For the past fifty years, sociolinguistic studies of linguistic change
have focused mainly on phonological variables, but recently some attention
has been paid to other features, particularly discourse features used by
younger speakers that may change within a relatively brief period. This
article deals with the appearance of an unusual intensifier
“pure” in the speech of adolescents in Glasgow,
Scotland. This usage suggests that the Glasgow working-class adolescents
have developed a set of norms for their speech community that owes little
to adult or outside influence. Grammaticalization is a process that is
normally investigated on the basis of historical documents but recent
developments in methodology provide an opportunity to explore changes in
progress. Intensifiers have historically been unstable and there is
evidence that teenagers have recently been developing their own
preferences for such items. The range of uses that the Glasgow adolescents
have developed for pure suggests a process of grammaticalization
that may still be in progress.The project
in which the recordings were made was supported by ESRC grant no.
R000239757. I am deeply indebted to Jane Stuart-Smith for providing the
transcripts and allowing me to make use of them for this article. The
sessions were arranged and conducted by the research assistant on the
project, Claire Timmins. It is clear from the transcripts that part of the
success of the project was the result of her good rapport with the
adolescents. There are many joking references to her in the sessions,
although the adolescents knew that she would hear these remarks. All the
names in the transcripts have been replaced with pseudonyms. I am grateful
for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper from Elizabeth
Traugott, Lee Munroe, and the anonymous reviewers for
LVC.