Synonymous intensifiers quite, pretty, rather, fairly in Thai English learners’ writing: a corpus-based comparative study between non-native speakers and native speakers

This corpus-based study aimed to investigate the differences and similarities of four synonymous intensifiers — quite, pretty, rather, and fairly —between the Thai Learners English Corpus (TLEC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). A corpus-based approach was used in the study. The data was taken from two dictionaries: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2014) and Oxford Advanced American Dictionary for Learners of English (2011). Also, two corpora, the TLEC and COCA, were used in the study. The results of the study suggest that quite, pretty, rather, and fairly share core meanings but differ with respect to detailed meanings, connotations, collocations, grammatical patterns and degree of formality. As for the frequency of use of the four synonymous intensifiers in the TLEC and COCA, the results revealed that fairly occurs with the least frequency in both the TLEC and COCA while quite occurs with the highest frequency in TLEC and pretty occurs with the highest frequency in COCA. In terms of connotations, fairly and pretty are more positive an emotional sense in the TLEC and COCA. Moreover, fairly is more commonly used in formal contexts than its loose synonyms in the TLEC, while rather is commonly used in very formal contexts in COCA. Based on the results, the four synonymous intensifiers quite, pretty, rather, and fairly cannot completely substitute for each other in all contexts. Thai EFL learners should be taught to select the appropriate words among these four synonymous intensifiers to enhance their English writing.