Journal of Research Design and Statistics in Linguistics and Communication Science

An examination of the lyrical construction of Pop music

Casey Hart, George J Day — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The current study examines the use of five different dimensions of language in popular music based on the sex of the performer. Theoretically grounded in both social cognitive theory and cultivation theory, the study analyzes popular music as a vehicle for enculturating gender norms within society. Sampling and analyzing over 700 popular songs, the lyrical construction of songs performed by females and males is compared. Similarities are found in many key areas, while differences are identified in the specific areas of power language and social language. Additional differences are identified and discussed when artists perform in mixed-sex groups. Based on the results, a discussion of the prominence of male writers and lack of female representation in the music industry is included.

Judgments of the English and Spanish Supreme Courts

Daniel Granados Meroño — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This study aims to explore the differences between English and Spanish judgments in criminal cases from the supreme courts of the UK and Spain using Biber’s Multidimensional Analysis. We compiled a corpus of twenty judgments from the supreme courts of Spain and the UK (ten from each country), whose parts of speech were tagged using the Free CLAWS web tagger and Grampal. The frequency of the eight selected linguistic features was obtained by using the corpus toolkit AntConc. We performed an exploratory factor analysis in both subcorpora to determine the latent structure behind all the linguistic features. Three textual dimensions were found in English: persuasion vs. power distance, subjectivity vs. objectivity, and involved vs. informational focus; and four factors representing three dimensions were found in Spanish: subjectivity vs. objectivity, intertextuality, involved and informational focus. The English corpus has prevalent persuasion, objectivity, and informational focus; the Spanish corpus has no relevant intertextuality scores, a prevalent subjectivity, and informational focus.

Corpus linguistics and historiography

Tony Berber Sardinha — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This study identified and tracked the major discourses present in the first 50 years of TESOL Quarterly. A corpus of articles published in the journal was collected, tagged, and analyzed for lexical dimensions of variation (the lexical parameters underlyingvariation across texts in the journal). A factor analysis detected the sets of lexical words cooccurring in the texts. The factors were interpreted into five dimensions: (1) critical, social, cultural, discourse or identity versus language assessment and testing; (2) applications of linguistic theory versus language policy, education and planning; (3) quantitative research methods versus positivist teaching materials and techniques; (4) language teaching and learning versus word-based investigations; and (5) reading and writing versus listening and speaking. The dimension scores were entered in a cluster analysis that identified the two principal eras of the journal: the first from 1967 to the early 1990s, and the second from the early 1990s to 2016.