stasis GIRL

& &
change BOY
 Methodology

Corpus-
Modern
Assisted
Diachronic MD-CADS
Discourse
Corpora
Studies
Corpora and Discourse: Approaches

0 Initially corpus-driven 0 Initially DA-driven

0 Use corpus 0 Use corpus
interrogation software interrogation software
to identify areas of to collect large
interest - Keywords quantities of
information in a DA
frame
 Corpora & Discourse
0 Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies
0 Aims to highlight non-obvious meaning
0 Explicitly combines quantitative and qualitative
approaches
0 Essentially comparative
0 (see Partington 2009, Wikipedia entry)

0 Stubbs (1996, 2001), Hardt-Mautner (1995), Baker

(2006)
 Corpora & Discourse
0 MD-CADS “allows us both to track changes in
language usage and to account for extra-linguistic
changes (social, political, cultural, historical etc.) that
language reflects”
Marchi & Taylor (2009)
Corpora & Discourse: Tools
Corpora & Discourse: Tools
0 Wordlists / cluster lists (WordSmith, AntConc)
0 Key words (WordSmith, AntConc, Xaira)
0 Concordances (WordSmith, AntConc, Xaira)
0 Collocates (WordSmith, AntConc, Xaira)
Similarity and difference
 Similarity and difference
0 “it seems to be a characteristic of the homo sapiens
mind that it is often unable to see things ‘as they are’
but imposes on them a tendency, a trend, a pattern”
Scott & Tribble (2006: 6)
0 corroboration drive
0 a systematic search for elements that validate previous
findings
Similarity and difference
 similarities
0 The final area of concern […] is the privileging of
difference over similarity. Inevitably with a tool
(Word Sketch Difference) that is designed […] to
reveal contrasts , the analyst is in danger of
exaggerating the differences and over-looking the
similarities (Pearce 2008)
0 Identifying the way that differences and similarities
interact with each other is therefore an essential part
of any comparative corpus-based study of discourse
Baker (2006: 182)
0 lockwords
 The SiBol corpus
0 Entire output of:
0 Guardian
0 Telegraph
0 Times
0 Currently contains 2
years:
0 1993
0 c. 95 million words
0 2005
0 c. 144 million words
Corpus analyses of gender terms
0 Holmes & Sigley (2000) / Sigley & Holmes (2002)
0 Brown (AmE 1961), Frown (AmE 1991), LOB (BrE
1961), FLOB (BrE 1991), WWC (NZE 1986-1990)
0 Pearce (2008)
0 BNC (c. 1975-1983)
0 Caldas-Couthard & Moon (2010)
0 BoE (1990s-2002)
0 Baker (forthcoming)
0 BLOB (1931), LOB (1961), FLOB (1991), BE06
Why GIRL and BOY in the press?
0 Address conflicting media discourses of assumption of
superiority & moral panic surrounding sexualisation
0 Opportunity to address the (mis)match between declared
intentions and actual usage
0 Discrimination
0 i. The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an
individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to
any physical or mental illness or disability.
0 ii. Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual
orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be
avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.
(Guardian Editorial Code)
Frequency of key items
 Corpus approaches
Difference Similarity

0 Concordance-
corpora Keywords
and Key-clusters
0 Semantic Key-
domains
GIRL compared to BOY

SiBol 05
SiBol 93
Key semantic domains GIRL 05
 ‘kin’
0 Now you've got perhaps 40 per cent one-parent
families, mostly girls with four or five children. (Gua
93 Q)
0 Dr Carey is preaching immorality and irresponsibility
by encouraging young girls to become parents out of
wedlock. (Tel 93 Q)
0 In addition, more than a quarter of teenagers think
there is a good chance they will be divorced, and
roughly the same number of girls believe they may
become single parents. (Tel 93)
 ‘numbers’
1993 2005

0 While most girls agreed that marriage 0 By the age of six, most girls are dissatisfied
was a distant threat, the traditional with their bodies and want to be thinner,
Debs' Delights - nice young men, 0 Most girls thought that being slim would
preferably with titles - are still essential. make them more popular,
0 in the days when most girls wanted to be 0 I'm no different from most girls I know in
married by the age of twenty feeling immense pressure to be ``perfect''.
0 Phoenix was the boy most girls wanted 0 After the derrire, the upper arms are
to have as a boyfriend. probably the most detested part of any
0 Subconsciously, too many girls still plan woman's body, whatever her age. There are
to get married and see their job as just many girls under 30 who don't like
for interest, as an extra. showing them.
0 Many of the girls are repeating family 0 she just did what many girls do - started
patterns: there are plenty of 30-year-old dieting
grandmothers around.
Key semantic domains BOY 05
‘judgement of appearance’
1993 2005
eyed 22 36.4 beautiful 28 16.8
taller 9 31.7 wee 31 73.6
pretty 21 14.2 emo 6 49.9
nice 18 13.5 pretty 88 48.4
lovely 10 11.3 eyed 27 34.2
haired 11 25.7 nice 57 34.2
blond 7 22.5 scrawny 5 31.7
haired 16 28.7
blond 10 24.7
lovely 26 23.3
cute 10 21.2
handsome 15 20.6
bespectacled 5 20.1
skinny 9 20
clad 9 15.7
bearded 6 14.6
faced 22 14
 Corpus approaches
Difference Similarity

0 Concordance- 0 Consistency lists

corpora Keywords 0 C-collocates
and Key-clusters
0 Semantic Key-
clouds
 Similarity: C-collocates
0 Collocates of BOY/GIRL :
0 Freq. ≥ 10 in each corpus
0 Z-score ≥ 10 in each corpus
Area GIRL BOY
AGE older, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, age, aged, eight, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, aged, eight, nine, three, two, baby,
three, two, baby, year year
adolescent, teenage, young, younger, little, old, adolescent, little, big, old, older, small, teenage, young,
pubescent younger, youngest
VIOLENCE abducted, assaulted, assaulting, dead, died, dies, abusing, assaulting, borstal
gang, indecent, bullied, dead, died, dies, drowned, indecent,
indecently, intercourse, kidnapped, killed, rape, kidnapped, killed, murdered, raped, gang
raped, raping, scream, stabbed,
SEX call, sex, sexual, sexually rent, sexually
DESCRIPTION: CHARACTER bad, lovely, nice, shy bad, naughty, nice
PHYSICAL beautiful, blonde, eyed, pretty, sexy, naked, door, black, blond, blue, eyed, fat, haired
hair, haired
dress, dressed, dresses, skirts, wearing, clad
OTHER EPITHETS English, jewish, class, pregnant, giggling, educated bright, jewish,
essex, glamour, golden, peasant, orphan, choir, altar, backroom, barrow, bovver, bully, cabin, choir,
CLASSIFIERS chorus, convent, daddy's, dancing, geisha golden, messenger, mummy's, racers, teddy, toy,
whipping, wide, wonder, birthday
MISC called, named named
ACTIVITIES/PROCESSES dance, kissing, like, love, married, marry, meets found, like, meets, playing, told

PEOPLE boy, boyfriend, boyfriends, boys, father, friend, girl, boy, boys, father, girl, girls, mother, parents
girls, mother, parents, women
SCHOOL boarding, camden, grammar, boarding, eton, expelled, grammar, playground, school,
guides, headmistress, high, malvern, paul's, school, schools, scout, scouts
schools, scouts, sherborne, vi
PART OF PROPER NOUN tiller del, george, pet, shop, beach, beastie
PART OF OTHER FIXED PHRASE blouse dear, network, oh, ol
MISC. birth singles [sport]
FUNCTION WORDS a, and, her, herself, she, she's, were, who, whom, a, as, had, he's, the, was, were, who, with
whose, with
Area GIRL BOY
AGE older, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, age, aged, eight, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, aged, eight, nine, three, two, baby,
three, two, baby, year year
adolescent, teenage, young, younger, little, old, adolescent, little, big, old, older, small, teenage, young,
pubescent younger, youngest
VIOLENCE abducted, assaulted, assaulting, dead, died, dies, abusing, assaulting, borstal
gang, indecent, bullied, dead, died, dies, drowned, indecent,
indecently, intercourse, kidnapped, killed, rape, kidnapped, killed, murdered, raped, gang
raped, raping, scream, stabbed,
SEX call, sex, sexual, sexually rent, sexually
DESCRIPTION: CHARACTER bad, lovely, nice, shy bad, naughty, nice
PHYSICAL beautiful, blonde, eyed, pretty, sexy, naked, door, black, blond, blue, eyed, fat, haired
hair, haired
dress, dressed, dresses, skirts, wearing, clad
OTHER EPITHETS English, jewish, class, pregnant, giggling, educated bright, jewish,
essex, glamour, golden, peasant, orphan, choir, altar, backroom, barrow, bovver, bully, cabin, choir,
CLASSIFIERS chorus, convent, daddy's, dancing, geisha golden, messenger, mummy's, racers, teddy, toy,
whipping, wide, wonder, birthday
MISC called, named named
ACTIVITIES/PROCESSES dance, kissing, like, love, married, marry, meets found, like, meets, playing, told
PEOPLE boy, boyfriend, boyfriends, boys, father, friend, girl, boy, boys, father, girl, girls, mother, parents
girls, mother, parents, women
SCHOOL boarding, camden, grammar, boarding, eton, expelled, grammar, playground, school,
guides, headmistress, high, malvern, paul's, school, schools, scout, scouts
schools, scouts, sherborne, vi
PART OF PROPER NOUN tiller del, george, pet, shop, beach, beastie
PART OF OTHER FIXED PHRASE blouse dear, network, oh, ol
MISC. birth singles [sport]
FUNCTION WORDS a, and, her, herself, she, she's, were, who, whom, a, as, had, he's, the, was, were, who, with
whose, with
Area GIRL BOY
AGE older, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, age, aged, eight, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, aged, eight, nine, three, two, baby,
three, two, baby, year year
adolescent, teenage, young, younger, little, old, adolescent, little, big, old, older, small, teenage, young,
pubescent younger, youngest
VIOLENCE abducted, assaulted, assaulting, dead, died, dies, abusing, assaulting, borstal
gang, indecent, bullied, dead, died, dies, drowned, indecent,
indecently, intercourse, kidnapped, killed, rape, kidnapped, killed, murdered, raped, gang
raped, raping, scream, stabbed,
SEX call, sex, sexual, sexually rent, sexually
DESCRIPTION: CHARACTER bad, lovely, nice, shy bad, naughty, nice
PHYSICAL beautiful, blonde, eyed, pretty, sexy, naked, door, black, blond, blue, eyed, fat, haired
hair, haired
dress, dressed, dresses, skirts, wearing, clad
OTHER EPITHETS English, jewish, class, pregnant, giggling, educated bright, jewish,
essex, glamour, golden, peasant, orphan, choir, altar, backroom, barrow, bovver, bully, cabin, choir,
CLASSIFIERS chorus, convent, daddy's, dancing, geisha golden, messenger, mummy's, racers, teddy, toy,
whipping, wide, wonder, birthday
MISC called, named named
ACTIVITIES/PROCESSES dance, kissing, like, love, married, marry, meets found, like, meets, playing, told

PEOPLE boy, boyfriend, boyfriends, boys, father, friend, girl, boy, boys, father, girl, girls, mother, parents
girls, mother, parents, women
SCHOOL boarding, camden, grammar, boarding, eton, expelled, grammar, playground, school,
guides, headmistress, high, malvern, paul's, school, schools, scout, scouts
schools, scouts, sherborne, vi
PART OF PROPER NOUN tiller del, george, pet, shop, beach, beastie
PART OF OTHER FIXED PHRASE blouse dear, network, oh, ol
MISC. birth singles [sport]
FUNCTION WORDS a, and, her, herself, she, she's, were, who, whom, a, as, had, he's, the, was, were, who, with
whose, with
 Corpus approaches
Difference Similarity

0 Concordance- 0 Consistency lists

corpora Keywords 0 C-collocates
and Key-clusters 0 Matching cluster
0 Semantic Key- lists
domains
 93/05 clusters
girl boy
1 A LOT OF 953 1 THE BIG BOYS 304
2 AS WELL AS 824 2 THE BOY'S MOTHER 159
3 SCH FOR GIRLS 619 3 THE BOY SAID 145
4 A COUPLE OF 475 4 BOY AND HIS 134
5 A BIT OF 472 5 THE BOY FROM 121
6 A GROUP OF 416 6 THE BOY TOLD 109
7 A YOUNG GIRL 367 7 MAN AND BOY 99
8 A LITTLE GIRL 351 8 THE BOY'S FATHER 99
9 A SERIES OF 338 9 BOY AT THE 97
10 A GIRL WHO 318 10 BOY FROM THE 94
11 ACCORDING TO THE 303 11 THAT MR JACKSON 91
12 A PAIR OF 267 12 THE OLD BOY 91
13 A NUMBER OF 257 13 BOY WHO CANNOT 89
14 AND IT IS 232 14 WITH THE BIG 88
15 AND IT WAS 222 15 WITH THE BOY 87
16 A TEENAGE GIRL 212 16 OLD BOY IN 86
17 AS PART OF 211 17 BOY WHO IS 84
18 AS MUCH AS 208 18 BOYS FROM THE 84
19 AS A RESULT 201 19 AT HALF TIME 83
20 A MAN WHO 200 20 TO A BOY 78
 93/05 clusters
girl boy
1 A LOT OF 953 1 THE BIG BOYS 304
2 AS WELL AS 824 2 THE BOY'S MOTHER 159
3 SCH FOR GIRLS 619 3 THE BOY SAID 145
4 A COUPLE OF 475 4 BOY AND HIS 134
5 A BIT OF 472 5 THE BOY FROM 121
6 A GROUP OF 416 6 THE BOY TOLD 109
7 A YOUNG GIRL 367 7 MAN AND BOY 99
8 A LITTLE GIRL 351 8 THE BOY'S FATHER 99
9 A SERIES OF 338 9 BOY AT THE 97
10 A GIRL WHO 318 10 BOY FROM THE 94
11 ACCORDING TO THE 303 11 THAT MR JACKSON 91
12 A PAIR OF 267 12 THE OLD BOY 91
13 A NUMBER OF 257 13 BOY WHO CANNOT 89
14 AND IT IS 232 14 WITH THE BIG 88
15 AND IT WAS 222 15 WITH THE BOY 87
16 A TEENAGE GIRL 212 16 OLD BOY IN 86
17 AS PART OF 211 17 BOY WHO IS 84
18 AS MUCH AS 208 18 BOYS FROM THE 84
19 AS A RESULT 201 19 AT HALF TIME 83
20 A MAN WHO 200 20 TO A BOY 78
 Quantifying GIRL and BOY
a couple of a bunch of a rota of
a/an x of
a fifth of a clutch of a selection of

a pair of a crowd of a series of

0 SiBol 05 a quarter of a gaggle of a set of
a third of a gang of a string of
0 GIRL 325
a trio of a generation of a succession of
0 BOY 308
a few of a group of
a lot of a handful of
a number of a household of
a pack
a cast of a posse
a class of a troop of
a troupe of
 Quantifying GIRL and BOY
0 After a string of skinny boys with Identikit punk influences, and
"distressed'' T- shirts (Times)
0 Suddenly, a gaggle of prancing boys skips into the fray (Guardian)
0 His early oils feature a succession of handsome, and androgynous
boys (Guardian)
0 hundreds of starry-eyed young girls, and perhaps a handful of
boys, decide to start ballet lessons (Times)
0 You don't have to have a clutch of towheaded boys to crave a
bedroom with sailing-boat curtains and white tongue-and-
groove walls. (Times)
 Quantifying GIRL and BOY
a bevy of (4) a band of (1)
a brace of a batch of (1)
a breed of (2) a chain of
a choir of a cluster of
a chorus of a community of
a circle of (2) a dearth of (2)
a flock of a field of
a huddle of a house of
a line-up of a lane of
a parade a legion of
a procession a line of (4)
a quartet of a minority of (2)
a row a party of
a scattering of a score of
a sextet of a sea of
a shortage of a shortlist of
a squad of a species of
a stable of a team of (7)
a swarm of a train of
a total of
a troup of
a unit of
a load of
a phalanx of
 Quantifying GIRL and BOY
a bevy of (4) a band of (1)
a brace of a batch of (1)
a breed of (2) a chain of
a choir of a cluster of
a chorus of a community of
a circle of (2) a dearth of (2)
a flock of a field of
a huddle of a house of
a line-up of a lane of
a parade a legion of
a procession a line of (4)
a quartet of a minority of (2)
a row a party of
a scattering of a score of
a sextet of a sea of
a shortage of a shortlist of
a squad of a species of
a stable of a team of (7)
a swarm of a train of
a total of
a troup of
a unit of
a load of
a phalanx of
Quantifying (& classifying) GIRL
0 A flock of chorus girls, white and feathery with rigid, fixed smiles
0 In France, she was the most notorious madam since Madame Claude,
who ran a stable of 50 call girls in Paris in the 1960s.
0 hangs in an exhibition opening this week in London beside a brace of
Irish girls, Joanna Hiffernan and Kathleen Newton, muses and mist
0 The smouldering, leonine Terrence Howard is DJay, a Memphis hustler
with a stable of girls who have been his bread and butter for too long.

0 Grady McNeil is a beguiling mix of tomboy and femme fatale - a breed of

girl familiar to readers of Proust and E M Forster,
0 Ladettes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are a breed of girls
defined by their foul-mouthed, sexually rampant,
0 Henrietta, 24, is the breed of girl men like to have around.
 GIRL and BOY

0 Differentiated representation and objectification is

not decreasing
0 BOY may be boys but GIRL are more likely to be women
– dictionary definitions inadequate
0 BOY increasingly used to refer to older individuals –
and more frequently in company of GIRL collocates
 What next?
0 Fleshing out the current research
0 Looking at alternatives to BOY/GIRL
0 Acquiring the FL software?
0 A new SiBol
References: MD-CADS / gender
0 Baker, P. (forthcoming) ‘Will Ms Ever Be as Frequent as Mr? A Corpus-based
Comparison of Gendered Terms across Four Diachronic Corpora of British English’,
Equinox: Gender and Language.
0 Caldas-Coulthard, R. & R. Moon. ‘curvy, hunky, kinky’: Using corpora as tools for critical
analysis. Discourse & Society 21(2): 99-133.
0 Holmes, J. and Sigley, R. (2001) ‘What’s a Word like Girl Doing in a Place Like This?’, in
A. Smith and P. Peters (eds) New Frontiers of Corpus Linguistics, pp. 247–63.
Amsterdam: Rodopi.
0 Marchi, A. & C. Taylor. 2009. 2009. Establishing the EU: The representation of Europe
in the press in 1993 and 2005. In Jucker, A. H., M. Hundt, & D. Schreier (eds.), Corpora:
Pragmatics and Discourse. Papers from the 29th International Conference on English
Language Research on Computerized Corpora. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 201- 224.
0 Partington, A. (forthcoming). Introduction to a special edition of Corpora, dedicated to
MD-CADS. Corpora 5(2).
0 Pearce, M. (2008) ‘Investigating the Collocational Behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in
the BNC using Sketch Engine’, Corpora 3(1): 1–29.
0 Sigley, R. and Holmes, J. (2002) ‘Looking at Girls in Corpora of English’, Journal of
English Linguistics 30(2): 138–57.
 References: CL general
0 Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London:
Continuum.
0 Hardt-Mautner, G. (1995) 'Only Connect': Critical Discourse Analysis and
Corpus Linguistics. UCREL Technical Paper 6. Lancaster: University of
Lancaster.
0 Partington, A. (2009) Evaluating evaluation and some concluding
thoughts on CADS. In J. Morley and P. Bayley (eds.), Wordings of War.
Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies on the War in Iraq. London: Routledge.
0 Scott, M. and Tribble, C. (2006) Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus
Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
0 Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell.
0 Stubbs, M. (2001) Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical
Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.