speechsuch

Speechsuch is a neologism in linguistics that denotes the practice of encoding speaker stance and evaluative emphasis in discourse through the use of demonstratives and evaluative adjectives, especially the determiner such and related modifiers. The term captures how lexical choice, syntax, and prosody interact to foreground an affective or attitudinal stance toward a proposition. As a concept, it is used mainly in discourse studies and corpus analyses rather than as a formal grammatical category.

In practice, speechsuch involves selecting evaluative vocabulary, positioning the determiner before a noun phrase, and applying prosodic cues that heighten emphasis or surprise. It is sensitive to context, genre, and culture, and its effects can differ between spoken and written registers. The phenomenon often works in tandem with discourse markers, intonation patterns, and tempo to signal approval, astonishment, or importance.

Examples include sentences like, “That was such a clever solution,” or “This is such an important issue.” In these cases, the word such amplifies the evaluative load of the noun phrase, shaping how a proposition is received. Cross-linguistic comparison shows that analogous devices may exist in other languages, sometimes realized through alternative evaluative constructions rather than the English word such alone.

Applications and research around speechsuch span sociolinguistics, sentiment analysis, and natural language generation. Studying speechsuch helps map how stance and solidarity are constructed in interaction and how evaluative emphasis influences interpretation. Limitations include varying definitions and inconsistent usage across dialects, which can complicate measurement and cross-corpus comparisons.

See also: stance-taking, evaluative language, discourse markers, sentiment analysis.