Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus LinguisticsVol. 14:1 (2009) ► pp.29–59
Keyness
Words, parts-of-speech and semantic categories in the character-talk of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
This paper explores keywords, key part-of-speech categories and key semantic categories and their role in text analysis. The first part of the paper addresses a set of issues relating to the definition of keywords and their history, the settings used in deriving keywords, the choice of reference corpora, the different kinds of keyword that emerge in one’s results and the dispersion of keywords in one’s data. It argues, amongst other things, that keywords are the same as style markers, and that three types of keyword can be identified: interpersonal, textual and ideational. The second part of the paper addresses the question of what precisely is to be gained from analysing key part-of-speech or key semantic domains in addition to keywords. It shows that whilst in general they add little to a keyword analysis, which is in any case methodologically more robust, there are some significant specific benefits. Answers to many of the questions posed in this paper are illustrated by a study of character-talk from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, and in this way this paper also makes a contribution to the fledging field of corpus stylistics.
Keywords: keywords, key parts-of-speech, key semantic domains, style markers, style
Cited by
Cited by 102 other publications
Ajšić, Adnan
2021. Data and Methods. In Language and Ethnonationalism in Contemporary West Central Balkans, ► pp. 47 ff. 
Ambele, Eric A. & Richard Watson Todd
2022. Translanguaging patterns in everyday urban conversations in Cameroon. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2022:273 ► pp. 181 ff.
Ancarno, Clyde
2020. Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies. In The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies, ► pp. 165 ff.
Archer, Dawn & Alison Findlay
2020. Chapter 3. Keywords that characterise Shakespeare’s (anti)heroes and villains. In Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 97], ► pp. 32 ff.
Archer, Dawn & Mathew Gillings
2020. Depictions of deception: A corpus-based analysis of five Shakespearean characters. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:3 ► pp. 246 ff.
AYDİNGULER, Zeynep & Meltem MUŞLU
2022. A Corpus-Based Analysis of Virginia Woolf and Arnold Bennett. Söylem Filoloji Dergisi 7:1 ► pp. 237 ff.
Bednarek, Monika
2018. Language and Television Series,
Birchfield, Alexandra & Rolando Coto-Solano
2021. “I am not that I play” – The use of hypercorrection in the performance of gender by Shakespeare’s ‘breeches’ parts. Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 7:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Blaxter, Tam T.
2014. Applying keyword analysis to gendered language in the Íslendingasögur. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 37:2 ► pp. 169 ff.
Boas, Evert van Emde
2022. Mind Style, Cognitive Stylistics, and Ēthopoiia in Lysias. Trends in Classics 14:2 ► pp. 233 ff.
Bridle, Marcus
2018. Male blues lyrics 1920 to 1965: A corpus based analysis. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 27:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Brocklebank, Paul
2015. IDENTIFYING DISTRIBUTIONAL PATTERNS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICAL ESSAYS. Discourse and Interaction 8:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Brooke, Julian, Adam Hammond & Graeme Hirst
2016. Using Models of Lexical Style to Quantify Free Indirect Discourse in Modernist Fiction. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities ► pp. fqv072 ff.
Burkette, Allison & Robin Skeates
2022. Words that Archaeologists Choose. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 35:1 ► pp. 85 ff.
Csomay, Eniko & Ryan Young
2021. Language use in pop culture over three decades. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 26:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Culpeper, Jonathan & Qian Kan
2020. Communicative Styles, Rapport, and Student Engagement: An Online Peer Mentoring Scheme. Applied Linguistics 41:5 ► pp. 756 ff.
Cvrček, Václav & Masako U. Fidler
2019. Chapter 5. More than keywords. In Political Discourse in Central, Eastern and Balkan Europe [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 84], ► pp. 93 ff.
Anna De Fina & Alexandra Georgakopoulou
2020. The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies,
Demmen, Jane
2020. Issues and challenges in compiling a corpus of Early Modern English plays for comparison with those of William Shakespeare. ICAME Journal 44:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Dryer, Dylan B.
2019. Divided by Primes: Competing Meanings among Writing Studies’ Keywords.
College English
81:3 ► pp. 214 ff.
Ebner, Carmen
2016. Language guardian BBC? Investigating the BBC's language advice in its 2003 News Styleguide. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37:3 ► pp. 308 ff.
Egbert, Jesse & Doug Biber
2019. Incorporating text dispersion into keyword analyses. Corpora 14:1 ► pp. 77 ff.
Fialho, Olivia, Sonia Zyngier & Michael Burke
2016. Chapter 1. Empirical approaches to the study of literature in learning environments. In Scientific Approaches to Literature in Learning Environments [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 24], ► pp. 1 ff.
Fidler, Masako & Václav Cvrček
2018. Going Beyond “Aboutness”: A Quantitative Analysis of Sputnik Czech Republic. In Taming the Corpus [Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ], ► pp. 195 ff.
Fidler, Masako & Václav Cvrček
2019. Keymorph analysis, or how morphosyntax informs discourse. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 15:1 ► pp. 39 ff.
Freake, Rachelle, Guillaume Gentil & Jaffer Sheyholislami
2011. A bilingual corpus-assisted discourse study of the construction of nationhood and belonging in Quebec. Discourse & Society 22:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Fuster-Márquez, Miguel
2020. «Con tan enfermo cerebro»: Fraseología recurrente en Corazón tan Blanco de Javier Marías. Círculo de Lingüística Aplicada a la Comunicación 83 ► pp. 41 ff.
Gast, Volker, Christian Wehmeier & Dirk Vanderbeke
2023. A Register-Based Study of Interior Monologue in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Literature 3:1 ► pp. 42 ff.
Geluso, Joe & Roz Hirch
Ha, Myung-Jeong
2013. Corpus-Based Literary Analysis. The Journal of the Korea Contents Association 13:9 ► pp. 440 ff.
Heo, Tak Sung, Yu Seop Kim, Jeong Myeong Choi, Yeong Seok Jeong, Soo Young Seo, Jun Ho Lee, Jin Pyeong Jeon & Chulho Kim
2020. Prediction of Stroke Outcome Using Natural Language Processing-Based Machine Learning of Radiology Report of Brain MRI. Journal of Personalized Medicine 10:4 ► pp. 286 ff.
Hou, Zhide
2018. The American Dream meets the Chinese Dream: a corpus-driven phraseological analysis of news texts. Text & Talk 38:3 ► pp. 317 ff.
Hubbard, Hilton
2010. Stance and style: A corpus-driven perspective on television coverage of the 2OO9 South African general election. Language Matters 41:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Ikeo, Reiko
2016. An analysis of viewpoints by the use of frequent multi-word sequences in DH Lawrence’sLady Chatterley’s Lover. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 25:2 ► pp. 159 ff.
Janda, Laura A., Masako Fidler, Václav Cvrček & Anna Obukhova
2023. The case for case in Putin’s speeches. Russian Linguistics 47:1 ► pp. 15 ff.
Jantunen, Jarmo
2017. Lexical and morphological priming. In Lexical Priming [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 79], ► pp. 254 ff.
Kim, Chulho, Vivienne Zhu, Jihad Obeid, Leslie Lenert & John Shawe-Taylor
2019. Natural language processing and machine learning algorithm to identify brain MRI reports with acute ischemic stroke. PLOS ONE 14:2 ► pp. e0212778 ff.
Lin, Yen-Liang
2015. Using key part-of-speech analysis to examine spoken discourse by Taiwanese EFL learners. ReCALL 27:3 ► pp. 304 ff.
Lin, Yen-Liang (Eric)
2017. Keywords, semantic domains and intercultural competence in the British and Taiwanese Teenage Intercultural Communication Corpus. Corpora 12:2 ► pp. 279 ff.
Liu, Yanhong, Stephen May & Lawrence Jun Zhang
2023. The ideological underpinnings in university English textbooks in China: A critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics approach. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development ► pp. 1 ff.
Lugea, Jane & Brian Walker
2023. Fictional Character. In Stylistics, ► pp. 145 ff.
Lugea, Jane & Brian Walker
2023. Mind Style. In Stylistics, ► pp. 201 ff.
Lugea, Jane & Brian Walker
2023. Style: Text, Cognition and Corpora. In Stylistics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Lutzky, Ursula
2024. “Doesn’t Really Answer My Question . . .”: Exploring Customer Service Interactions on Twitter. International Journal of Business Communication 61:1 ► pp. 92 ff.
Mahlberg, Michaela
2012. Corpus Analysis of Literary Texts. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Mahlberg, Michaela, Catherine Smith & Simon Preston
2015. Phrases in literary contexts. In Current Issues in Phraseology [Benjamins Current Topics, 74], ► pp. 35 ff.
Mahlberg, Michaela, Peter Stockwell, Johan de Joode, Catherine Smith & Matthew Brook O'Donnell
2016. CLiC Dickens: novel uses of concordances for the integration of corpus stylistics and cognitive poetics. Corpora 11:3 ► pp. 433 ff.
Mahlberg, Michaela, Viola Wiegand, Peter Stockwell & Anthony Hennessey
2019. Speech-bundles in the 19th-century English novel. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 28:4 ► pp. 326 ff.
Malmström, Hans, Diane Pecorari & Philip Shaw
2018. Words for what? Contrasting university students' receptive and productive academic vocabulary needs. English for Specific Purposes 50 ► pp. 28 ff.
Mastropierro, Lorenzo
2018. Key clusters as indicators of translator style. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 30:2 ► pp. 240 ff.
Mastropierro, Lorenzo & Michaela Mahlberg
2022. Key words and translated cohesion in Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and one of its Italian
translations. English Text Construction ► pp. 78 ff.
McIntyre, Dan
2010. The year’s work in stylistics 2009. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 19:4 ► pp. 396 ff.
McIntyre, Dan
2012. Prototypical Characteristics of Blockbuster Movie Dialogue: A Corpus Stylistic Analysis. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 54:3 ► pp. 402 ff.
McIntyre, Dan
2012. Corpora and Literature. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
McIntyre, Dan
2013. Language and Style in David Peace’s 1974: a Corpus Informed Analysis. Etudes de stylistique anglaise :4 ► pp. 133 ff.
Meng, Lingzi & Feng Pan
2022. Using corpora to reveal style in translation: The case of The Song of Everlasting Sorrow. Frontiers in Psychology 13
Meng, Yingying, Yuwei Wan & Chunyu Kit
2023. Du Fu’s conspicuous negativity and Li Bai’s hidden positivity: a sentiment comparison and exploration. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2016. A corpus linguistic study of the situatedness of English pop song lyrics. Corpora 11:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2016. Prevalent Discourses in ESC Lyrics. In Language, Normativity and Europeanisation, ► pp. 279 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2018. Corpus linguistics in language and sexuality studies. Journal of Language and Sexuality 7:2 ► pp. 145 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2021. Corpus-Based Considerations on Critical Literacy in ELT: The Linguistic Representation of Ricky Martin in the News Media. In Intersectional Perspectives on LGBTQ+ Issues in Modern Language Teaching and Learning, ► pp. 217 ff.
Moustafa, Basant S. M.
2022. A comparative corpus stylistic analysis of thematization and characterization in Gordimer’s My Son’s Story and Coetzee’s Disgrace
. Open Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 46 ff.
Murphy, Bróna & María Palma-Fahey
2018. Exploring the construction of the Irish Mammy in ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’. Pragmatics and Society 9:2 ► pp. 297 ff.
Murphy, Sean
2015. I will proclaim myself what I am: Corpus stylistics and the language of Shakespeare’s soliloquies. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 24:4 ► pp. 338 ff.
Murphy, Sean, Dawn Archer & Jane Demmen
2020. Mapping the links between gender, status and genre in Shakespeare’s plays. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:3 ► pp. 223 ff.
Nieto Caballero, Guadalupe
2023. Benito Pérez Galdós a través de las humanidades digitales: propuesta metodológica para el análisis literario con herramientas de corpus. In Literatura, didáctica y humanidades digitales: aportaciones para la docencia y la investigación,
Norledge, Jessica
2022. Towards a Poetics of Dystopia. In The Language of Dystopia [Palgrave Studies in Language, Literature and Style, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
Obeid, Jihad S, Jennifer Dahne, Sean Christensen, Samuel Howard, Tami Crawford, Lewis J Frey, Tracy Stecker & Brian E Bunnell
2020. Identifying and Predicting Intentional Self-Harm in Electronic Health Record Clinical Notes: Deep Learning Approach. JMIR Medical Informatics 8:7 ► pp. e17784 ff.
Obeid, Jihad S, Matthew Davis, Matthew Turner, Stephane M Meystre, Paul M Heider, Edward C O'Bryan & Leslie A Lenert
2020. An artificial intelligence approach to COVID-19 infection risk assessment in virtual visits: A case report. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 27:8 ► pp. 1321 ff.
Palayon, Raymund T., Richard Watson Todd & Sompatu Vungthong
2022. From the temple of life to the temple of death: keyness analyses of the transitions of a cult. Corpora 17:3 ► pp. 331 ff.
Pojanapunya, Punjaporn & Richard Watson Todd
Pojprasat, Somboon
2022. A pragmatic analysis of Shylock’s use ofthouandyou. Open Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 496 ff.
Rayson, Paul & Amanda Potts
2020. Analysing Keyword Lists. In A Practical Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, ► pp. 119 ff.
Romaine, Suzanne
2010. 19th Century Key Words, Key Semantic Domains and Affect: “In the Rich Vocabulary of Love ‘Most Dearest’ be a True Superlative”. Studia Neophilologica 82:1 ► pp. 12 ff.
Ruano San Segundo, Pablo
2018. A Corpus-Based Approach to Waiting for Godot’s Stage Directions: A Comparison between the French and the English Version. In Voice and Discourse in the Irish Context, ► pp. 139 ff.
Sauro, Shannon & Björn Sundmark
2019. Critically examining the use of blog-based fanfiction in the advanced language classroom. ReCALL 31:01 ► pp. 40 ff.
Shahidul Islam, Mohammad
2023. Striking a paradoxical balance: Shakespearean insights for hospitality management. Tourism and Hospitality Research
Simon, Gábor
Sung, Sheng-Feng, Cheng-Yang Hsieh & Ya-Han Hu
2022. Early Prediction of Functional Outcomes After Acute Ischemic Stroke Using Unstructured Clinical Text: Retrospective Cohort Study. JMIR Medical Informatics 10:2 ► pp. e29806 ff.
Tabbert, Ulrike
2016. Naming and describing offenders and victims. In Language and Crime, ► pp. 43 ff.
Taylor, Charlotte
2013. Searching for similarity using corpus-assisted discourse studies. Corpora 8:1 ► pp. 81 ff.
Terblanche, Lize
2016. The language of stories: Modelling East African fiction and oral narratives. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 34:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Teresa Palmateer
2017. Corpus Analysis of Argumentative Essays from Macroscopic and Microscopic Perspectives. Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics 17:3 ► pp. 497 ff.
Tongjing, Wang, Evert Meijers & Huijuan Wang
2023. The multiplex relations between cities: a lexicon-based approach to detect urban systems. Regional Studies 57:8 ► pp. 1592 ff.
Tsai, Hui-Chu, Cheng-Yang Hsieh & Sheng-Feng Sung
2022. Application of machine learning and natural language processing for predicting stroke-associated pneumonia. Frontiers in Public Health 10
Tully, Cassandra S.
2023. Book Reviews: Estilística de corpus: Nuevos enfoques en el análisis de textos literarios. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 32:3 ► pp. 376 ff.
van Ostade, Ingrid Tieken-Boon
2013. Studying attitudes to English usage. English Today 29:4 ► pp. 3 ff.
VERONICO, N. TARRAYO
2018. BEAUTY IN BREVITY: CAPTURING THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF FLASH FICTION BY FILIPINO WRITERS. i-manager’s Journal on English Language Teaching 8:2 ► pp. 36 ff.
Villanueva, Louise S., Mary Aizel C. Dolom & Jennifer S. Belen
2018. Genre analysis of the “About Us” sections of Asian Association of Open Universities websites. Asian Association of Open Universities Journal 13:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Weninger, Csilla & Danyun Li
2023. Performing microcelebrity: Analyzing Papi Jiang's online persona through stance and style. Language in Society 52:2 ► pp. 263 ff.
Werner, Valentin
2019. Assessing hip-hop discourse: Linguistic realness and styling. Text & Talk 39:5 ► pp. 671 ff.
Werner, Valentin & Theresa Summer
Wu, Yuxi
2023. Discussion and Conclusions. In Media Representations of Macau’s Gaming Industry in Greater China, ► pp. 131 ff.
Wu, Yuxi
2023. Macroscopic Analysis on Macau’s Gaming Industry at the Semantic Level. In Media Representations of Macau’s Gaming Industry in Greater China, ► pp. 95 ff.
Wu, Yuxi
2023. News Discourse and Relevant Linguistic Studies. In Media Representations of Macau’s Gaming Industry in Greater China, ► pp. 13 ff.
Yang, Na & Zihe Wang
2022. Addressing as a gender-preferential way for suggestive selling in Chinese e-commerce live streaming discourse: A corpus-based approach. Journal of Pragmatics 197 ► pp. 43 ff.
Zare-ee, Abbas & Sheena Kuar
2012. Do Male Undergraduates Write More Argumentatively?. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 46 ► pp. 5787 ff.
전지은
2014. A study on key words analysis of the public and private discourse in Korean spoken language. Discourse and Cognition 21:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
전지은
2017. A Study on the Authenticity of the Dialogue in the Intermediate Korean Textbooks. Language Facts and Perspectives 41:null ► pp. 273 ff.
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.