“It’s lunacy now”

This paper contributes to the characterisation of the pragmatic system of Irish English through a corpus-based examination of the item now. Comparative corpus frequency data confirm the saliency of now in Irish English, highlighting the need for a more nuanced investigation. This investigation analyses 500 randomised occurrences of now from the Limerick Corpus of Irish English (LCIE) and compares them to 500 randomised occurrences from the spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC). The analysis points toward now as markedly more frequent in the LCIE data due to its additional functions such as its use as a pragmatic marker and deictic presentative. The pragmatic function of now, visible in the corpus evidence, is given detailed attention in the discussion. Keywords: Now; corpus linguistics; discourse/pragmatic markers; deictic presentative

• Affiliations: 1: Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick; 2: University of Limerick