RE: [Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life

From: Mcenery, Tony (eiaamme@exchange.lancs.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 15:10:09 MET DST

  • Next message: Mike Maxwell: "Re: [Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life"

    Hi Martin,
     
    This is an interesting post, because I suppose it highlights the question 'do semantic prosodies really matter?', in the sense that can people really understand/infer on the basis of them rather than simply reproduce them. What effect will reading this advert have on most people? Will they view the meaning as 'odd' or other than what we guess the bank intended any more than the might (or might not) find the phrases 'cause joy' and 'cause happiness' odd because of the prevailing semantic prosody of the words/phrases involved. I have always been a bit of a fan of semantic prosodies etc. but I have wondered from time to time whether they actually matter in processing terms, i.e. are semantic prosodies a purely productive phenomenon, or do they have an impact upon utterance interpretation? I am tempted to believe that they do have an influence on utterance interpretation, but would love to see more experimental evidence that shows it. This, by the way, is the perfect opportunity for all of you who have experimental evidence of the impact of semantic prosodies (preferences etc ..) on utterance interpretation to respond pointing out that I should have read your paper!
     
    Anyway, thanks for bringing this example up. Thoughts in haste,
     
    Tony

            -----Original Message-----
            From: owner-corpora@lists.uib.no on behalf of Martin Wynne
            Sent: Fri 17/10/2003 12:44
            To: CORPORA (E-mail)
            Cc:
            Subject: [Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life
            
            

            Barclays Bank need a corpus linguist. Has anyone else noticed and been
            surprised by the current advertising slogan for Barclayloan in the UK: "The
            personal loan with the personal price"?
            (e.g. at
            http://www.personal.barclays.co.uk/BRC1/jsp/brccontrol?site=pfs&task=article
            group&value=2522&target=_self)

            For me, if someone pays a "personal price" for taking out a loan, it means
            they lose their house, or they get their legs broken. So, of course, I
            looked it up in a corpus to check my intuitions.

            The Bank of English (450 million words) has 18 examples, all unremittingly
            negative:

              <dt> 09 May 2001 </dt> <p> The Queen will pay a heavy personal price for
            assenting yesterday to Tony Blair's election
             <p> It was Burleigh's sixth book in the genre, but the personal price was
            almost too high. Now he has drawn a line. `I'
                       Now I feel sorry for him. He has paid a high personal price." <p>
            Findlay, who stepped down as vice-chairman
            wealthy man. After ruling out retirement, he paid a big personal price to
            join PA. Under a shareholder agreement with
              in the House of Commons, and for this he paid a heavy personal price. But,
            as Eden said at the time of his own
             on Cell Block H. But the actress also lets you see the personal price this
            woman has paid. A fierce proponent of the
            a tennis court and a multi-use sports surface. But at a personal price. It's
            true that perhaps I didn't know where to
                  s movie career is on the up and up, but at a high personal price.
            Garth Pearce spoke to the troubled star MONICA
              YEARS AFTER THE FAIRY-TALE WEDDING, WHAT HAS BEEN THE PERSONAL PRICE OF
            HER PUBLIC SUCCESS? BRENDA POLAN INVESTIGATES
               of the West, with some hapless missionaries paying a personal price of
            flagrant cultural in-sensitivity. It is a
              Roth. <p> David Roth (Attorney # Despite the enormous personal price, I do
            not for one moment regret the course of
                 what they decided, the decision would exact a high personal price. It
            was Del who had opened the Texas plant five
                in unfair price competition. It is also argued that personal price
            discrimination could increase. An agent may be
            native women's religious education could come at a high personal price, as
            when Huron converts were martyred by the
                to their families, they are now paying a very steep personal price. That
            has to change. The initiatives that we are
             Hayes admits the phenomenal success has come at a high personal price. The
            past year was `so stressful" he has
                  or corrupt. Tony Fitzgerald, QC, paid an enormous personal price for
            his efforts, including being criticised for
                       the ayes have it. <sect id=MONITOR> <hd> THE PERSONAL PRICE: THE
            GOOD IT DID: THE MISSED OPPORTUNI </hd>

            The pattern here seems to be that you usually pay a heavy personal price for
            making a bad decision.

            The British National Corpus has only two examples, but they are nice ones:

              Instability, with its consequent social and personal price, haunts the
            lives of the socially abnormal.
              Every citizen in Britain in due course - in my judgement, it will be
            sooner rather than later - will pay a real, direct and personal price for
            what the Prime Minister negotiated at Maastricht.

            It seems to me that unless Barclays intended to adopt an intimidatory
            approach to potential customers, the marketing department has got it badly
            wrong. Actually this isn't a case of corpora showing us the problem - their
            intuitions about the phrase should have told them this. All the corpus work
            is doing is to provide the evidence to back up the intuitions. It'd be
            interesting to see how successful the campaign is.

            Hopefully this will provide a nice example for showing how corpora can
            provide interesting and useful evidence. (Note that you need a pretty big
            corpus to get useful results for this example though.)

            But perhaps instead of mailing this list I should be suing Barclays for
            emotional distress caused by aggressive and menacing cash machines, or
            offering corpus linguistics consultancy to Barclays' marketing division...

            __
            Martin Wynne
            Head of the Oxford Text Archive

            Oxford University Computing Services
            13 Banbury Road
            Oxford
            UK - OX2 6NN
            Tel: +44 1865 283299
            Fax: +44 1865 273275
            martin.wynne@ota.ahds.ac.uk




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