A corpus based study of adjectival collocation with the word ‘economy’ in the corpus of contemporary American English

This study describes a study of adjectives collocating with the word ‘economy’ in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). This study which analyzes the real-life use of the word ‘economy’ reveals how ‘economy’ is used in American English in some certain contexts.

grasped the gravity of the situation and put forward a plausible candidate The writer is saying that the current state of the reigning party is not strong because the economy is not strong and the president has a very limited ability to influence the economy ’Weak’ refers to the state of the economy while ‘vulnerable’ refers to the re-electability of the standing president The author believes that because the economy is weak, the Republican Party had the opportunity to have their candidate elected (13) (2010) Theoretically, in a "hydrogen economy," our country could experience seemingly endless new expansion opportunities through new jobs in business, industry and customer service as we work to support the integration of fuel cell technology into our lives (USDOE, 2006) Envision this awesome picture of a booming economy intertwined with a more environmentally friendly world The booming economy referred to in this context is described as a “hydrogen economy.” ’Booming’ has a positive meaning, referring to an expanding economy with new jobs in new businesses Other word chunks with a positive meaning are ‘awesome’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ collectively denoting an economically prosperous period 2.3.3 Findings and implications In this study, the dictionary meanings of all of the listed adjectives are confirmed by specific examples in the COCA It can be observed that the meanings of the adjectives vary in different contexts In other words, the meanings of the words depend on the context Specifically, “political”, “new” and “national” have meanings in different settings The top 10 adjectives can be divided into groups Initially, the size of an economy is mentioned, from ‘local’ to ‘national to ‘global’ The provenance of an economy only exhibits in adjectives, namely ‘American’ and ‘Soviet’ The adjectives in the COCA can be grouped as describing an economic condition with ‘strong’, ‘weak’, ‘new’ and ’booming’ on the list Global economy stays as the prime concern for Americans In a multi-pillared world, cooperating with emerging economies is an option of the US “Political” is in the 3rd position, perhaps because the economy is controlled by government/businesses or “political economy” as a subject stand as the most crucial issue at that time ‘New’, ‘strong’ and ‘booming’ have a positive meaning while weak has a negative meaning This study contributes to the field of determining the meanings of words through corpus analysis and discourse analysis as well as education The findings of this study 129 Nguyen Hong Lien show that the meanings of adjectival collocation with the word ‘economy’ vary in different discourse communities This confirms the fact that the meaning of a word is significantly restricted by ideological context, which is the core of discourse analysis It is noteworthy that this study also serves as a pedagogical document which teachers and students can consult to give them a more comprehensive view and reference material when studying economics Conclusion The objective of this study is to pinpoint those adjectives which collocate in the highest frequency with the word ‘economy’ in the COCA, thus revealing American English use of the word ‘economy’ in the COCA This study is expected to fill a gap in corpus linguistic research surrounding the lexical item ‘economy’ In order to attain the mentioned goals, a corpus-based approach is employed using the lexical collocation technique After running the queries, the top 10 adjectives which collocate in the highest frequency with the word ‘economy’ in the COCA are listed Subsequently, the adjectives are analyzed Initially, dictionaries’ meanings of each adjective are contrasted with the meaning of the word in contexts to confirm the use of the adjective Then the adjectives are thoroughly examined to uncover the underlying ideologies in the COCA The data analyses come to the following conclusions: (1) The meanings of adjectival collocation with the word ‘economy’ vary in different discourse community (2) The top 10 adjectives collocating with the word ‘economy’ describe the size, provenance and condition of an economy This study not only contributes to the field of developing meanings of words through corpus analysis and the field of discourse analysis but also serves as a pedagogical document which teachers and students can consult REFERENCES [1] Conrad, S., (Guest Editor), 2003 TESOL Quarterly Special-Topic Issue on Corpus Linguistics 37(3), pp 385 [2] Davies, M., 2008- The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ [3] Firth, J R., 1935 The technique of semantics Transactions of the Philological Society, pp 36-72 130 ... frequency with the word ‘economy’ in the COCA are listed Subsequently, the adjectives are analyzed Initially, dictionaries’ meanings of each adjective are contrasted with the meaning of the word in. .. the COCA, thus revealing American English use of the word ‘economy’ in the COCA This study is expected to fill a gap in corpus linguistic research surrounding the lexical item ‘economy’ In order... Lien show that the meanings of adjectival collocation with the word ‘economy’ vary in different discourse communities This confirms the fact that the meaning of a word is significantly restricted