Part of
Diachronic Corpus PragmaticsEdited by Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker and Jukka Tuominen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 243] 2014
► pp. 277–302
Edited by Irma Taavitsainen, Andreas H. Jucker and Jukka Tuominen
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 243] 2014
► pp. 277–302
Exploring verbal aggression in English historical texts using USAS
The possibilities, the problems and potential solutions
This article investigates the ways in which we might use the UCREL Semantic Annotation System (USAS) to explore pragmatic phenomena relating to verbal aggression within Old Bailey trial texts dating from the late eighteenth century. Specifically, I demonstrate how this automated system can be used to identify potential leads into what I have called an aggression space, by way of the words, phrases and multi-word units captured by six USAS semantic-field tags: speech acts (Q2.2), im/politeness (S1.2.4+/-), (lack of) respect (S7.2+/-) and violence/anger (E3-). As these semtags, as they are known, have been designed with modern data in mind, I also discuss the problems which arise when using the tool to explore historical courtroom proceedings, and outline some potential solutions to these problems.
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Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
Archer, Dawn
2017. (Im)politeness in Legal Settings. In The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistic (Im)politeness, ► pp. 713 ff. 
2017. Context and historical (socio-)pragmatics twenty years on. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 18:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
Archer, Dawn & Cliff Lansley
2015. Public appeals, news interviews and crocodile tears: an argument for multi-channel analysis. Corpora 10:2 ► pp. 231 ff.
Archer, Dawn & Bethan Malory
2017. Tracing facework over time using semi-automated methods. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Landone, Elena
2022. Corpus Analysis. In Methodology in Politeness Research [Advances in (Im)politeness Studies, ], ► pp. 217 ff.
Taylor, Charlotte
2022. The affordances of metaphor for diachronic corpora & discourse analysis. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 27:4 ► pp. 451 ff.
Włodarczyk, Matylda
2015. Nineteenth-century institutional (im)politeness. In Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English [Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics, 4], ► pp. 153 ff.
[no author supplied]
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