[Corpora-List] Corpus linguistics in everyday life

[Mcenery, Tony]

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 at 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 at ota.ahds.ac.uk