DIACHRONIC AND DIALECT VARIATION OF ENGLISH INTENSIFYING ADVERBS IN THE FILM DIALOGUE DISCOURSE: CORPUS-BASED STUDY
The article presents a corpus-based study of the diachronic and dialect variations of adverbial intensifiers used as the expression of emotionality that is a key defining feature of interpersonal conversation in the British and American film discourse. Based on the corpora of scripts of British and American feature films released in the 1930-1950s and 1990-2010s, data on the frequency of adverbial intensifiers in the sub-corpora of the English regional varieties of the two periods were obtained and their comparative analysis was carried out to establish the regional specifics and historical dynamics of their use; the collocation profiles of adverbial intensifiers that form syntagmatic units in the dialogic speech of British and American film discourse for each of the studied periods were described; semantic classes and stylistic characteristics of adjectives that form the most frequent collocations with the intensifiers were identified; the pragmalinguistic potential of the intensifiers and adjectives to indicate informality and emotionality in the dialogues of the English film discourse was determined. The diachronic analysis revealed a decline in the occurrences of the standard register intensifiers ( terribly , awfully , perfectly , extremely , etc.) with adjectives carrying the semantics of general evaluation, opinion, judgment, and emotionality in both corpora of modern English film discourse. In the 1990-2010s period, the process of renewal is observed in the UK and US film discourse when formerly frequent intensifiers are seen to be replaced by informal adverbs with a maximal degree of emotionality in speakers’ attitudes to situations, objects of the surrounding world and the interlocutor, which reflects a trend in preference towards the colloquial and substandard stylistic register. The growth of substandard vocabulary indicates that this trend is in line with the expectations of the English-speaking discursive communities that perceive film discourse as a reflection of authentic face-to-face discursive practices.