Abstract
As studies on socio-pragmatics in South Asian Englishes and – more generally – postcolonial Englishes are still
rare, the present study analyses how age, formality of context, gender, topic of the conversation and type-token ratio of a given
speaker influence intensifiers and downtoners in spoken Indian, Sri Lankan and British English as represented in the
International Corpus of English. Central research interests cover (a) differences in the frequencies of
intensifiers/downtoners regarding these factors and across the varieties studied and (b) variety-specific intensifiers/downtoners
in these regional varieties. Two random forest analyses highlight that, while topic and type-token ratio are more important
predictors than age and gender, all variables are – to different degrees – sensitive to variety. Possible explanations for a
higher incidence of intensifiers/downtoners in British English than in Indian and Sri Lankan English include intensification
strategies transferred from indigenous languages or high degrees of uncertainty avoidance in the South Asian speech
communities.
