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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 26, No. 0, pp.1182-1196
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Oct 2026
Received 07 Jul 2026 Revised 04 Aug 2026 Accepted 11 Sep 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.26..202610.1182

Pragmatic Re-Orientation in Academic Spoken Discourse: Deconstructing Prescriptive Stance Boundaries Through the Maximizers Perfectly and Entirely

Jungyull Lee
Assistant Professor, Office of Life and Liberal Arts Education Wonkwang University 460 Iksan-daero, Iksan-si, Jeonbuk State 54538, Korea, Tel: +82-63-850-6555 brianlee3838@hanmail.net


© 2026 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study presents a corpus-pragmatic investigation into the functional re-orientation of the maximizers entirely and perfectly within the academic spoken register of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. By analyzing 119 combinatorial tokens through a dual quantitative-qualitative framework, this research challenges the prescriptive semantic dualism that traditionally governs these lexemes. Quantitative profiling reveals a notable mirror-image distribution: entirely exhibits a dominant negative semantic prosody (69.1%), whereas perfectly manifests a predominant value-neutral, technical prosody (67.2%). Qualitative discourse criticism further uncovers a prominent pragmatic convergence: in STEM lectures, these modifiers function as objective indicators of strict parameter compliance, while in humanities seminars, they are strategically repurposed as advanced politeness tools to manage interpersonal vulnerability. Notably, the study suggests that entirely instantiates epistemic hedging through negated frames, while perfectly serves as a concessive cushion—a mechanism closely aligned with Brown and Levinsonʼs politeness theory—to mitigate face-threatening acts during intellectual critique. These findings indicate that lexical items of divergent diachronic origins converge toward common pragmatic objectives, providing informed pedagogical suggestions for Data-Driven Learning and advancing the understanding of register-specific discursive competence in global academic environments.

Keywords:

entirely, perfectly, maximizer, semantic prosody, pragmatic convergence

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