Intensifiers are described in several recent articles as unstable vocabulary elements. This article presents an investigation of intensifiers of adjectives in four Norwegian corpora of speech language and two of written language, which shows that some intensifiers are rapidly increasing in use and others declining. An adjectival intensifier does strengthen or underline the meaning of the adjective, but is also an important mean to show the speaker’s opinions or attitude to what is described. The investigation shows to which degree the use of such intensifiers is changed in modern Norwegian spoken language according to some social variables, and gives a brief discussion of whether changes in use results in grammaticalization of the most frequent intensifiers or just show changes in lexical popularity.
