Abstract
In Chap. 22, Jensen discusses how Cultural Linguistics can benefit from adding corpus-linguistic techniques to its list of research methods. A major aim of the corpus-linguistic approach is to identify association patterns in corpora such as collocations, colligations, and collostructions. The chapter provides an overview of extant corpus-linguistic research in which culture is addressed, after which Jensen presents some case studies of his own. Drawing on data from several corpora in Danish and varieties of English, he shows how corpus-linguistic analysis can reflect patterns of instantiations of cultural conceptualisations in naturalistic use of language. For example, he observes that corpus-linguistic analysis of collostructional relations in a Danish pseudocoordinating construction points to a Danish cultural schema where sitting, rather than standing, appears to be the prototypical bodily posture of verbal interaction. In another case study carried out by Jensen, a corpus of data from 20 national varieties of English is analysed for patterns of the use of the X make love to Y construction. He notes that, in all these varieties, the construction appears, to be associated with a heteronormative cultural schema of intercourse in which men are agents and women are patients. Overall, Jensen convincingly argues that corpus-linguistic and experimental methods can compliment each other and provide a platform for triangulation through naturalistic and experimental data sources.
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Notes
- 1.
While we will not go into detail with this, we use the term ‘construction’ in the sense embraced in construction grammar (i.e. Fillmore et al. 1988; Goldberg 1995; Croft 2001). Gries and Stefanowitsch (2004) and Jensen (2014, 2015a) have shown that construction grammar theory can be linked up with cultural cognition.
- 2.
For discussions of corpus compilation, see Kennedy (1998, pp. 70–85).
- 3.
For a discussion of concordancers, see McEnery and Hardie (2012, pp. 37–48).
- 4.
The reader is invited to read Sharifian’s section on ‘Research methods in Cultural Linguistics’ in Chap. 1 in this volume for more on methodology in Cultural Linguistics.
- 5.
For a follow-up study, see Elsness (2013).
- 6.
Fina (2011) does not overtly address cognition as such, but her findings can be interpreted as evidence for the instantiation of cultural cognition in the discourse of Trip Advisor reviews in English and Italian. Using cognitive–scientific terminology closer to that of Cultural Linguistics, one could argue that, in preferring more generic terms, Italian reviews operate with superordinate and basic levels of categorisation (Ungerer and Schmid 2006, pp. 84–113) as well as construal operations of schematic attention patterning (Croft and Wood 2000, pp. 57–60) while English ones operate with basic and subordinate levels of categorisation and construal operations of specific attention patterning.
- 7.
Gries and Stefanowitsch (2004) use the term ‘cultural frame’.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
For a list of contributors to Korpus2000, visit http://ordnet.dk/korpusdk/fakta/korpusser/tekstleverandorer_k2000.
- 11.
For a discussion of the advantages of log-transformation, see Stefanowitsch and Gries (2005, p. 7).
- 12.
For a discussion of semantic prosody as such, see Stewart (2010).
- 13.
This expression is quite euphemistic compared to many other ways in which intercourse can be linguistically encoded in English. A comparison of different expressions of intercourse to see whether they differ in terms of gender/animacy-specifications of AGENTS and PATIENTS would definitely be interesting. However, that would be beyond the scope of this particular chapter, and we shall not pursue that here.
- 14.
For instance, in varieties spoken in territories where Mandarin Chinese is an L1, there may be crosslinguistic influence from the Mandarin cognate of X make love to Y, in which the preposition is closer to with than to to. Thanks to Jesper Bonderup Frederiksen for pointing this out to me.
- 15.
That said, a perusal of the volumes of the International Journal of Language and Culture that have been published so far, as well as some of the chapters in the present volume, will reveal that corpus-linguistic methodology is finding its place in the world of Cultural Linguistics.
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Appendix: Glossary of Danish V2 Verbs
Appendix: Glossary of Danish V2 Verbs
bilde = ‘imagine’/‘make believe’/‘believe’, brække = ‘break’, chatte = ‘chat’, dø = ‘die’, drikke = ‘drink’, drømme = ‘dream’, duve = ‘pitch’, feje = ‘sweep’, flyde = ‘float’, foretage = ‘make’/‘do’, forhandle = ‘negotiate’, fundere = ‘ponder’, gemme = ‘hide’, gispe = ‘gasp’, glæde = ‘please’/‘look forward’, glo = ‘gawk’, høre = ‘hear’, kigge = ‘look’, krybe = ‘creep’, læne = ‘lean’, læse = ‘read’, lave = ‘make’, lege = ‘play’, lure = ‘lurk’/‘observe’, lytte = ‘listen’, mangle = ‘need’/‘miss’, overveje = ‘consider’, parlamentere = ‘discuss’/‘negotiate’/‘parlay’, råbe = ‘yell’, rode = ‘make a mess’, rydde = ‘clear’/‘clean up’, sige = ‘say’, skrige = ‘scream’, skrive = ‘write’, skulle = ‘should’, slås = ‘fight’, slumre = ‘slumber’, sole = ‘revel in’/‘enjoy the sunlight’, sove = ‘sleep’, spise = ‘eat’, sprælle = ‘wiggle’/‘writhe’, tænke = ‘think’, trække = ‘pull’, trippe = ‘shuffle about’, tro = ‘think’/‘believe’, tumle = ‘tumble’, ulme = ‘smoulder’, vaske = ‘wash’, vinke = ‘wave’, vippe = ‘tilt’, vride = ‘twist’.
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Jensen, K.E. (2017). Corpora and Cultural Cognition: How Corpus-Linguistic Methodology Can Contribute to Cultural Linguistics. In: Sharifian, F. (eds) Advances in Cultural Linguistics. Cultural Linguistics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4056-6_22
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