The%20corpus%20and%20society

1
The corpus and society

• Michaela Mahlberg
• Corpus Linguistics Summer Institute
• 30 June - 3 July 2008

2
A corpus theoretical framework(cf. Mahlberg 2005)

• 1) Language is a social phenomenon.
• 2) Meaning and form are associated.
• 3) A corpus linguistic description of language
  prioritises lexis.

2
2
3
yesterday characterising meanings of words

• word out of
• textual context
• KWIC
• word in
• a specific text

4

• ... Have you read any good books lately?" he
  said.
• Oh, for God's sake.
• I racked my brain frantically to think when I
  last read a proper book. The trouble with working
  in publishing is that reading in your spare time
  is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling
  through the pig bin in the evening. I'm halfway
  through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,
  which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark
  Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept
  himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had a
  brainwave.
• "Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said
  triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as
  such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting
  about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option
  as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody
  would have read five-hundred-page feminist
  treatise.

5

• ... Have you read any good books lately?" he
  said.
• Oh, for God's sake.
• I racked my brain frantically to think when I
  last read a proper book. The trouble with working
  in publishing is that reading in your spare time
  is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling
  through the pig bin in the evening. I'm halfway
  through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,
  which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark
  Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept
  himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had a
  brainwave.
• "Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said
  triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as
  such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting
  about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option
  as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody
  would have read five-hundred-page feminist
  treatise.

6

• ... Have you read any good books lately?" he
  said.
• Oh, for God's sake.
• I racked my brain frantically to think when I
  last read a proper book. The trouble with working
  in publishing is that reading in your spare time
  is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling
  through the pig bin in the evening. I'm halfway
  through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,
  which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark
  Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept
  himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had a
  brainwave.
• "Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said
  triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as
  such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting
  about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option
  as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody
  would have read five-hundred-page feminist
  treatise.

7

• ... Have you read any good books lately?" he
  said.
• Oh, for God's sake.
• I racked my brain frantically to think when I
  last read a proper book. The trouble with working
  in publishing is that reading in your spare time
  is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling
  through the pig bin in the evening. I'm halfway
  through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,
  which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark
  Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept
  himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had a
  brainwave.
• "Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said
  triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as
  such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting
  about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option
  as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody
  would have read five-hundred-page feminist
  treatise.

8

• ... Have you read any good books lately?" he
  said.
• Oh, for God's sake.
• I racked my brain frantically to think when I
  last read a proper book. The trouble with working
  in publishing is that reading in your spare time
  is a bit like being a dustman and snuffling
  through the pig bin in the evening. I'm halfway
  through Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus,
  which Jude lent me, but I didn't think Mark
  Darcy, though clearly odd, was ready to accept
  himself as a Martian quite yet. Then I had a
  brainwave.
• "Backlash, actually, by Susan Faludi," I said
  triumphantly. Hah! I haven't exactly read it as
  such, but feel I have as Sharon has been ranting
  about it so much. Anyway, completely safe option
  as no way diamond-pattern-jumpered goody-goody
  would have read five-hundred-page feminist
  treatise.

9
Collocation - well-known concept

• "Collocation is the occurrence of two words
  within a short space of each other in a text.
  (Sinclair
  1991 170)
• becomes visible in a concordance
• can be calculated
• characterises the meanings of words
• may not be easy to introspect

10
Collocation and meaning

• Example blind
• blind baby, man, people, students
• blind-date, blind date, Blind Date
• blind alley
• turn a blind eye
• blind fury, ignorance, lust

11
Implications of collocational findings for
language descriptions

• dictionaries (Cobuild)
• descriptive unit lexical item (Sinclair 1996)
• Pattern Grammar (Hunston Francis 2000)
• Lexical priming (Hoey 2005)

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(No Transcript)
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Corpus and society

• Texts in corpora as evidence of social practice.
• cultural key words sustainable development
• textual key words move
• computer key words Examples from Textual
  
• priming
  project

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Cultural key words Sustainable development

• greenwash, conveniently meaningless (Alexander
  2002)
• development that meets the needs of the
  present without compromising the ability of
  future generations to meet their own needs
  (Brundtland 1987 43)
• Agenda 21, Rio 1992
• World Summit, 26 August to 4 September 2002 in
  Johannesburg
• With our carton manufacturer we are committed to
  sustainable development and wherever possible use
  materials from renewable resources

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Corpus and method

• SDC
• Guardian 2002
• 368 occurrences of SD
• 211 articles
• approximately 150,000 words
• functional groups and ad hoc categories

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Group Examples
G1 Conferences 61
G2 Organizations 22
G3 Education 13
G4 Approaches 58
G5 SD requires 24
G6 Working towards SD 74
G7 Leading in SD 10
G8 The need for SD 12
G9 Talking about SD 21
G10 SD means 33
G11 And SD 35
Other 5
Total 368
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G1 Conferences and the world summit the World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) the
Earth summit on sustainable development in
Johannesburg the Johannesburg summit on
sustainable development
18
G2 Organizations Business Action for Sustainable
Development (BASD) The World Business Council
for Sustainable Development the Western
Partnership for Sustainable Development the
International Institute for Sustainable
Development the UK Sustainable Development
Commission and
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1 subject to a "sustainable development" test
2 subject to a sustainable development review,
3 up with a sustainable development
framework, 4 , and sustainable
development projects 5 annual sustainable
development report 6 to introduce sustainable
development criteria 7 the agenda for
sustainable development - not 8 plan
for sustainable development, with 9 declared
policy on sustainable development, it was 10 a
new approach to sustainable development.
Natural 11 principles of sustainable development.
But 12 to the EU's own sustainable development
strategy. 13 http//www.sustainable-developm
ent.gov.uk ) in
G4 Approaches to SD
20

• 1 duty to promote sustainable development
• to promote sustainable development and
• , promoting sustainable development and
• 4 commitment to sustainable development.
• 5 set off towards sustainable development. But
• 6 work towards sustainable development of
• 7 aim of "sustainable development",
• to achieve sustainable development. In
• 9 progress on sustainable development.
• 10 to support sustainable development.

G6 Working towards SD
21
The text as a unit SD in newspaper articles
22
News features tend to contain more comment,
analysis, colour, background, and a greater
diversity of sources than news stories and
explore a larger number of number of issues in
greater depth. It is the external length that
accounts for many of the distinguishing elements
of features.
(Keeble 2006219)
23
Link between meaning and section Education MSc
in Sustainable Development education for
sustainable development
24

• G9 Talking about SD
• 1 in the debate about sustainable development.
• debates around sustainable development were
• 3 a message about sustainable development to
• 4 a speech about sustainable development in
• To talk about sustainable development in
• issues around sustainable development have

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SD means (1) Sustainable development means
managing growth in the world's economies during
the next century in a way that avoids disaster
for the environment, and reduces the intolerable
gaps between the haves and the have-nots.
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SD means (2) The idea is to improve social,
environment and economic advancement all in one
go, under the catch-all phrase of
sustainable development. (3) Sadruggin Aga Khan,
the former UN Commissioner for Refugees, was
unhappy about the prospects for the natural
world, and dismissed the phrase sustainable
development. He said it had been adopted as a
convenient mantra, but it was a delusion. (8) As
the world prepares for next month's world summit
on social development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, the
Rio rhetoric is back on the airwaves. Northern
governments are treating us to painful cover
versions of the old sustainable development
classics, and marketing them
with more hype than that surrounding the launch
of Will Young.
27

• SD and evaluation
• negative semantic prosody of SD means
• G7 Leading in SD
• The US is a world leader in sustainable
  development..
• Britain leading the world in sustainable
  development..
• .. seen as the Crystal Palace of sustainable
  development

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obituaries

• (1a) Anil Agarwal, who has died aged 54 of
  cancer, was one of the world's most important
  environmentalists, campaigning from a developing
  country - India - at a time when many of the
  international debates around sustainable
  development were dominated by the west.
• (1b) he was one of the first campaigners to
  talk about what became known as sustainable
  development.
• (2) Under his leadership, the trust spearheaded
  the setting up of LSx, the London Sustainability
  Exchange, promoting sustainable development and
  dedicated to improving the environment of London.
  
• (3) Barraclough became head of
  UNRISD, specialising
• in sustainable
  development.

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textual key words move
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move 3-word clusters

• in a move
• a move that
• the move is
• such a move
• a move which
• the move follows

31
move 3-word clusters

• in a move
• a move that
• the move is
• such a move
• a move which
• the move follows

32
Guardian 2002 move follow
Texts Tokens average text length hits (per 1000 articles)
Leading articles 586 280791 479 0
Home 14470 6328337 437 28 (1.9)
Overseas news 3684 1790795 486 6 (2)
Business 7330 2878352 393 23 (3.1)
Sport 11281 5470297 485 3 (0.3)
Obituaries 975 758941 778 0
Features 31359 18786358 599 8 (0.3)
Letters 4189 499456 119 0
total 73874 36793327 498 68 (0.9)
33
(The) move follows/followed
? news values
(1) authorities a call by the Palestinian
parliament earlier in the day a decision by US
authorities to bring criminal charges a report by
the justice ministry which singled out Britain a
warning by Andy Gilchrist, leader of the Fire
Brigades Union comments in the Guardian by the
CNN founder, Ted Turner,
34
(2) legal and institutional issues a case
involving a clergyman in Stoke who a fingertip
forensic search of the alley between a series of
mass trespasses, notably in the Peak District,
an investigation into the fatal accident in
November, 1999 an unreported 10-week pre-trial
hearing at Liverpool crown court
35
(3) facts and figures industry figures this
month which revealed 61 of the 10.2m the
introduction of Abbey branches into 18 Costa
Coffee shops last year's charity commission
guidance on "programme-related investment
information that the 1st Class Post Paid
Impression service is 20 a thorough review that
had taken into account investment market
36
(4) negative evaluation a furious round of
contacts between the TUC, the firemen's leaders,
a spate of embarrassments for ministers as a
result of the data act an outcry prompted by
insurer Prudential's decision to use
policyholders last year's acrimonious court room
battle between MLIM, formerly growing questions
about the safety of rail maintenance in the light
of
37
(the) move follows/ followed
38
(the) move follows/ followed
39
Orbital structure (White 1997) Nucleus
Specification 1 Specification 2 Specification
3 ......
40
Abbey National sets up shop in Homebase Abbey
National is attempting to buck the trend among
high- street banks of closing branches by opening
outlets in Homebase DIY stores. S1 The move
follows the introduction of Abbey branches into
18 Costa Coffee shops and several Safeway stores
and .... S2 Andrew Pople, managing director of
Abbey's retail bank, said the project with
Homebase would begin with a pilot store in
Liverpool on Good Friday - a time when ... S3
While the first pilot store will not have
facilities for business banking, Mr Pople said
this would S4 Abbey is one of the banks looking
to take on the "big four" who have been accused
by the government of ripping off small
businesses. ... S5 ....
41
Table 2 Business, Home, and Overseas
News 57
Nucleus Not nucleus n/a
44 (of which 20 paragraph initial AND paragraph 2) 9 4
42
Mallon feud to end as police chief rival
retires One of the most bitter feuds within
Britain's police is finally to end, with the
decision of Cleveland's chief constable, Barry
Shaw, to retire. lt/PgtltPgtThe move follows years of
duelling with Ray "Robocop" Mallon, whose
progress from disgraced detective to elected
mayor of Middlesbrough has placed Mr Shaw in an
embarrassing position. ....
43
Ministers consider restrictions on data access
rights The government has slipped out proposals
to curb citizens' rights to obtain access to
files kept on them, including credit card
information, under the Data Protection Act.
lt/PgtltPgtThe move follows a spate of embarrassments
for ministers as a result of the data act
including the Tory peer, Lord Ashcroft, obtaining
embarrassing documents on him from the Foreign
Office, and Liberal Democrat MPs being able to
prove that ministers hid information from
parliament.
44

• Local textual functions and criteria that
  characterise (the) move follows/followed
• distribution across sections of newspaper (cf.
  SD)
• average texts length of these sections (cf. SD)
• position at beginning of paragraph
• paragraph 2 preferred paragraph
• reference to (part of) nucleus, textual
  organisation of information
• emphasizing news values (cf. SD, but..)

45
Computer key words

• e.g. with WordSmith (Scott 2008)
• comparing frequencies in corpus A and
• corpus B

46
Textual functions of lexical items

• Textual priming project
• AHRC Project, Michael Hoey
• Michaela Mahlberg
• Matthew Brook ODonnell
• Mike Scott

47
Textual Priming Project Aims

• to investigate how many (and what types of)
  lexical items are primed to appear in
  text-initial or paragraph-initial position
• to identify lexico-grammatical patterns and see
  how these patterns can be functionally
  interpreted in the textual contexts.
• to relate these lexical and corpus-driven facts
  to current textual descriptions of (hard) news
  stories that might provide explanations for the
  positive primings of relevant lexis.

48
The nucleus pattern (work from Mahlberg
ODonnell forthcoming)
TISC NTISC Total
Words 3,122,037 49,922,632 53,044,669

• TISC Text initial sentence corpus
• NTISC Non-text initial sentence corpus
• headlines are excluded

49
Key words

• 1905 positive TISC vs NTISC key words
• key means here statistical tendency to be found
  in first sentence of Guardian Home News article
• examples yesterday, after, according, emerged,
  jailed, police, accused, woman, death,
  controversial

50
example fresh
TISC NTISC
Occurrences 923 3984
Per million words 295.6 79.8
Per 1000 sentences 8.1 6.2
from difference in frequency we cannot yet draw
conclusion about differences in functional
behaviour
51
fresh row/controversy (all three words key in
TISC vs NTISC) Downing Street ran into a fresh
row over "cronyism" yesterday when the
multimillionaire New Labour economist Gavyn
Davies was appointed vice-chairman of the
BBC. The nucleus pattern (cf. Mahlberg
ODonnell forthcoming)
52
rday at the centre of a fresh education
row after dismissing national te e Tory
leadership contest faced a fresh row over dirty
tricks yesterday when the overnment was last
night facing a fresh row about the future of
selective gramma environment minister, is
facing a fresh row over a London incinerator's
toxic as Tony Blair yesterday ignited a
fresh row over the issue of privatisation as h
al-Qusaibi, became embroiled in a fresh row last
night for defending Palestinian h Museum has
become involved in a fresh row with the Greeks
and a leading Britis ry, Robin Cook was
embroiled in a fresh row over arms sales
yesterday after givi Labour was
engulfed in a fresh row last night after a panel
headed by t The government was embroiled in a
fresh row with the BBC yesterday after a Forei
ty of bullying, is embroiled in a fresh row with
the beleaguered professional bo Downing
Street ran into a fresh row over "cronyism"
yesterday when the m ancellor, has been plunged
into a fresh row over cronyism after it emerged
that ry Irvine, will be plunged into a fresh
row over cronyism this month as damning was
yesterday at the centre of a fresh row over its
admissions, when the mother n Prescott was at
the centre of a fresh row with the Tories last
night over whet was yesterday at the centre of
a fresh row over plans for a shake-up in the way
was last night at the centre of a fresh row
over rigging the party's national ex el Sharon,
threatens to provoke a fresh row with the
Palestinians today by warni ts released today
have provoked a fresh row about the credibility
of the "gold s Tony Blair yesterday sparked a
fresh row over "cronyism" when he appointed Da
rof schools, yesterday sparked a fresh row about
the teaching of morality by bl KENNETH
CLARKE triggered a fresh row over racism within
the Tory party ye government last night
triggered a fresh row about selective education
when it si Introduction and evaluation
53
Distribution of row and controversy across 43
articles with fresh row in sentence 1 (Numbers
refer to articles)
54
Distribution of row and controversy across 40
articles with fresh controversy in sentence 1
(numbers refer to articles)
55
Row over u-turn on arms sales to Sahara war
zone The foreign secretary, Robin Cook was
embroiled in a fresh row over arms sales
yesterday after giving the go-ahead for a pounds
3.5m contract to supply artillery spare parts to
a north African war zone. (insert source)
McConnell in cash row Jack McConnell,
Scotland's first minister in waiting, has become
embroiled in a fresh controversy over claims that
he asked MPs for cash to keep his lover in her
job as a press officer for the party.
56
Cohesive devices linking to nucleus (1) The
row emerged a day after (2) Disability rights
organisations waded into the row, claiming that
(3) The row hits close to home because
57
another - contextualisation (1) Earlier, the
chief inspector had triggered a row by (2) He
also stoked controversy over his handling of
(3) Said is no stranger to controversy he
(4) In a bitter row which echoed the
controversy over Laura Spence
58
Fury at pounds 100,000 bill for Prescott's
official apartment (1) THE DEPUTY Prime
Minister, John Prescott, was facing fresh
controversy yesterday when it was revealed that
his official residence in central London was
refurbished for pounds 100,000. (2) The bill
includes pounds 13,000 for a carpet, thought to
be a luxurious handwoven Balmoral Wilton at a
cost of pounds 38 a square metre. (3) The
controversy over the cost of modernising
Prescott's apartment in Admiralty House has
echoes of the row that engulfed Derry Irvine, the
Lord Chancellor, who was criticised after it was
revealed that his office had spent pounds 59,000
on wallpaper for his official residence in the
House of Lords. (4) Prescott's bill brings to
pounds 1.8 million the amount cabinet ministers
have spent on improvements to their official
accommodation since Labour came to power. (5)
Critics estimated that the amount of new carpet
in Prescott's apartment was enough to cover 'an
average-sized municipal swimming pool'. (6)
'That's an awful lot of carpet,' said the
Conservative's environment spokesman, Archie
Norman. (7) 'It's just typical of somebody who is
making the most of the trappings of office. (8)
The refurbishment bill is the latest in a long
line of rows about Prescott's lifestyle. (9) The
deputy prime minister was nicknamed 'Two Jags'
after it was revealed that he had use of two such
cars and he has also been teased about his
five-bedroom house in his Hull constituency,
which is known locally as Prescott Towers. (10)
But a government spokesman defended the
refurbishment, saying
59
Expectations about what makes news BBC and
Foreign Office clash over euro screening The
government was embroiled in a fresh row with the
BBC yesterday after a Foreign Office official was
ejected from a special screening of a television
documentary which takes a hard-hitting look at
Britain's stance on the euro. We value
our editorial independence and have to protect
that principle in the same way that newspapers
do.
60

• Conclusions
• language as a social phenomenon and the basis of
  corpus work
• cultural key words (cultural and textual context
  most visible)
• textual key words (functions in texts, text has
  purpose, link between function of word and text
  not so obvious)
• computer key words help study of both types of
  key words
• value system of society in texts, news values