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And yeah, it was really good! Positive stance in native and learner speech

And yeah, it was really good! Positive stance in native and learner speech. Sylive De Cock Centre for English Corpus Linguistics Université catholique de Louvain. Introduction. Attitudinal stance (Biber et al. 1999, Conrad and Biber 2000) conveys speakers’ personal attitudes or feelings

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And yeah, it was really good! Positive stance in native and learner speech

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  1. And yeah, it was really good!Positive stance in native and learner speech Sylive De Cock Centre for English Corpus Linguistics Université catholique de Louvain

  2. Introduction • Attitudinal stance (Biber et al. 1999, Conrad and Biber 2000) • conveys speakers’ personal attitudes or feelings • e.g. likes and dislikes, evaluations of events and personal experiences • LINDSEI and LOCNEC particularly good to study this sort of phenomenon (informal interviews, topics) – see De Cock 2007 (LIKE, LOVE, ENJOY) • Work in progress • Focus on • positive attitudinal stance • adjectives

  3. Data and method • LOCNEC and LINDSEI_French • Starting point: word lists (WordSmith Tools) – Compare list • Selection of the adjectives • Biber et al. (1999)’s semantic group of descriptors (vs classifiers)  evaluative/emotive subcategory (i.e. denoting judgement, affect, emphasis: bad, beautiful, good, great, lovely, nice, etc.)

  4. Data and method • Focus on • Positive evaluative adjectives • Prototypical (good; big?) • Frequent in LOCNEC and/or LINDSEI_FR

  5. LOCNEC good (345) nice (191) interesting (61) great (54) better (47) beautiful (44) pretty (41) brilliant (38) amazing (36) impressive ( 31) lovely (19) important (14) wonderful (14) LINDSEI good (110) beautiful (103) interesting (92) nice (79) great (62) better (37) important (25) wonderful (25) pretty (23) lovely (18) impressive (17) amazing (13) incredible (13) Positive evaluative adjectives

  6. Data and method • Focus on • Positive evaluative adjectives • Prototypical (good; big?) • Frequent in LOCNEC and/or LINDSEI_FR • ‘General’ positive evaluative adjectives (good/pleasant/enjoyable) • Picture story effect (beautiful, pretty) • Disambiguation (adverbs, nouns, etc.)

  7. LOCNEC good nice great better brilliant amazing impressive lovely wonderful fantastic incredible LINDSEI_FR good nice great better wonderful lovely impressive amazing incredible (General) Positive evaluative adjectives

  8. Positive evaluative adjectives • Selected findings • syntactic patterns • collocations • idiosyncratic uses

  9. Frequency and range • Frequency counts: overall lower in NNS • good (NS: 293; NNS: 118) • nice (NS: 172; NNS: 93) • amazing (NS: 30; NNS: 14) • BUT wonderful (NS: 12; NNS: 27) • Range: overall more limited stock of recurrent positive evaluative adjectives in LINDSEI_FR (e.g. brilliant, attractive, enjoyable)

  10. Syntactic patterns • Attributive and predicative use • = nice (NS: 27% and 73%; NNS: 25% and 75%) • ≠ good (NS: 42% and 58%; NNS: 52% and 48%) • Recurrent sequences: NS only • it’s good, it was good, (and / yeah) it was really good • it was quite good, that was good, it’s really good

  11. Syntactic patterns • <B> it was a very good experience for me . yes because they . made a lot of critics (NNS) • it was just really good I really liked it (NS) • .. wrote a script for a play at college . and I got to see that acted out and it was really good (NS) • <B> is it a part two course or <\B> <A> erm I think so but I’m not sure I think I think it is <\A> <B> oh right er .. I might have to look into that that sounds really good <\B> (NS)

  12. Syntactic patterns • Adjective complementation • BE nice to + inf. … • NS: 21 (16% of predicative uses); NNS: 3 (4% of predicative uses) • it’d be nice to go somewhere different (NS) • but erm . yeah it’s nice to see her when I do see her (NS)

  13. Syntactic patterns • Evaluative adjectives in evaluative relative clauses (which = a collocate + recurrent sequences: which is good, which was, which is quite, which is a bit, which is very) • NS > NNS • I’ve got other people to hitch with which is good (NS) • but the next year we went I took some books and I was giving them to people which was really nice (NS)

  14. Syntactic patterns • <B> they all come and visit me cos they think it’s great having a student life so close to <X> so a lot of them travel up at weekends and that [ which is quite nice <B> (NS) • Tao and McCarthy (2001 – spoken NS English): sentential relative clauses tend to have evaluative function displaying speakers’ affective involvement with and attitudes to the events and experiences they are relating

  15. Collocations • ??? • good fun • Claire was good fun; it was good fun; it’s good fun (NS) • NS 16 vs NNS 1 (!input from the interviewer) • <B> no .. it’s .. very pleaseful .. <XX> pleased to <\B> <A> oh you mean you oh you mean you like it . you mean good fun <\A> <B> yeah good fun yes really <\B> (NNS)

  16. Collocations • Idiosyncratic uses • we: we went .. er in a restaurant and er . with the girl and then to the cinema and we had a great fun and . and the next day (NNS) • <B> yes but I think it’s a . very great job you know <\B> (NNS) • it was very great for them to live that way (NNS)

  17. Rounding off • Work in progress • Positive and negative evaluative adjectives • General picture of attitudinal stance • Other subcorpora (L1-related or not) • Assess the ‘picture story effect’ + topic chosen? • Individual variation • Other effects?: input from the interviewer

  18. Rounding off • Implications for teaching • range • collocations • typical syntactic patterns • more prominence given to the description and use of evaluative (sentential) relative clauses in informal speech • Attitudinal stance in textbooks?

  19. Thank you for your attention!

  20. References • Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S. and Finegan, E. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman. • Conrad, S. and Biber, D. 2000. "Adverbial marking of stance in speech and writing." In Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse, S. Hunston and G. Thompson (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 56-73. • De Cock, S. 2007. “Routinized building blocks in native speaker and learner speech: Clausal sequences in the spotlight”. In Spoken Corpora in Applied Linguistics, M.C. Campoy and M.J. Luzón (eds). Bern: Peter Lang, 217-233. • Tao, H. and McCarthy, M.J. 2001. Understanding non-restrictive which-clauses in spoken English, which is not an easy thing. Language sciences 23: 651-677.

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