scholarly journals British ‘Bollocks’ versus American ‘Jerk’: Do native British English speakers swear more – or differently – compared to American English speakers?

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marc Dewaele
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
British English ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
American English Speakers ◽  
National Corpus

AbstractThe present study investigates the differences between 414 L1 speakers of British and 556 L1 speakers of American English in self-reported frequency of swearing and in the understanding of the meaning, the perceived offensiveness and the frequency of use of 30 negative words extracted from the British National Corpus. Words ranged from mild to highly offensive, insulting and taboo. Statistical analysies revealed no significant differences between the groups in self reported frequency of swearing. The British English L1 participants reported a significantly better understanding of nearly half the chosen words from the corpus. They gave significantly higher offensiveness scores to four words (including “bollocks”) while the American English L1 participants rated a third of words as significantly more offensive (including “jerk”). British English L1 participants reported significantly more frequent use of a third of words (including “bollocks”) while the American English L1 participants reported more frequent use of half of the words (including “jerk”). This is interpreted as evidence of differences in semantic and conceptual representations of these words in both variants of English.

scholarly journals A Corpus-based Study of the Use of Pause Fillers Among British English Speakers

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (12) ◽  
pp. 09-16
Author(s):  
Dr. Hamad Abdullah H Aldawsari
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Age And Gender ◽  
British English ◽  
Gender Influence ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
And Gender ◽  
National Corpus

Many people use pause fillers such as um, erm, and er in order to signal to the other person that they have not finished speaking yet. This paper aims to investigate pause fillers and their relationship with the two sociolinguistic variables of age and gender. The data-driven analysis is based on the British National Corpus (BNC). The results show that the sociolinguistic variables of age and gender influence the use of pause fillers among British English speakers, which is proposed to be linked to the advancement of age and an improved fluency among female speakers.

Swearing in Modern British English: The Case of Fuck in the BNC

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony McEnery ◽  
Zhonghua Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
American English ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
British English ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Morphological Variants ◽  
National Corpus

Swearing is a part of everyday language use. To date it has been infrequently studied, though some recent work on swearing in American English, Australian English and British English has addressed the topic. Nonetheless, there is still no systematic account of swear-words in English. In terms of approaches, swearing has been approached from the points of view of history, lexicography, psycholinguistics and semantics. There have been few studies of swearing based on sociolinguistic variables such as gender, age and social class. Such a study has been difficult in the absence of corpus resources. With the production of the British National Corpus (BNC), a 100,000,000-word balanced corpus of modern British English, such a study became possible. In addition to parts of speech, the corpus is richly annotated with metadata pertaining to demographic features such as age, gender and social class, and textual features such as register, publication medium and domain. While bad language may be related to religion (e.g. Jesus, heaven, hell and damn), sex (e.g. fuck), racism (e.g. nigger), defecation (e.g. shit), homophobia (e.g. queer) and other matters, we will, in this article, examine only the pattern of uses of fuck and its morphological variants, because this is a typical swear-word that occurs frequently in the BNC. This article will build and expand upon the examination of fuck by McEnery et al. (2000) by examining the distribution pattern of fuck within and across spoken and written registers.

scholarly journals Where do negative stereotypes come from? The case of Indian English in the USA

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Kutlu ◽  
Caroline Wiltshire
Keyword(s):  
Language Attitudes ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
British English ◽  
Communication Problem ◽  
Immigrant Populations ◽  
The Usa ◽  
American English Speakers

Language attitudes inform social stereotyping, which in turn affects linguistic judgments (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick 2007). Nonstandard varieties are particularly subject to negative stereotypes, being evaluated as “less friendly” and “hard to understand” (Giles & Watson 2013). In this study, we investigate attitudes towards Indian English, a variety of English spoken by one of the largest immigrant populations in the USA (approximately 2.4 million), to understand the roots of linguistic stereotyping towards this variety of English. We compared attitudes of American English speakers towards Indian English and British English. Our results show that while American English speakers do not explicitly indicate any communication problem with Indian English, they disfavor Indian English compared to British English. This disfavoring of Indian English aligns with Raciolinguistic theories, suggesting that post-colonialism, especially Whiteness, is a factor in language prestige and how different varieties are perceived.

On the use of uh and um in American English

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnel Tottie
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
American English ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
British English ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Difficult Subjects ◽  
National Corpus

This study examines the use of uh and um — referred to jointly as UHM — in 14 conversations totaling c. 62,350 words from the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English. UHM was much less frequent than in British English with 7.5 vs. 14.5 instances per million words in the British National Corpus. However, as in British English the frequency of UHM was closely correlated to extra-linguistic context. Conversations in non-private environments (such as offices and classrooms) had higher frequencies than those taking place in private spaces, mostly homes. Time required for planning, especially when difficult subjects were discussed, appeared to be an important explanatory factor. It is clear that UHM cannot be dismissed as mere hesitation or disfluency; it functions as a pragmatic marker on a par with well, you know, and I mean, sharing some of the functions of these in discourse. Although the role of sociolinguistic factors was less clear, the tendencies for older speakers and educated speakers to use UHM more frequently than younger and less educated ones paralleled British usage, but contrary to British usage, there were no gender differences.

scholarly journals Forms and Meanings of Stative Verbs in Progressive Tense: a Corpus Linguistics Research

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-190
Author(s):  
Upi Laila Hanum
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
British English ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Mixed Categories ◽  
National Corpus ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

 AbstractSemantics is the field of linguistic concerned with the study of meaning in language. The aims of the research are to analyze the forms and meanings of the stative verbs in progressive tense in corpora. The data of this research were obtained from Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC). The data of the corpora used descriptive qualitative. The result of the research shows that the stative verbs are found and used in progressive tense. The stative verbs appeared in all types of progressive tense except future perfect progressive. The use of the stative verbs in progressive tense took place due to overgeneralization in the use of the native speakers’ form of American and British English. The stative verbs in progressive tense used to express temporariness, emotiveness, comprehension and mixed categories of meaning; temporariness and emotiveness, temporariness and tentativeness. Temporariness meaning almost appeared in all types of progressive. Stative verbs in progressive tense indirectly stated temporariness in stative sense of meaning, is contrary to the rules of English grammar.

scholarly journals CONVENTIONAL INDIRECTNESS STRATEGIES ON REQUEST USED BY MALE AND FEMALE SPEAKERS IN SPOKEN BRITISH NATIONAL CORPUS

PARADIGM ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Tantri Refa Indriarti ◽  
Yulia R. Mawarni
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
British English ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Request Strategies ◽  
National Corpus

<p>This study aims at analysing conventional indirectness strategies on request used by British English speakers as shown in spoken British National Corpus (BNC). Conventional indirect strategy is often rated as the most polite expression of politeness. In this case, male and female obviously have different strategies for making the request, which may be influenced by some factors. A qualitative approach was employed to conduct this study since the data are the utterances produced by male and female speakers in spoken BNC. The study revealed that there were 187 utterances that contain Conventional Indirectness Strategies on request used by male and female speakers in spoken BNC. Ability conditions was the strategy of conventional indirect request that mostly used by the male and female speakers. Then, the three factors (i.e. gender, age, and social class) have an effect and significant role on the speaker’s choice of strategies employed by British English speakers. As this study is focused on the indirect request strategies, thus it is suggested to the next researchers who are interested in the same study could be expected to conduct the indirect request strategies by adding more factors.</p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Where do negative stereotypes come from? The case of Indian English in the USA

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Kutlu ◽  
Caroline Wiltshire
Keyword(s):  
Language Attitudes ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
British English ◽  
Communication Problem ◽  
Immigrant Populations ◽  
The Usa ◽  
American English Speakers

Language attitudes inform social stereotyping, which in turn affects linguistic judgments (Fiske, Cuddy, &amp; Glick 2007). Nonstandard varieties are particularly subject to negative stereotypes, being evaluated as “less friendly” and “hard to understand” (Giles &amp; Watson 2013). In this study, we investigate attitudes towards Indian English, a variety of English spoken by one of the largest immigrant populations in the USA (approximately 2.4 million), to understand the roots of linguistic stereotyping towards this variety of English. We compared attitudes of American English speakers towards Indian English and British English. Our results show that while American English speakers do not explicitly indicate any communication problem with Indian English, they disfavor Indian English compared to British English. This disfavoring of Indian English aligns with Raciolinguistic theories, suggesting that post-colonialism, especially Whiteness, is a factor in language prestige and how different varieties are perceived.

scholarly journals The Analysis of Metaphorical Domain on English “Stab Verb” in Corpora

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-58
Author(s):  
LaOde Achmad Suherman
Keyword(s):  
Light Flash ◽  
American English ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Target Domain ◽  
Semantic Roles ◽  
British English ◽  
Pain Memory ◽  
Source Domain ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

Metaphor as part of language is taking special place on Semantics studies which is unique and needs more logical thinking in interpretation. The objective of this research was to ascertain the kinds of metaphorical domains of English stab verb in corpora. The data of this research consist of American English and British English which were mainly taken from two corpora, Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British National Corpus (BNC).  The result of this research indicated that, there were source domain and target domain that were employed on the semantic construction of English Stab verb. Source domain ascertained from the semantic roles which lied on the construction of stab verb, they are Agent, Target and Manip, while target domain consists of twenty noun phrases they are: eyes, looks, words, voice, question, guilt/ remorse, sadness, anger, pain, memory, fear, panic, light/ flash, ray, dark, air, sound and directions. Most of these nouns were mapped as Manip or stabbing instrument while dark, air, and direction were mapped as the stabbing target.

scholarly journals English comparative correlative constructions: A usage-based account

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-215
Author(s):  
Thomas Hoffmann ◽  
Thomas Brunner ◽  
Jakob Horsch
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
American English ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
British English ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
Large Corpus ◽  
National Corpus

AbstractEnglish Comparative Correlatives (CCs) consist of two clauses, C1 and C2:[The more we get together,]C1 [the happier we’ll be.]C2Recently, large corpus studies based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English have unearthed various meso-constructions in English CCs using covarying–collexeme analysis. The present study tests these findings against data from the British National Corpus (BNC), aiming to replicate previous results against data from another standard variety of English (British English) and a corpus that is sampled from a wider range of registers. Over 2,000 CC tokens from the BNC were analyzed with regard to hypotactic features, filler types encountered as comparative elements, and deletion phenomena. Moreover, in contrast to earlier corpus studies (such as Hoffmann, Thomas, Jakob Horsch, and Thomas Brunner. 2019. “The more data, the better: a usage-based account of the English comparative correlative construction.” Cognitive Linguistics 30(1): 1–36), the present study also investigates the frequency of the semantically related C2C1 construction (You will be the happierC2, the more we get togetherC1) that previously has been found to be considerably less frequent than its counterpart. The results of the present analysis confirm that English CCs possess more paratactic than hypotactic features and, supporting most of the findings of Hoffmann, Horsch, and Brunner (2019) provide even stronger evidence for the existence of several symmetric meso-constructions.

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