ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to divide Limerick Corpus of Intimate Talk (LINT) into its constituent intimate sites such as couples, family and close friends. corpus research indicates that the use of taboo language is a linguistic indicator of informality, that the use of taboo language differs according to social variables such as gender, age and educational background. LINT was seen to have a higher frequency of these items with potential to function as pragmatic markers than other corpora such as Limerick-Belfast Corpus of Academic English (LIBEL) or the British National Corpus (BNC). Deixis facilitates complexities involved in referring to people, places and things in a particular physical space at a particular moment in time. In terms of the operationalisation of both the family and friends communities of practice, the results indicate a number of characteristic features. Finally this chapter, turns everyone attention to linguistic items traditionally associated with pragmatic marking.
