nowson, S.
(2006) The language of Weblogs: A study of genre and individual differences (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Núñez Pertejo, P., & Palacios Martínez, I.
(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, I., & Núñez Pertejo, P.
(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, 32(6), 773–796. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pugh, T., & Wallace, D. L.
(2006) Heteronormative heroism and queering the school story in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter Series. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 31(3), 260–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J.
(1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London/New York: Longman.Google Scholar
R Development Core Team
(2008) A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, R Foundation for Statistical Computing [Computer software]. Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from [URL] (last accessed June 2017).
Rayson, P., Geoffrey, L., & Hodges, M.
(1997) Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1). 133–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Röndahl, G., Bruhner, E., & Lindhe, J.
(2009) Heteronormative communication with lesbian families in antenatal care, childbirth and postnatal care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(11), 2337–2344. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rühlemann, C.
(2007) Conversation in Context: A Corpus-driven Approach. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
(2010) Conversational grammar-feminine grammar? A sociopragmatic corpus study. Journal of English Linguistics, 38(1), 56–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schler, J., Koppel, M., Argamon, S., & Pennebaker, J. W.
(2006) Effects of age and gender on blogging. AAAI spring symposium: Computational approaches to analyzing weblogs, 6, 199–205.Google Scholar
Schmid, H. -J.
(2003) Do women and men really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC. In Wilson, A., P. Rayson & T. McEnery (Eds.), Corpora by the Lune: a Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech (pp. 185–221). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Schweinberger, M.
(2014) The Discourse Marker LIKE: A Corpus-based Analysis of Selected Varieties of English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.Google Scholar
Stenström, A.B.
(1999) He was really gormless – She’s bloody crap: Girls, boys and intensifiers. In H. Hasselgard & S. Oksefjell (Eds.), Out of Corpora (pp. 69–78). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Stenström, A. B., Andersen, G. & Hasund, I.
(2002) Trends in Teenage Talk. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stoffel, C.
(1901) Intensives and Down-Toners: A Study in English Adverbs. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, S.
(2008) So different and pretty cool! Recycling intensifiers in Toronto, Canada. English Language and Linguistics, 12(2), 361–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, S., & D’Arcy, A.
(2009) Peaks beyond phonology: Adolescence, incrementation and language change. Language, 85(1), 58–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tagliamonte, S., & Roberts, C.
(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
Wickham, H.
(2009) ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, R.
(2015) Gender and language: Cultural concerns. In J. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) (pp. 698–703). Oxford: Elsevier. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xiao, R., & Tao, H.
(2007) A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of amplifiers in British English. Sociolinguistic Studies, 1(2), 241–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yaguchi, M., Iyeiri, Y., & Baba, Y.
(2010) Speech style and gender distinctions in the use of very and real/really: An analysis of the Corpus of Spoken Professional American English. Journal of Pragmatics, 42(3), 585–597. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 34 other publications

Aijmer, Karin
2020. That’s absolutely fine. In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 143 ff. DOI logo
Aijmer, Karin
2021. “That’s well good”: A Re-emergent Intensifier in Current British English. Journal of English Linguistics 49:1 ► pp. 18 ff. DOI logo
Alshaboul, Asia, Marwan Jarrah, Sharif Alghazo & Ekab Al-Shawashreh
2022. A sociolinguistic analysis of intensifiers in Ammani Arabic. Ampersand 9 ► pp. 100086 ff. DOI logo
An, Yi, Hang Su & Mingyou Xiang
2022. Apology responses and gender differences in spoken British English. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 32:1 ► pp. 28 ff. DOI logo
Baker, Paul & Gavin Brookes
2022. Analysing Language, Sex and Age in a Corpus of Patient Feedback, DOI logo
Bardovi-Harlig, Kathleen & Yunwen Su
2023. Developing an empirically-driven aural multiple-choice DCT for conventional expressions in L2 pragmatics. Applied Pragmatics 5:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Blanco-Suárez, Zeltia
2020. Two sides of the same coin?. In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 169 ff. DOI logo
Chiba, Yuya & Ryuichiro Higashinaka
2023. Analyzing Variations of Everyday Japanese Conversations Based on Semantic Labels of Functional Expressions. ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing 22:2 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
CLARIDGE, CLAUDIA, EWA JONSSON & MERJA KYTÖ
2020. Entirely innocent: a historical sociopragmatic analysis of maximizers in theOld Bailey Corpus. English Language and Linguistics 24:4 ► pp. 855 ff. DOI logo
Claridge, Claudia, Ewa Jonsson & Merja Kytö
2021. A Little Something Goes a Long Way: Little in the Old Bailey Corpus. Journal of English Linguistics 49:1 ► pp. 61 ff. DOI logo
Curry, Niall, Robbie Love & Olivia Goodman
2022. Adverbs on the move: investigating publisher application of corpus research on recent language change to ELT coursebook development. Corpora 17:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Davydova, Julia
2023. Tracking global English changes through local data: Intensifiers in German Learner English. International Journal of Bilingualism DOI logo
Davydova, Julia & Kirk Hazen
2021. The role of linguistic structure in the perceptions of vernacular speech. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 42:3 ► pp. 273 ff. DOI logo
Fuchs, Robert
2020. Sociolinguistic Variation in Intensifier Usage in Indian and British English. In Gender in World Englishes, ► pp. 47 ff. DOI logo
Funke, Nina & Tobias Bernaisch
2022. Intensifying and downtoning in South Asian Englishes. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 43:1 ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo
Leone, Ljubica
2022. A Corpus-based Investigation of Modals in Spoken British English: Gender Variation and Change in the Years 1994 and 2014. English Studies 103:8 ► pp. 1318 ff. DOI logo
Liao, Xinyu & Yanhui Zhang
2023. Stylistic and linguistic variations in compliments: an empirical analysis of children’s gender schema development with machine learning algorithms. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1 DOI logo
Liu, Chen-Yu
2019. Gender and Discipline: Intensifier Variation in Academic Lectures. Corpus Pragmatics 3:3 ► pp. 211 ff. DOI logo
OXBURY, ROSAMUND, MATTHEW HUNT & JENNY CHESHIRE
2023. Epistemic phrases and adolescent speech in West London. English Language and Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 815 ff. DOI logo
Schneider, Gerold
2022. Recent changes in spoken British English in verbal and nominal constructions. In Broadening the Spectrum of Corpus Linguistics [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 105], ► pp. 172 ff. DOI logo
Schweinberger, Martin
2020. How Learner Corpus Research can inform language learning and teaching. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 43:2 ► pp. 196 ff. DOI logo
Schweinberger, Martin
2020. Analyzing change in the American English amplifier system in the fiction genre. In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo
Schweinberger, Martin
2021. Ongoing change in the Australian English amplifier system. Australian Journal of Linguistics 41:2 ► pp. 166 ff. DOI logo
Schweinberger, Martin
2021. On the waning of forms – A corpus-based analysis of decline and loss in adjective amplification. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
Stange, Ulrike
2023. So Grown Stale? On Intensifying and Emphasizing Uses of Preverbalsoin Present-Day American English. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage 98:3 ► pp. 235 ff. DOI logo
Stratton, James M.
2020. Adjective Intensifiers in German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 32:2 ► pp. 183 ff. DOI logo
Stratton, James M.
2020. A diachronic analysis of the adjective intensifierwellfrom Early Modern English to Present Day English. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 65:2 ► pp. 216 ff. DOI logo
Stratton, James M.
2022. Old English intensifiers. Journal of Historical Linguistics 12:1 ► pp. 31 ff. DOI logo
Unuabonah, Foluke Olayinka, Adebola Adebileje & Rotimi Olanrele Oladipupo
2021. Intensifier Usage in Nigerian English: A Corpus-Based Approach. Corpus Pragmatics 5:3 ► pp. 335 ff. DOI logo
Van Olmen, Daniel
2024. Adjectival intensification in West Germanic. Studies in Language 48:2 ► pp. 436 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Jiawei
2020. Love, R. (2020). Overcoming Challenges in Corpus Construction: The spoken British National Corpus 2014 . International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 25:4 ► pp. 504 ff. DOI logo
Wang, Qian & Guangwei Hu
2023. Disciplinary and gender-based variations: A frame-based analysis of interest markers in research articles. English for Specific Purposes 70 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. On the waning of forms - A corpus-based analysis of decline and loss in adjective amplification. In Lost in Change [Studies in Language Companion Series, 218], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. A Constructional Account of Verb-Forming Suffixation [Constructional Approaches to Language, 36], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.