The pragmatics of grand in Irish English

Over the past two centuries, the use of the adjective grand underwent a specific semantic expansion in Irish English. Apart from the meaning of ‘displaying grandeur’, the adjective came to mean ‘fine’, ‘alright’ and ‘in good form’, both as an expression of the speaker’s situation and as a reference to that of the addressee. This development can be shown to represent a case of subjectification, as described seminally by Elizabeth Traugott in various publications (e.g., Traugott 1995Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1995. “Subjectification in Grammaticalization”. In Dieter Stein and Susan Wright (eds), Subjectivity and Subjectivisation in Language, 31–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ), with the element of intersubjectification arising somewhat later (Traugott 2003Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2003. “From Subjectification to Intersubjectification”. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), Motives for Language Change, 124–142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). Through the examination of various texts, this paper examines the diachronic development of grand in its various uses and the rise of the Irish English extension with a consideration of possible precursors and parallels in other varieties. The subjective and intersubjective uses of grand are labelled “approving grand” and “reassuring grand” respectively and are shown to be in keeping with other features of Irish discourse structure and pragmatics.