scholarly journals A Corpus-Based Study on Construction of “Anger Adjectives + Prepositions” in World Englishes

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Xinlu Zhang ◽  
Jingxiang Cao
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Basic Emotions ◽  
British English ◽  
Temporal Duration ◽  
China English ◽  
Concentric Circles ◽  
British National Corpus ◽  
World English ◽  
Insight Into

Anger as one of the basic emotions has attracted much attention. In the construction of “Anger adjectives + prepositions”, the temporal duration of the Anger adjectives is closely related to their prepositional collocates. Differences in the use of the Anger adjectives and their prepositional collocates might be captured in the world English varieties. The corpora used in this study cover eight varieties of English. The five varieties of English used in Canada, Philippines, Singapore, India and Nigeria are from the International Corpus of English (ICE). The China English corpus (ChiE) consists of news texts crawled from six Chinese English media. American English is taken from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and British English is taken from British National Corpus (BNC). By investigating the use of the Anger adjectives and their prepositional collocates in the eight varieties of English, this paper finds that, on the continuums of the temporal duration of Anger adjectives, most varieties of English are closer to American English, whereas only Singapore English is close to British English. The distribution of Anger adjectives in the English varieties is largely in accordance with the Concentric Circles of world Englishes whereas the continuums of the temporal duration of emotions present a new insight into their relations.

Why China English should stand alongside British, American, and the other ‘world Englishes’

English Today ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
HU XIAO QIONG
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
British English ◽  
China English ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Other World ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
World English ◽  
Radical Revision

ENGLISH as the world's lingua franca has become a focus of attention for many scholars. Since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the motivation to learn English has dramatically increased. This paper questions the need for English in China to conform to any of the existing standard varieties, arguing that this objective is both undesirable and virtually unattainable, especially in respect to pronunciation, and that Chinese learners should therefore be learning ‘China English’. In an investigation with over 1,200 Chinese students at her university, the writer discovered that the vast majority had never heard of either World English or China English, believing instead that proficiency in standard American or British English should be their goal. She proposes both a reorientation of English language learning in China and a radical revision of the materials used there for both practical and cultural reasons.

Colloquial features in Word Englishes

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Collins ◽  
Xinyue Yao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American English ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Evolutionary Status ◽  
First Person ◽  
Functional Interpretation ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
World English ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Grammatical Change

A powerful discourse-pragmatic agent of grammatical change in English since the mid-twentieth century has been the increasing acceptance of colloquialism. Little is known, however, about its influence on grammatical developments in regional varieties of World English other than the two inner circle ‘supervarieties’, British and American English. This paper reports findings from a corpus-based study of three grammatical categories known to be undergoing a colloquialism-related rise in contemporary English, across a range of registers in ten World Englishes: quasi-modals (have to, have got to, be going to, want to), get-passives, and first person plural inclusive let’s. In each case comparisons are drawn with non-colloquial variants: modals (must, should, will, shall), be-passives, and let us. Subsequent functional interpretation of the data is used to explore the effect upon the quantitative patterns identified of the phenomenon of colloquialism and of further factors with which it interacts (including Americanism, prescriptivism, and evolutionary status).

The Oxford Companion to the English Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom McArthur ◽  
Jacqueline Lam-McArthur ◽  
Lise Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Text Messaging ◽  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
British Sign Language ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
China English ◽  
British Sign

Over 1,400 entriesThis new edition of a landmark Companion notably focuses on World Englishes, English language teaching, English as an international language, and the effect of technological advances on the English language. More than 130 new entries include African American English, British Sign Language, China English, digital literacy, multimodality, social networking, superdiversity, and text messaging. It also includes new biographical entries on key individuals who have had an impact on the English language in recent decades, including Beryl (Sue) Atkins, Adam Kilgariff, and John Sinclair.It is an invaluable reference for English language students and fascinating reading for any general reader with an interest in language.

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 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.

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.

Blaming the media? Folk attitudes towards the state of the English language and its ‘wrongdoers’

English Today ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Ebner
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
American English ◽  
The State ◽  
General Question ◽  
Time Of Death ◽  
Personal Beliefs ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
British English ◽  
The Media ◽  
Insight Into

Every now and then one stumbles across complaints about the decaying state of the English language. British English is under threat from American English. English is dying or just on the verge of drawing its last breath. Recurring allegations similar to these are made by worried, albeit self-opinionated, speakers who are not only quick to declare the time of death of English, but also to point the finger at who they think is to blame for these developments. As part of my PhD project on usage attitudes in British English, I included the somewhat general question ‘What do you think about the state of the English language?” in an online questionnaire which was completed by 230 informants from Great Britain in order to obtain an insight into commonly held beliefs about British English. This particular question generated answers from 176 informants who shared their personal beliefs, or rather fears, about the state of the English language. In this article, I would like to share some of the insights gained through the preliminary analysis of these answers and invite you to contribute by completing a survey on this topic.

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 On the native/nonnative speaker notion and World Englishes: Debating with K. Rajagopalan

2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-611
Author(s):  
John Robert SCHMITZ
Keyword(s):  
Native Speaker ◽  
American English ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Indian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Nonnative Speaker ◽  
The World ◽  
Australian English

ABSTRACT In a series of three articles published in the Journal of Pragmatics (1995, henceforth JP), the purpose of the papers is to question the division of English spoken in the world into, on one hand, "native" varieties (British English, American English. Australian English) and, on the other, "new/nonnative" varieties (Indian English, Singaporean English, Nigerian English). The JP articles are indeed groundbreaking for they mark one of the first interactions among scholars from the East with researchers in the West with regard to the growth and spread of the language as well as the roles English is made to play by its impressive number of users. The privileged position of prestige and power attributed to the inner circle varieties (USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) is questioned. Rajagopalan (1997, motivated by his reading of the JP papers, adds another dimension to this questioning by pointing to the racial and discriminatory stance underlying the notions "native speaker" and "nonnative speaker" (henceforth, respectively NS and NNS). Rajagopalan has written extensively on the issue of nativity or "nativeness"; over the years, Schmitz has also written on the same topic. There appears, in some cases, to be a number of divergent views with regard to subject on hand on the part of both authors. The purpose of this article is to engage in a respectful debate to uncover misreading and possible misunderstanding on the part of Schmitz. Listening to one another and learning from each another are essential in all academic endeavors.

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