Downtoners and intensifiers in different registers

Abstract

The article analyzes the frequency of downtoners and intensifiers in seven Estonian registers based on data from the Estonian Pragmatics Corpus. These particles are most common in instant messaging, followed by institutional interaction, everyday conversation, online comments, printed fiction, media, and academic prose. The analysis revealed that previously offered situational features that increase frequencies (orality, spontaneity, dialogicity, everydayness and involved production) correlate only with frequencies of downtoners in comments, fiction and media. The frequency of downtoners in instant messaging is significantly higher than in spoken dialogues, and the use of all particles in academic prose is significantly lower than expected. We propose hypotheses to explain those anomalies. Ten especially frequent particles were identified: six downtoners and four intensifiers. Those particles account for 15% of all downtoners/intensifiers and account for 76% of particle use, with their proportion varying across registers from 87% in everyday conversation to 43% in academic prose.