Chapter 11
Sure in Irish English
The diachrony of a pragmatic marker
The English adjective sure functions in Irish English as a pragmatic marker in sentence-initial or clause-initial position (occasionally in tag questions) expressing intersubjectivity in discourse. This essentially has the effect of affirming shared knowledge among speakers and offering reassurance in cases where a speaker feels it is appropriate to do so. The specifically Irish use of sure can be traced back to the late seventeenth century with a peak in the nineteenth century, going on literary representations of Irish English. Its indexical value for Irishness may have contributed to its decline, but not demise, in twentieth century literature, despite its continued occurrence in Irish English today.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Origin of sure
- 3.Pragmatic marker sure
- 4.Intersubjectification: From emphasis to reassurance
- 5.Pragmatic marker sure
: The question of vintage
- 6.Pragmatic marker sure and Irishness
- 7.Possible transfer from Irish
- 7.1
Sure in English and Irish corpora
- 8.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
References (32)
References
Aijmer, K. 2009. The pragmatics of adverbs. In One Language, Two Grammars? Differences between British and American English, G. Rohdenburg & J. Schlüter (eds), 324–340. Cambridge: CUP. 

Aijmer, K. 2012. Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: EUP.
Aijmer, K. 2014. Pragmatic markers. In A Handbook of Corpus Pragmatics, K. Aijmer & C. Rühlemann (eds), 195–218. Cambridge: CUP.
Amador-Moreno, C. P. & McCafferty, K. 2015. “Sure this is a great country for drink and rowing at elections”: Discourse markers in the Corpus of Irish English Correspondence, 1750–1940. In Amador-Moreno, McCafferty & Vaughan (eds), 270–292.
Barron, A. & Pandarova, I. 2016. The sociolinguistics of language use in Ireland. In Hickey (ed.), 107–130.
Barron, A. & Schneider, K. P. 2008. Variational pragmatics: Studying the impact of social factors on language use in interaction. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(4): 425–442.
Barron, A. & Schneider, K. P. (eds). 2005. The Pragmatics of Irish English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Blake, Norman F. 1981. Non-standard Language in English Literature. London: André Deutsch.
Brinton, L. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammaticalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Culpeper, J. & Kytö, M. 2010. Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken Interaction as Writing. Cambridge: CUP.
Davidse, K., Vandelanotte, L. & Cuyckens, H. (eds) 2010. Subjectification, Intersubjectification and Grammaticalization. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Defour, T. 2010. The semantic-pragmatic development of well from the viewpoint of (inter)subjectification. In Davidse, Vandelanotte & Cuyckens (eds), 155–196.
Dolan, T. 2012[1998]. A Dictionary of Hiberno-English: The Irish Use of English, 3rd edn. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
Hickey, R. 2007. Irish English: History and Present-day Forms. Cambridge: CUP.. 

Hickey, R. 2015. The pragmatics of Irish English and Irish. In Amador-Moreno, McCafferty & Vaughan (eds), 17–36.
Hickey, R. (ed.). 2016. Sociolinguistics in Ireland. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Joyce, P. W. 1910. English as we Speak it in Ireland. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. Reprinted 1979 by the Wolfhound Press, Dublin.
Kallen, J. L. 2013. Irish English, Vol. 2: The Republic of Ireland. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. 

Kirk, J. M. 2015.
Kind of and sort of: Pragmatic discourse markers in the SPICE-Ireland Corpus. In Amador-Moreno, McCafferty & Vaughan (eds), 89–114.
Kytö, M. & Culpeper, J. 2006. A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760. Uppsala: Department of English, Uppsala University.
Pandarova, I. (In preparation). Revisiting sentence adverbials in relevance theory: The semantics and pragmatics of sure across varieties of English. Lüneburg: Leuphana University.
Schiffrin, D. 1990. The principle of intersubjectivity in communication and conversation. Semiotica 80, 121–151.
Taniguchi, J. 1972[1956]. A Grammatical Analysis of Artistic Representation of Irish English with a Brief Discussion of Sounds and Spelling, revised and enlarged edn. Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin.
Traugott, E. C. 2003. From subjectification to intersubjectification. In Motives for Language Change, R. Hickey (ed.), 124–142. Cambridge: CUP. 

Traugott, E. C. 2010. (Inter)subjectivity and (inter)subjectification: A reassessment. In Davidse, Vandelanotte & Cuyckens (eds), 29–71.
Vaughan, E. & Clancy, B. 2011. The pragmatics of Irish English. In Irish English in Today’s World, R. Hickey (ed.). Special issue of English Today 106: 47–52. 

Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
P. Amador-Moreno, Carolina
2023.
Discourse-Pragmatic Markers in Irish English. In
The Oxford Handbook of Irish English,
► pp. 426 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 december 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.