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

From: Veronika Koller (Veronika.Koller@isis.wu-wien.ac.at)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2003 - 15:33:00 MET DST

  • Next message: Susan Hunston: "RE: [Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life"

    Dear Tony McEnery and other list members,

    another factor influencing utterance interpretation in this particular case
    may be social knowledge about what message a company wants to convey in an
    ad and what feelings/beliefs/behaviors it wants to trigger in the recipient
    of that persuasive text type. Given the recent focus on what could be
    called "synthetic relationships" especially in financial services
    advertising (banks casting themselves in the role of partner/lover/friend
    of their customers), this kind of knowledge could well offset default
    processing of semantic prosody.

    Best,
    Veronika Koller

    At 14:10 17.10.2003 +0100, Tony McEnery wrote:
    >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

    Dr. Veronika Koller
    Assistant Professor
    Department of English Business Communication
    Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
    Augasse 9
    A-1090 Vienna/Austria
    tel. ++43-1-31336 4068
    fax ++43-1-31336 747
    http://www.wu-wien.ac.at/inst/english/koller.html



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