Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus LinguisticsVol. 17:3 (2012) ► pp.295–324
Does semantic tagging identify cultural change in British and American English?
This paper explores the viability of automated semantic tagging as a tool of cultural analysis comparing American and British English using the Brown family of corpora. Pairs of corpora representing written language production from circa 1961, 1991 and 2006 were contrasted by comparing key semantic tags. This method was then evaluated in relation to three earlier studies which attempted to uncover cultural differences via assigning keywords to ad hoc categories. After outlining the differences found, we conclude that computerised semantic tagging can offer a wider reaching and more scientific comparison of language patterns. However, we suggest that this method is most appropriate as a starting point for a more in-depth cultural analysis, rather than as a final or certain indication of cultural change.
Keywords: semantic tagging, American, culture, diachronic change, British
Cited by (35)
Cited by 35 other publications
Chan, JJ & Mathew Gillings
2024. Constructions and representations of Chinese identity through England’s curatorial imagination: A corpus-assisted analysis. Research in Corpus Linguistics 12:1 ► pp. 114 ff. 
Hollmann, Willem B., Kazuko Fujimoto & Masahiro Kuroda
2024. Japanese EFL undergraduate students’ use of the epistemic modal verbs may, might, and could in academic writing. Language Learning in Higher Education 14:1 ► pp. 21 ff.
Liu, Yanhong, Lin An & Shan Chen
2024. Environmental Sustainability Education in Twelve Series of Chinese University English Language Textbooks. Sage Open 14:3
Todorovic, Natalija, Benedetto Lepori & Andrea Rocci
2024. Chapter 1. Plural conversations about argumentation. In Persuasion in Specialized Discourse [Argumentation in Context, 22], ► pp. 24 ff.
Zhao, Yaru & Jiayu Wang
2024. The newsworthiness of Gu Ailing: a comparative critical discourse analysis of Chinese and American media reports. Chinese Journal of Communication ► pp. 1 ff.
Aull, Laura
2023. Language patterns in secondary and postsecondary student writing. In Corpora and Rhetorically Informed Text Analysis [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 109], ► pp. 94 ff.
Baker, Paul
Duc, Huynh Quang
2023. Proposing a Semantic Tagging Model on Bilingual English Vietnamese Corpus. In Intelligent Systems and Networks [Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 752], ► pp. 526 ff.
Gillings, Mathew, Gerlinde Mautner & Paul Baker
2023. Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies,
Heritage, Frazer
2023. Introduction. In Incels and Ideologies [Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
Hou, Zhide & Qianni Peng
2023. The national security law for Hong Kong: a corpus-driven comparative study of media representations between China’s and Anglo-American English-language press. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1
Qian, Yubin
2023. Mining culture from professional discourse: a lexicon-based hybrid method. Language Resources and Evaluation 57:3 ► pp. 945 ff.
Shafi, Jawad, Rao Muhammad Adeel Nawab & Paul Rayson
2023. Semantic Tagging for the Urdu Language: Annotated Corpus and Multi-Target Classification Methods. ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing 22:6 ► pp. 1 ff.
Wu, Yuxi
2023. News Discourse and Relevant Linguistic Studies. In Media Representations of Macau’s Gaming Industry in Greater China, ► pp. 13 ff.
Krendel, Alexandra, Mark McGlashan & Veronika Koller
2022. The representation of gendered social actors across five manosphere communities on Reddit. Corpora 17:2 ► pp. 291 ff.
Pettersson-Traba, Daniela
2022. Ongoing semantic change in a modernising society: a look at some adjectives from the olfactory domain in the Corpus of Historical American English. Corpora 17:3 ► pp. 389 ff.
Prentice, Sheryl, Paul Rayson, Jo Knight, Mahmoud El-Haj & Solly Elstein
2022. A Domain Based Approach to Semantic Lexicon Expansion. International Journal of Lexicography 35:3 ► pp. 364 ff.
Clark, Stephen D. & Nik Lomax
2020. Linguistic and semantic factors in government e-petitions: A comparison between the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Government Information Quarterly 37:4 ► pp. 101523 ff.
Heritage, Frazer & Veronika Koller
Hobbs, Valerie
2020. The discourse of divorce in conservative Christian sermons. Critical Discourse Studies 17:2 ► pp. 193 ff.
O'Halloran, Kieran
2020. A posthumanist pedagogy using digital text analysis to enhance critical thinking in higher education. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 35:4 ► pp. 845 ff.
Palander-Collin, Minna & Minna Nevala
2020. Person reference and democratization in British English. Language Sciences 79 ► pp. 101265 ff.
Avila-Ledesma, Nancy E.
2019. “Believe My Word Dear Father that You Can’t Pick Up Money Here as Quick as the People at Home Thinks It”: Exploring Migration Experiences in Irish Emigrants’ Letters. Corpus Pragmatics 3:2 ► pp. 101 ff.
Hou, Zhide
2019. Using semantic tagging to examine the American Dream and the Chinese Dream. Semiotica 2019:227 ► pp. 145 ff.
Anthony, Laurence
2018. Introducing Fireant: A Freeware, Multiplatform Social Media Data-Analysis Tool. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 61:4 ► pp. 428 ff.
Murphy, M. Lynne
2018. American and British English: Divided by a Common Language?. Journal of English Linguistics 46:4 ► pp. 351 ff.
O’Halloran, Kieran
2018. Digitally deconstructing ‘straw man’ and ‘wicker man’ arguments: A software-aided pedagogy. Argument & Computation 9:3 ► pp. 193 ff.
Laviosa, Sara, Adriana Pagano, Hannu Kemppanen & Meng Ji
2017. A Corpus Analysis of Translation of Environmental News on BBC China. In Textual and Contextual Analysis in Empirical Translation Studies [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 129 ff.
Liu, Ying, Alex Chengyu Fang & Naixing Wei
2017. A Corpus-Based Study of Syntactic Patterns of Nominalizations Across Chinese and British Media English. In Researching Chinese English: the State of the Art [Multilingual Education, 22], ► pp. 77 ff.
Piao, Scott, Fraser Dallachy, Alistair Baron, Jane Demmen, Steve Wattam, Philip Durkin, James McCracken, Paul Rayson & Marc Alexander
2017. A time-sensitive historical thesaurus-based semantic tagger for deep semantic annotation. Computer Speech & Language 46 ► pp. 113 ff.
Potts, Amanda & Elena Semino
2017. Healthcare professionals' online use of violence metaphors for care at the end of life in the US: a corpus-based comparison with the UK. Corpora 12:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
Wong, May
2017. Linguistic Variation in Digital Discourse: The Case of Blogs. In Hong Kong English, ► pp. 131 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2016. Prevalent Discourses in ESC Lyrics. In Language, Normativity and Europeanisation, ► pp. 279 ff.
Motschenbacher, Heiko
2016. A corpus linguistic study of the situatedness of English pop song lyrics. Corpora 11:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Anthony, Laurence & Paul Baker
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 november 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.