[Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life

[ctribble at webline.pl]

A Webcorp search throws up a lot of instances of personal price that are
pretty neutral. A very quick eyeballing  of these results throws up either
theabsence of an article or an indefinite article in most of these ... so
there's acolligation / semantic prosody thing going on here as well.  There are
lots ofthe negative instances, but also many like the ones below:

for FREE until it sells! For more information on guide personal price
watercraftcall 734-668-7155. 1295 Waterways Dr., Suite 300, Ann Arbor
vides beamer video phone the ultimate product for both personal price video
phone and business free video phone.
The Motorola V66 is available for purchase with easy4U personal price plans,
plans for Business and Leisure, and Canadian One Rate
: Once you qualified for discount and logged in - your personal price counted
with discount applied. Availability : If item is in stock
               ASE NOTE: Do not use this form to get a personal price
               request /quote. To receive a personal quote, click her please
er square meter-based co-location, we can create you a personal price
calculation based on your demands of space, power supply and

If the Barclays text had read something like "a personal price for your
personalloan" I think that Martin might not have thought it was unusual.

One of the issues for me with semantic prosody (a notion I continue to find
intriguing) is that it's contextually variable.  "International" is
negative in greenpolitics discourse - it's positive if you're trying to present your
consultancyexperience in bids to INGOs. Likewise with "personal price".  In a commercial
context it's postive and goes along with personal service.  In personal
narratives, price shifts into a negative prosody - as does cost (as in "pay a
price" / at a personal cost).

Thanks to Martin for allowing a moment's distraction from other concerns!

Best

Chris

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