Contemporary Native Speakers’ Attitudes towards Diminutives

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the attitude of native speakers towards the use of diminutives. To achieve this goal, the author has extracted evaluations of diminutives from texts of various genres written in the last two decades, which have then been systematised and classified as negative or positive. The ways in which these evaluations are expressed (explicitly and implicitly) have been analysed, with particular attention to expressive vocabulary, ironic strategies and the reciprocal use of diminutives.