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1、Corpora in sociolinguistic studies,Corpus Linguistics Richard Xiao ,Aims of this session,Lecture Corpora vs. sociolinguistics Some examples of corpus-based sociolinguistic studies Case study of amplifiers in the BNCLab session Using BNCweb to explore sociolinguistic variation in the BNC,Corpora vs.
2、sociolinguistics,Sociolinguistics has traditionally focused on phonological and grammatical variations in terms of features and rules (de Beaugrande 1998: 133) The use of corpus data can bring sociolinguistics “some interesting prospects” (de Beaugrande 1998: 137) “Real data also indicate that much
3、of the socially relevant variation within a language does not concern the phonological and syntactic variations” (de Beaugrande 1998: 133),Corpora vs. sociolinguistics,“Corpus can help sociolinguistics engage with issues and variations in usage that are less tidy and abstract than phonetics, phonolo
4、gy, and grammar, and more proximate to the socially vital issues of the daycorpus data can help us monitor the ongoing collocational approximation and contestation of terms that refer to the social conditions themselves and discursively position these in respect to the interests of various social gr
5、oups” (de Beaugrande 1998: 135),Corpora vs. sociolinguistics,Sociolinguistics has traditionally been based upon empirical data, but the use of standard corpora in this field has been limited the operationalization of sociolinguistic theory into measurable categories suitable for corpus research the
6、lack of sociolinguistic metadata encoded in currently available corpora the lack of sociolinguistically rigorous sampling in corpus construction Corpus-based sociolinguistic studies have so far largely been restricted to the area of gender studies at the lexical level,Some examples,Caldas-Coulthard
7、and Moon (1999) Women were frequently modified by adjectives indicating physical appearance (e.g. beautiful, pretty and lovely) whereas men were frequently modified by adjectives indicating importance (e.g. key, big, great and main) Hunston (1999) “Right” modifying “man” is work-related (the right m
8、an for the job) whereas the typical meaning of right co-occurring with women is man-related (the right woman for this man),Some examples,Holmes and Sigley (2002) used Brown/LOB and Frown/FLOB/WWC to track social change in patterns of gender marking between 1961 and 1991 “while women continue to be t
9、he linguistically marked gender, there is some evidence to support a positive interpretation of many of the patterns identified in the most recent corpora, since the relevant marked contexts reflect inroads made by women into occupational domains previously considered as exclusively male.” (ibid: 26
10、1),Some examples,Baker (2004) undertook a corpus-based keyword analysis of the debates over a Bill to equalize the age of sexual consent for gay men with the age of consent for heterosexual sex at sixteen years in the House of Lords in the UK between 1998 and 2000 homosexual was associated with acts
11、 whereas gay was associated with identities Those who argued for the reform focused on equality and tolerance, those who argued against it linked homosexuality to danger, ill health, crime and unnatural behaviour,Case study,How do the Britons use amplifiers: A sociolinguistic perspective Based on Xi
12、ao, R. and Tao, H. (2006) A corpus-based sociolinguistic study of amplifiers in British English. Sociolinguistic Studies 1(2): 241-273,Amplifiers in sociolinguistic studies,Amplifiers such as very, so, absolutely and totally are a common type of intensifiers that semantically function to increase in
13、tensification Earlier studies have largely concentrated on the structural and semantic properties of amplifiers Since the 1970s numerous studies focusing on amplifiers have been conducted in the areas of gendered language and language and power,Amplifiers in sociolinguistic studies,Stoffel (1901:101
14、) and Jespersen (1922:250) observed impressionistically that the use of amplifiers was characteristic of womens speech Robin Lakoff, a pioneer in language and gender, draws attention to womens use of amplifiers (and hedges) as a prominent feature of “powerless language” (Lakoff 1973, 1975, 1990) Wom
15、en often use expressions such as I like him so much so as to “weasel on” the intensity of their emotions, and this effect is achieved through the semantic vagueness of amplifiers such as so (Lakoff 1975:55),Case study of amplifiers,Xiao and Tao (2006) provide a comprehensive account of (33) common a
16、mplifiers in British English as mirrored by the attested language use in the 100M word BNC How differently, if at all, do men and women use amplifiers, in quantitative and qualitative terms? Do ones age, social class and education affect their use of amplifiers? Are the gender and age of audience relevant parameters of gendered language? How are amplifiers used differently in different discourse modes and registers? In what way has the use of amplifiers developed over the past decades?,
