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Lexical Priming: Applications and advances
Edited by Michael Pace-Sigge and Katie J. Patterson
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 79] 2017
► pp. 189–229

Lexical priming and register variation

| São Paulo Catholic University

Lexical priming predicts that repeated encounters with lexical patterns will prime users for register awareness (Hoey 2013: 3344). To verify this prediction, this chapter reports on a study that determined the dimensions of collocation in American English, which are the parameters underlying the use of collocations in spoken and written text. The method was inspired by the multidimensional framework for register variation analysis introduced by Biber in the 1980s. The corpus used was the 450-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA, 1990–2012 version). The most characteristic collocations of each register in COCA (spoken [American radio and television programs], magazine, newspaper, academic, and fiction) were computed using the logDice coefficient (Rychly 2008). These were then entered in a factor analysis, which yielded the statistical groupings of collocation across the registers. Nine dimensions were identified and are described in this chapter. The relationship between collocation and register was tested statistically through the dimensions, and the results suggested that register could predict the collocations (via the dimensions) between 39% and 67% of the time, which seems to lend support to the hypothesis that users are primed for register, as far as AmE collocations are concerned.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
  • 3.Dimensions of collocation in American English
    • 3.1Dimension 1: Literate discourse
    • 3.2Dimension 2: Oral discourse
    • 3.3Dimension 3: Objects, people, and actions
    • 3.4Dimension 4: Colloquial and informal language use
    • 3.5Dimension 5: Organizations and the government
    • 3.6Dimension 6: Politics and current affairs
    • 3.7Dimension 7: Feelings and emotions
    • 3.8Dimension 8: Cooking
    • 3.9Dimension 9: Education research
  • 4.Assigning collocations to register categories based on their MD profile
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
  • Author query
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.79.08ber
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