The individual and the group from a corpus perspective
The connection between the individual and the group has been a recurring issue since the earliest investigations into the nature of language. The contribution made here is to provide some empirical data on individual differences in the production of phrases and constructions. For this purpose, we examine some aspects of the speech of five White House press secretaries. The results show that individual speakers reuse favoured constructions and routines, leading to a clear disparity in the frequency of common lexical and grammatical patterns among the different press secretaries. Investigating the extent of idiolectal variation provides a baseline for assessing corpus results based on aggregate data and for understanding the connection between the individual and the group.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The individual and the group
- 2.1Research on individual speech
- 2.2Individuals and groups in corpus linguistics
- 3.Results
- 3.1Negation
- 3.2Present perfect
- 3.3Correspondence analysis
- 4.Conclusion
-
Notes
-
References
References
Baayen, H.
2008 Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R. Cambridge: CUP.


Baker, P.
2010 Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: EUP.

Brezina, V. & Meyerhoff, M.
Chomsky, N.
1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Dorian, N. C.
1994 Varieties of variation in a very small place: Social homogeneity, prestige norms, andlinguistic variation.
Language 70(4): 631–696.


Elsness, J.
2013 Gender, culture and language: Evidence from language corpora about development of cultural differences between English-speaking countries. In
English Corpus Linguistics: Variation in Time, Space and Genre,
G. Andersen &
B. Kristin (eds), 113–138. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Fischer, J. L.
1964 Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. In
Language and Culture in Society: A Reader in Linguistics and Anthropology,
D. Hymes &
O. Werner (eds), 483–488. New York NY: Harper & Row.

Gauchat, L.
1905 L’unité phonetique dans le patois d’une commune. In
Aus Romanischen Sprachen and Literaturen: Festschrift Heinrich Mort,
L. P. Betz (ed.), 175–232. Halle: Max Niemeyer.

Goldberg, A.
2006 Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: OUP.

Jakobson, R.
1971 Studies on Child Language and Aphasia. The Hague: Mouton.


Johnstone, B.
1999 Uses of Southern speech by contemporary Texas women.
Journal of Sociolinguistics 3: 505–522.


Johnstone, B.
2000 The individual voice in language.
Annual Review of Anthropology 29: 405–424.


Johnstone, B. & Bean, J.
1997 Self-expression and linguistic variation.
Language in Society 26(2): 221–246.


Langacker, R. W.
1987 Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.

Le Page, R. B. & Tabouret-Keller, A.
1985 Acts of Identity: Creole-based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity.Cambridge: CUP.

Milroy, L.
1987 Language and Social Networks. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Patrick, P. L.
2002 The speech community. In
Handbook of Language Variation and Change,
J. K. Chambers,
P. Trudgill &
N. Schilling-Estes (eds), 573–598. Oxford: Blackwell.

Pollard, C. & Sag, I. A.
1994 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Rayson, P.
2008 Wmatrix: a web-based corpus processing environment. Computing Department, Lancaster University.
[URL] (7 August 2017).
Sapir, E.
1973 Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. Berkeley CA: University of California Press

Saussure, F.
1985 The Linguistic Sign. In
Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology,
R. E. Innis (ed.), 24–46. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.

Talmy, L.
2000 Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Vol. 1. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

Teubert, W.
2010 Meaning, Discourse and Society. Cambridge: CUP.


Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Statham, Simon & Rocío Montoro
2019.
The year’s work in stylistics 2018.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 28:4
► pp. 354 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 may 2023. 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.