Intensification in conversation

The author looked for instances of intensification in a corpus of American phone calls. He then analysed each sequence of conversation using the techniques of Conversation Analysis. 

This means that evidence for the motivations of and responses to intensification is found within the interaction of the conversationalists itself, using features in the speech of the intensifying speaker and the recipient’s response, rather than relying on the analyst’s own hunches and intuitions.

Intensification marks out the situation as remarkable, out of the ordinary, worth telling about. 

• It modifies the meaning of the intensified item in a more extreme direction, much like adding lexical intensifiers such as really and very.  

Intensifications are often accompanied by evidence intended to persuade the recipient that the situation is indeed out of the ordinary. 

• In the example, B follows up the intensification of so overwhelming with evidence of how overwhelming the course was, by enumerating the hours of work involved—ending up with a rather dramatic 31-hour day.

Moderate responses like mhm or uh-huh are not expected responses to intensification, because they do not align with the stance of the speaker. 

• If this happens the speaker may go on describing the event, providing more evidence, to achieve the expected response, as in the example below:

A: I've never seen anybody eat as much as he does and he's SO SKINNY

B: mhm

A: I mean the amount of cereal he eats like between meals and after meals

B: yeah

A: and we go through a box of cereal every two days

B: really

A: yeah

B: wow