A Comparative Study on Intensifiers in Opinion Articles on Rudaw Portal

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Nahlah Khorsheed
Hisham Dzakiria
Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh

Abstract

Semantically, intensifiers are concerned with the degree that scales the element to which the intensifiers applied to a point either higher than the norm or lower. Thus, the writers’ involvement with or detachment from a statement can be reflected through the use of intensifiers. This paper explores the use of intensifiers by Kurdish authors in comparison to non-Kurdish authors who write opinion articles on Rudaw portal. The aim of the study is to demonstrate how these two groups of authors differ in their preference for the use of intensifiers. To this end, two corpora were compiled: Kurdish authors (COKA) and non-Kurdish authors (CONKA). The online interface of UCREL Semantic Analysis System (USAS) in Wmatrix was employed to identify the semantic categories of intensifiers. The results showed that boosters had the highest frequency (140 in COKA and 280 in CONKA). However, the use of all categories was higher by the non-Kurdish authors and with wider range of lexicons than the Kurdish authors. This study contributes to literature of the use of automated semantic tagger (USAS) for identifying intensifiers; it is a mechanism that can be fruitful for investigating other lexicogrammatical items for a better understanding of the link between language and socio-cultural factors.

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How to Cite
Khorsheed, N., Dzakiria, H. . and Sarjit Singh, M. K. (2022) “A Comparative Study on Intensifiers in Opinion Articles on Rudaw Portal”, Koya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 5(1), pp. 70-76. doi: 10.14500/kujhss.v5n1y2022.pp70-76.
Section
Articles
Author Biographies

Nahlah Khorsheed, Department of English Language, College of Education and Languages, Lebanese French University, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

Nahlah N. Khorsheed is an assistant lecturer in the Department of English at the College of
Education and Languages, Lebanese French University. Her fields of interest are corpus
linguistics, critical discourse analysis, pragmatics, assessment, and speaking test. She is a PhD
candidate at University of Utara Malaysia.

Hisham Dzakiria, Awang Had Salleh Graduate School, College of Arts, University of Utara Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia

Associate Professor Dr. Hisham Dzakiria presently is Dean of Awang Had Salleh Graduate School, College of Arts, University of Utara Malaysia. Formerly, a Post-Doctoral fellow with Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Vancouver, Canada. His Doctor of Philosophy is in Professional Development majoring in Lifelong Learning and Professional Development in ODL from University of East Anglia, UK (2004).

Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh, Department of English Language, School of Language, Civilisation, and Philosophy, College of Arts, University of Utara Malaysia, Kedah, Malaysia

Associate Professor Dr. Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh teaches in University of Utara Malaysia. She received her Ph.D. in Applied linguistics, specialising in corpus-based genre analysis, from University of Technology Malaysia. Her areas of research interest are TESL, ESP, corpus linguistics, genre, and discourse analysis. She holds the patent for the CACA approach which she developed during her PhD study. She is also an author of a book entitled “A Corpus-based Genre Analysis of Quality, Health, Safety and Environment Work Procedures in Malaysian Petroleum Industry” published in 2020.

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