Comparative perspectives on uses of ACTUALLY as a discourse marker

What is it about?

This paper examines the word ACTUALLY as a discourse marker in Irish English, comparing uses of ACTUALLY in the International Corpus of English for Ireland (ICE-Ireland) with other ICE corpora and previous research on ACTUALLY as an adverb or discourse marker in other varieties of English. Comparing Englishes worldwide, ICE data suggest that Irish English participates relatively less in a possible change in progress which favours clause-level ACTUALLY ('Actually, it's unfair to say that I was throwing stones') over phrase-level ACTUALLY ('I haven't actually been to Venice').

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Why is it important?

This is the first corpus-based examination of ACTUALLY in Irish English, and the first to use a wide range of ICE corpora to examine ACTUALLY in a global perspective. The conclusion that ACTUALLY is both qualitatively and quantitatively different in across world Englishes invites further investigations of the changing dynamics of ACTUALLY as a discourse marker.