“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness
Sanchez-Stockhammer C, Uhrig P (2023)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2023
Journal
Book Volume: 11
Pages Range: 121-150
Issue: 1
Abstract
The English language is famous for its large number of drunkonyms, i.e. words that can be used to refer to the state of drunkenness – from blind and hammered to pissed, smashed and wasted. Various lists of words have been compiled in the past (e.g. Levine 1981). However, most of the terms seem to be relatively infrequent, and they also appear to fall out of use relatively quickly. In view of Michael McIntyre’s (2009) claim that it is possible to use any word to mean ‘drunk’ in English, this contribution therefore approaches the issue from a constructionist perspective. In a corpus-based study, we tested whether it is possible to model the expression of drunkenness in English as a more or less schematic (set of) construction(s). Our study shows that while corpus evidence for truly creative uses is scarce, we can nonetheless identify constructional and collostructional properties shared by certain patterns that are used to express drunkenness in English. For instance, the pattern be/get + ADV + drunkonym is strongly associated with premodifying (and often strongly intensifying) adverbs such as completely, totally and absolutely. A manual analysis of a large wordlist of English drunkonyms reveals further interesting patterns that can be modelled constructionally.
“Obviously, Americans, like many other peoples of the world, have taken being drunk very seriously.”
Harry Gene Levine (1981)
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Germany (DE)How to cite
APA:
Sanchez-Stockhammer, C., & Uhrig, P. (2023). “I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness. Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 11, 121-150. https://doi.org/10.1515/gcla-2023-0007
MLA:
Sanchez-Stockhammer, Christina, and Peter Uhrig. "“I’m gonna get totally and utterly X-ed.” Constructing drunkenness." Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association 11 (2023): 121-150.
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