Evaluation, affect and intensity

In the previous chapter we looked at how certain uses of specific grammatical features could be related to the sense of identity of a specific community. In that chapter, the argument was that certain uses of the apparently anodyne grammatical feature of pronouns often illustrated a shared sense of distance from and disillusionment with those in power. Secondly, the use of vague categories often seemed to be predicated on assumption of shared knowledge which, in turn, might reflect a sense of solidarity. This chapter continues the theme of identity expressed through grammar, but in this case we relate it to the expression of evaluation, affect and intensity in conversation. We are concerned, then, with devices speakers use to express an emotional reaction to the subject under discussion. This involves the analysis of four linguistic features: two of these are syntactic features from the BWC – tails (‘right dislocation’) and a feature for which I have coined the term ‘end weight apposition’. The discussion of evaluation involves a brief analysis of the lexico-grammatical area of swearing and bad language. We also focus on interjections through case studies of Oh and Why! in the BWC and the MC. The first three features analysed in this chapter can all be seen in the BWC example below (the tail is in italics, the apposition structure is underlined and the swearing speaks for itself):

Ee’s a bloody seet wuss nar, owd Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale bugger. (Standard English (SE): He’s a bloody sight worse now, old Eric, the bloody grabbing free ale bugger)

In this example, there is a clear evaluation of Eric which seems to be on the grounds that he is, in some way, a great deal worse than he was before, and that he has a tendency to accept drinks without buying them for anyone else. Intensity is added by bloody, bugger and a kind of colloquial intensifier seet (sight). The tail structure owd Eric, I will argue, promotes affective involvement, while the apposition structure the bloody grabbing free ale bugger conveys intensity. All three features – tails, swearing and end weight apposition – I argue, are salient in the BWC through their frequency and/or by the sheer force of the evaluative language they express or co-occur with; by comparison, these features are less 64frequent in the MC, as might be expected from interview data with interlocutors of a different social class where the discourse will typically be less intimate.