Local Grammar and Register Variation

Monika Bednarek

Department of English Linguistics, Augsburg

Sydney Research Seminar, 26 May 2006

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There’s something chilling about the inevitability of “collateral damage”, which happens in every war, just or otherwise.

(Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald Magazine, April 29, 2006)

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there is something irritating about the way Phil sits there there is something abnormal about their opiate receptors . there is something suspect about the property there is something crude about sex. there is something special about complex … things. there is something wonderful about make-believe. there is something different about him. there is something peculiar about Harley's contract there is something empty about such shots. there is something unusual about me. there is something bad about the way they look there is something strange about Mr Hyde, something evil. there is something tragic about this. there is something odd about the expression imperator noster there is something sexy about Sue Lawley in real life there is something paradoxical about this aspiration

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Outline

1. An introduction to evaluation

2. Local grammar

3. A local grammar of evaluation

4. Local grammar and register variation

5. Conclusions

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1. An Introduction to Evaluation

“the broad cover term for the expression of the speaker’s or writer’s attitude or stance towards, view point on, or feelings about the entities or propositions that he or she is talking about. That attitude may relate to certainty or obligation or desirability or any of a number of other sets of values.” (Thompson & Hunston 2000: 5)

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Approaches to Evaluation

• EAP

• SFL: Appraisal

• Stance analyses

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2. Local Grammar

• Deals with ‘leftovers’• Sub-language descriptions• “the items described by local grammars

[are] small (but not insignificant) sub-languages, and sub-language descriptions [are] extended local grammars” (Hunston & Sinclair 2000: 77)

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• Transparent category labels

• Application in automated parsers

• Cobuild dictionary definitions, newspaper headlines, the language of evaluation

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A local grammar of evaluation

• Evaluative patterns with adjectives

Pattern 1: Evaluative category Thing evaluated

it It It

link verb was seemed

adjective group certain important

finite or non-finite clause that he was much to blame. to trust her judgement.

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• Patterns: local grammar of evaluation

• Either exclusively or usually with evaluative or subjective adjectives

• Automated parsing more or less successful

• Applied mainly in EAP

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3. Local Grammar and Register Variation

• The corpus (Handout)

• 10 newspapers, 10 topics

• The software (Scott’s Wordsmith)

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• Link verbs analysed: be, look, appear, seem, remain, leave

• General nouns analysed: thing, point, kind, sort

• Patterns not analysed: pseudo-clefts, attributive adjectives

• 8 Patterns analysed (Handout)

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Doing the decent thing

If you meet people from other countries, they understand what you mean if you say to do the legal thing, or the just thing, or the right thing, in certain ways, but it seems to me to be a slightly soggy, but nevertheless very important, British concept of doing the decent thing, which may be just, may be legal, may not be either of those two, but the British man has a very clear sense of what it entails.

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Doing the decent thing

Google Australia:

“Do the decent thing”: 619 (UK: 32,300)

“Doing the decent thing”: 106 (UK: 503)

“Does the decent thing”: 76 (UK: 385)

“Did the decent thing”: 139 (UK: 661)

“Done the decent thing”: 317 (UK: 539)

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5. Conclusions

• Local grammar and variation?

• ‘Recycled’ talk

• Evaluative categories and evaluating responses

• Lexis?

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Lexis: Broadsheets

• 62 ‘evaluative’ adjectives

• 14 emotional/mental adjectives

• 2 evaluative/emotional

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Lexis: Tabloids

• 32 ‘evaluative’ adjectives

• 31 emotional/mental

• 1 evaluative/emotional

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Lexis: Comparison

Broadsheets Tabloids

‘intense’ anxious, jubilant, baffled

delighted, distraught, euphoric, incandescent, incensed, livid, puzzled

metaphorical (+ intense)

-- dead inside, destroyed, shattered

informal fed-up with, stressed

cool with

formal -- incandescent, saddened

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Thank you