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This paper investigates changes in swearing usage in informal speech using large-scale corpus data, comparing the occurrence and social distribution of swear words in two corpora of informal spoken British English: the demographically-sampled part of the Spoken British National Corpus 1994 (BNC1994) and the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014); the compilation of the latter has facilitated large-scale, diachronic analyses of authentic spoken data on a scale which has, until now, not been possible. A form and frequency analysis of a set of 16 'pure' swear word lemma forms is presented. The findings reveal that swearing occurrence is significantly lower in the Spoken BNC2014 but still within a comparable range to previous studies. Furthermore, FUCK is found to overtake BLOODY as the most popular swear word lemma. Finally, the social distribution of swearing across gender and age groups generally supports the findings of previous research: males still swear more than females, and swearing still peaks in the twenties and declines thereafter. However, the distribution of swearing according to socio-economic status is found to be more complex than expected in the 2010s and requires further investigation. This paper also reflects on some of the methodological challenges associated with making comparisons between the two corpora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates practices of urban discursive place-making in selected neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. I investigate the forms and functions of hitherto neglected multimodal data – semiotic landscapes written on the body, (hidden) Wi-Fi Service Set Identifiers, that is, SSIDs or Wi-Fi names, and #Brooklyn Tweets – and how I have compiled these into a corpus. The corpus currently consists of multivariate data including – among others – ca. 1.3 million words of semi-structured interviews with Brooklynites, ca. 8,000 photographs of the semiotic landscapes in Brooklyn, New York, and ca. 47,000 Wi-Fi SSIDs. The aim of this paper is to show which semiotic forms and constructions of both Wi-Fi SSIDs and #Brooklyn Tweets take on foregrounded practices of so-called discursive urban-place-making and how these interact in the various neighborhoods of Brooklyn and in the virtual spheres related to them. I will show how these practices carry the potential for (re-)indexing specific social values of an urban neighborhood or even the borough itself and how Brooklynites and others comment on the respective neighborhoods. They position themselves in the social, cultural, political, and economic spheres of urbanity. The mixed-methods approach draws on corpus linguistic, sociolinguistic, and stylistic methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on aspects of Nigerian corrupt practices and how perceptions of public service and leadership responsibilities are framed linguistically, or discursively, around predatory elitist interests. It is based on two premises. The first pertains to the ways in which the national wealth is metaphorically called the national cake, and how it is viewed as an object that elicits consumption. Textual data is generated from 19 national newspapers and blogs that show 85 occurrences of the term the national cake. The surrounding contexts of the term indicate that national wealth is eatable, shareable and is spatially located. The second premise relates to how the Nigerian elite use metonymic associations to make themselves serve as the aggregate of, or shorthand to, the geographical, partisan and religious interests of the country. This stand-for relationship plays a prominent role in establishing contiguous representations which aid (conceptual) proximity to the national cake. This study uses critical metaphor analysis, corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to demystify the facts about Nigeria's national life otherwise overlaid by ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, social and political commentators have criticised the ongoing marketisation of the UK's state-based healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS). This paper examines the websites of 187 NHS's Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), exploring how the CCGs represent themselves and their actions, and considering the extent to which these reflect and indeed enact this process of marketisation. Taking a corpus-based approach to Critical Discourse Studies, the analysis shows how the CCGs represent themselves as accountable, collaborative, patient-centred, responsive and self-determining organisations. It is thus argued that these websites function as forms of 'prestige advertising', reflecting the increasingly marketised nature of contemporary UK healthcare. Following the analysis, the potential motivations for these representations are considered, as are their possible implications for website users and the broader UK healthcare landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the relationship between research using systemic functional linguistics and research of the kind referred to as corpus linguistics, specifically in a study of ideology in a popular science text. The paper argues that ideas in SFL and corpus linguistics may be regarded as parallel (register), divergent (grammar and phraseology), and complementary (lexis and taxonomy). Following a review of research in these areas, the paper presents a case study of evaluation of status in a popular science book ( The Rough Guide to Evolution). 'Status' draws on the grammatical concept of projection and on a set of lexis and phraseologies. The interaction between grammatical choice and lexical choice is quantified. It is argued that particular combinations of lexis and grammar are preferred when knowledge is presented as in the process of formation, and other combinations are preferred when knowledge is presented as in a state of completion. The case study reveals that concepts drawn from a systemic functional view of grammar and from a corpus linguistic view of phraseology are usefully combined in studying ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A phrase-frame (p-frame) is a multi-word sequence with a one-word variable within the sequence (e.g., it is * to). P-frames are important components of language production and can demonstrate phraseological patterning. This study examined p-frames retrieved from one learner business emails corpus (1,413 texts based on the Education First-Cambridge Open Language Database) and one working professional email corpus (1,145 texts from the Enron email dataset). P-frames were investigated both quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of their structural characteristics, functional characteristics, and variability. Our results showed that the working professionals and the learners of business English used p-frames differently. The working professionals used p-frames in ways that aligned with written conventions, whereas the learners of business English used p-frames in ways that did not accord well with written conventions. This difference was detected by comparing tendencies in function-word frames and frames for referential function. In addition, p-frames used by the working professionals displayed a higher degree of variability than those by the learners of business English. This study facilitates an understanding of learners' p-frame use in English for business purposes and suggests that p-frames be incorporated into the teaching and learning of L2 business writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2015, the World Health Organization published a report on the carcinogenicity of red and processed meat (IARC, 2015. Carcinogenicity of consumption of red and processed meat. The Lancet Oncology 16(16). 1599–1600), attracting intense interest from both the general public and the scientific community. This study combines corpus approaches, Systemic Functional Linguistics and discourse analysis to investigate and compare scientific and animal rights movement reactions to the IARC 2015 report. Scientific reactions are exemplified by three research papers published immediately after the report; responses from animal rights campaigners are investigated through an analysis of texts taken from the website of the nongovernmental organization PETA. The aim is to explore how discourse not only describes, but also constructs meat carcinogenicity, in texts produced by two discourse communities (scientists and animal campaigners) which, for entirely different reasons, have an important stake in this issue. Qualitative (close reading) and quantitative (corpus-based) methods are combined, focusing on vocabulary, grammatical metaphor, and Appraisal (Martin, Jim and Peter White, 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). The results show a high level of hybridity, discursive erasure (Stibbe, Arran, 2012. Animals erased: discourse, ecology, and reconnection with the natural world. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press), and some substantial differences in the discourse reactions to the IARC report by the two sources, reflecting the ideologies and ethical assumptions they espouse in their approach to the announcement that red and processed meat can cause cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the discourse of LifeChurch.tv, an American evangelical megachurch - headed by the influential pastor Craig Groeschel - whose sermons are accessed by thousands of followers on the Internet. The study is based on the transcripts of a five-year period of online preaching (177 sermons). The goal was to apply the framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to digital sermons, particularly focusing on examining the elements of personalization in this relatively new form of "net" evangelism. Groeschel's "hyper-personalized" style of preaching, we argue, utilizes strategies intended to lessen any perceived barriers between the speaker and his virtual congregation. The study discusses the implications for the commodification and mediatization of religion in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the phenomenon of "leftover" women and men in China has been hotly debated over the past decade, there are few comparative studies investigating similarities and differences underlying media representations of the two groups. To fill this gap, this study employs a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the discourses of similarities and differences underlying the representations of leftover women and men in the Chinese English-language news media between 2007 and 2017 by building two corpora. The findings indicate a similar discourse surrounding both leftover women and men, which is heterosexual marriage pressure. The findings also reveal two discourses highlighting differences between leftover women and men: while leftover women are represented as A-grade women facing fertility issues, leftover men are represented as D-grade men confronted with the demographic crisis. These discourses have ideological implications for heteronormativity and patriarchy. The study sheds light on non-hegemonic forms of femininity and masculinity constructed by the media in contemporary Chinese society, as well as the usefulness of employing corpus techniques to examine both similarities and differences in gender representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of intensification is pervasive in natural language use. Previous research has extensively discussed what intensifiers are and how they are associated with semantic developments. Corpora prove to be a useful tool to examine the semantic dimension of intensifiers. What has been overlooked, however, is the internal structure(s) of meaning conveyed by "intensifier + adjective" constructions in naturally occurring text and speech. The semantic relationship between the intensifier and the modified adjective needs to be made more explicit to address the pragmatics of intensification. Using BNC Sampler (a part-of-speech tagged corpus of general English) this study examines the most frequently used adjective intensifiers in both written and spoken discourse. Concordance lines generated for the adjective intensifiers are used to illustrate evaluative expressions in context. The observation contributes to debates on the pragmatics of intensifiers for evaluative meaning construction and transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse analysis or conversation analysis approaches audio or video data by way of transcription. It takes sentence or utterance as its point of departure, from which it moves up to discourse or conversation, or down to parts of a sentence or utterance. The present study departs from this mainstream paradigm by outlining and demonstrating a corpus linguistic approach to multimodal text analysis that starts from the analytic unit of social situation, to that of activity type, task/episode, and the participants’ behavior of talking and doing. The primary data consists of video streams with synchronized sounds rather than orthographic transcripts. The segmentation and annotation of nondiscrete streams of a multimodal text are demonstrated in accordance with the latest Text Encoding Initiative (TEI P4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the use of metaphors, metonymies and metaphorical similes for love in a corpus of 52 year-end number one hit songs in the USA from 1946 to 2016 according to Billboard charts. The analysis is performed within the framework of Conceptual Metaphor Theory and from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Our findings indicate that the theme of romantic love is prevalent in US mainstream pop music over the course of seven decades but shows evolutionary features. Metaphors of love evolve from conventional to novel with a notable increase in both heartbreak and erotic metaphors. Remarkably, the study finds that the two predominant conceptualizations of love in pop songs – which in a significant number of cases overlap – are the following: experiential, originating in the physical proximity of the lovers, and cultural, reflecting possession by one lover and showing a non-egalitarian type of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the use of disaster metaphors in the American media coverage of the 2008 global financial crisis. More specifically, it aims to examine the role of different sub-metaphors in performing various pragmatic and rhetorical functions in financial news discourse. Using the Metaphor Identification Procedure, this study identifies key words from the 1-million-word corpus which comprised the news articles published from September 15, 2008 to March 15, 2009, and examines the associated concordance lines to discern their metaphorical connotations. The findings show that a wide range of sub-source domains of disaster—namely, wind, storm, and water—metaphors was deployed by journalists to capture the various negative impacts of the financial crisis. These findings suggest that the salient extension and mixing of metaphors could enhance the popularization of specialist financial news discourse. The findings also indicate that the news media was complicit in constructing the collective illusion that the financial crisis was unavoidable and not caused by anyone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English present perfect has received a great deal of sentence-based analytical attention in the empirical linguistic literature as well as some corpus-based coverage at the discourse level, in which analysis depends on close scrutiny of the context of a structure's placement, i.e. several utterances, turns at talk, or sentences before and after. Due to the painstaking nature of such analysis, however, corpora used to date have been relatively small. This study, via a corpus of over 12 million words from television and radio interviews in the United States, categorizes the use of discourse-pragmatic functions of 268 present perfect tokens. From this analysis, one use stood out overwhelmingly: the present perfect in the employment of position-taking or support. Also, only very rarely was the present perfect used to initiate narratives, which is a finding that does not conform to previous understandings. The study contributes to the overall knowledge of present perfect use and has implications for how the tense can be taught to English language learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a corpus-based examination of metaphors in the media coverage of the global financial crisis of 2008. Based on conceptual metaphor theory, it discusses how and why metaphors of LIVING THING were used in the news reports, with a particular focus on the two negative emotions of fear and anxiety. The research started with the compilation of a 1-million-word corpus of news articles. With the use of the software suites Wmatrix 2.0 and WordSmith 5.0, metaphors directly conceptualizing the emotions of fear and anxiety were identified. The findings showed that these metaphors described various stages and intensities of negative emotions, and that they were tailored to increase the negative feelings of the readers, which in turn increased the news value of the articles for the newspaper. Various theoretical and lexicogrammatical implications have also arisen from the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) in conjunction with a corpus-driven analytical methodology has evolved into a powerful qualitative and quantitative tool for deconstructing and studying political discourse. This study utilizes a corpus-driven CDA approach to examine the dynamics of power distance and the ideological stance in the context of Greater China, as conveyed in the 2013 Report on the Work of the Government of Mainland China and the Policy Address in Hong Kong. Concordancing software was used to generate frequency lists, co-selection patterns, and concgrams for detailed analysis. In particular, study examines differences in usage of the first-person plural pronoun we collocated with modal verbs and related lexical items. Concgrams in discourse analysis offer insights into the discursive practice of political actors in this unique political discourse genre. The findings show that the distribution and utilization of first-person plural pronoun we, and its interplay with other modal verbs and lexical items, comprising a specific "concgram," have provided textual and intertextual evidence for the analytical results of conventional critical discourse analysis. The discussions support that a methodological synergy between corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis can serve as a powerful tool to deconstruct and analyze political discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over food politics provide insight into the convergence of commercial and political discourses. As the organic food market has grown, campaigners and independent producers have faced the dilemma of how far they should promote their cause using standard marketing language. We report on a research project which combined corpus analysis, interviews, and focus group discussions to investigate the discourse of organic food promotion in Britain, the thinking behind it, and how people react to it. We found growing convergence across the sector. Whether produced by supermarkets, small politically committed producers, or environmentalist campaign groups, the language used tends to be poetic, vague, dialogic, narrative, and emotive, with an emphasis upon bucolic imagery and consumer self-interest. Text producers assume that consumer attitudes can be easily manipulated by such an approach. Our focus group data however suggest both a critical resistance to marketing language in general, and that attitudes to food may be less amenable to manipulation through standard promotional techniques than is commonly assumed. Our findings contribute not only to an understanding of food politics and persuasive discourse more generally, but also to the development of discourse analytic methodology which integrates textual analysis with investigation of sender and receiver perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]