Certain language expressions irritate certain individuals. Some individuals are comparatively tolerant in this respect, but others are very intolerant of expressions they do not like. in order to examine this problem in some detail, a questionnaire containing 50 irritating Australian English expressions was designed. The questionnaire was answered by 135 subjects. Differences between expressions, groups of expressions, irritability indices of individuals, and age and sex groups of speakers were established.
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HAMMARSTRÖM, G. (1976b). Towards more exhaustive descriptions of languages. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 9, 23–41, and Linguistics, 177, 23–41.
