Semantic associations in business English: A corpus-based analysis

: Nelson M

Publisher: PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

: 2006

: English for Specific Purposes

: ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES

: ENGL SPECIF PURP

: 25

: 2

: 217

: 234

: 18

: 0889-4906

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2005.02.008(external)

: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889490605000050(external)

This paper examines the semantic associations of words found in the business lexical environment by using a one-million word corpus of both spoken and written Business English. The key method of analysis is that of semantic prosody or semantic association; the notion that words associate with collocates that are themselves related, often either negatively or positively or belonging to a specific semantic set. The paper thus shows how words in the Business English environment interact with each other on a semantic level. After a brief introduction and literature review on semantic prosody, the main research based on an analysis of corpus data is presented. It shows that not only do words in the business environment have semantic prosodies, that is they are found to regularly collocate with word groups that share semantic similarity, they also have prosodies that are unique to business, separate from the prosodies they generate in the 'general English' environment. It was also noted, however, that these prosodies are not all-consuming, and often only represent strong tendencies for lexical relations, rather than a firmly fixed relationship. The article ends by discussing the pedagogical consequences that this research may have when the results are introduced into the classroom. (c) 2005 The American University. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.