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Pragmatic Markers in Irish English
Edited by Carolina P. Amador-Moreno, Kevin McCafferty and Elaine Vaughan
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 258] 2015
► pp. 135–155

“Actually, it’s unfair to say that I was throwing stones”

Comparative perspectives on uses of actually in ICE-Ireland

This chapter examines Irish English in the perspective of world Englishes, taking the word actually as a discourse marker for case study. The initial discussion focuses on variation in the structural positioning of actually, and on the possible differentiation between actually as an adverb and as a discourse marker. Analysis proceeds on the working assumption that all uses of actually in contemporary English share potential as discourse markers, though clausemarginal position is taken to illustrate an advanced structural position for this function. Material from ICE-Ireland is used to illustrate a wide range of structural positions and discourse-marking functions for actually, while comparisons with other ICE corpora suggest Ireland to be in a conservative position relative to possible change in progress.

Published online: 15 July 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.258.06kal
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Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Aijmer, Karin
2022. “Well He’s Sick Anyway Like”: Anyway in Irish English. Corpus Pragmatics 6:2 ► pp. 101 ff. DOI logo
Aijmer, Karin
2023. Corpus Pragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context, ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
Kirk, John M.
2016. The Pragmatic Annotation Scheme of the SPICE-Ireland Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 21:3 ► pp. 299 ff. DOI logo
KIRK, JOHN M.
2017. Developments in the spoken component of ICE corpora. World Englishes 36:3 ► pp. 371 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
O’Keeffe, Anne
2023. Irish English Corpus Linguistics. In The Oxford Handbook of Irish English, ► pp. 243 ff. DOI logo

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