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Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 18:1 (2017) ► pp.82–103

The pragmatics of grand in Irish English

| University of Duisburg and Essen

Over the past two centuries, the use of the adjective grand underwent a specific semantic expansion in Irish English. Apart from the meaning of ‘displaying grandeur’, the adjective came to mean ‘fine’, ‘alright’ and ‘in good form’, both as an expression of the speaker’s situation and as a reference to that of the addressee. This development can be shown to represent a case of subjectification, as described seminally by Elizabeth Traugott in various publications (e.g., Traugott 1995), with the element of intersubjectification arising somewhat later (Traugott 2003). Through the examination of various texts, this paper examines the diachronic development of grand in its various uses and the rise of the Irish English extension with a consideration of possible precursors and parallels in other varieties. The subjective and intersubjective uses of grand are labelled “approving grand” and “reassuring grand” respectively and are shown to be in keeping with other features of Irish discourse structure and pragmatics.

Keywords: “approving grand”, Irish English discourse, “reassuring grand”, semantic extension, (inter)subjectification
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The diachrony of grand
  • 3.The transition from “impressive grand” to “approving grand”
    • 3.1The role of collocations in the development of grand
    • 3.2Negative uses of grand
    • 3.3Use of qualifiers with grand
  • 4.Extension of syntactic contexts
  • 5.Uses of grand today
    • 5.1Distribution within Ireland
    • 5.2Possible occurrences of “approving grand” beyond Ireland
      • 5.2.1Occurrences of grand in British English
      • 5.2.2Definitions of grand in dictionaries
    • 5.3Intersubjectification: From “approving grand” to “reassuring grand”
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 26 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.18.1.04hic
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Cited by 3 other publications

Hickey, Raymond
2015. The Pragmatics of Irish English and Irish. In Pragmatic Markers in Irish English [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 258], ► pp. 17 ff. DOI logo
Hickey, Raymond
2020. Chapter 11. Sure in Irish English. In Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 97], ► pp. 174 ff. DOI logo
Ní Mhurchú, Aoife
2018. What’s Left to Say About Irish English Progressives? “I’m Not Going Having Any Conversation with You”. Corpus Pragmatics 2:3 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo

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