A Corpus-based Study Of Semantic Prosody In Chinese English Learners’ Written English

Semantic prosody is a newly emerged subject in the studies of corpus linguistics. Itmainly refers to the phenomenon that the collocates before or after a word tend to form aspecific semantic category with the same emotional significance. In recent decades, with thefast development of computer technology, various institutions and researchers have built upmany corpora, which benefit the corpus linguistics and make the research on semantic prosodypossible. Since the introduction to semantic prosody by Bill Louw in1993, many researchers,such as Sinclair, Stubbs, Whitsitt and Hunston, have devoted themselves to this field. In China,Ji Yuhua, Wu Jianping and Nai Weixing systematically introduce the theory and researchapproaches to Semantic prosody. Many Chinese researchers also conduct relevant researchesbased on Chinese English learners’ corpora.This study tries to reveal the semantic prosody in Chinese learners’ written English andcompare it with native English speakers’ by examining the semantic prosodic features of fournode words ambition, competition, society and career, so as to examine whether ChineseEnglish learners have grasped the knowledge of semantic prosody. The Written Englishsub-corpus of Spoken and Written English Corpus of Chinese Learners and Corpus ofContemporary American English are employed in this study.This research consists of the following steps. First the author queries the node word inWritten English Corpus of Chinese Learners with BFSU Collocator, lists all collocates andcomputes the MI value and T-score. The collocates with MI value of3or higher and T-score of2or higher are considered significant collocates. Next, the author examines the collocatesrespectively and classifies the collocates into three categories, namely positive, negative andneutral. Then the proportions of each kind of collocates in the two corpora are calculated. Theauthor judges the semantic prosodic feature of each node word in the two corpora according tothese proportions and collocates. Finally, the author runs the Chi-Square test and compares theproportions of the same kind of collocates between the two corpora to judge whether thedifferences on semantic prosodies between the two groups of subjects are significant or not.The study shows that in some cases, Chinese English learners show similar semantic prosody features comparing with native English speakers. However, there are also cases thatChinese English learners show significant differences with native English speakers. Thereforeit can be concluded that Chinese English speakers are not aware of the knowledge of semanticprosody and they use English words without noticing their semantic prosodic features. Thepossible reasons for the differences on semantic prosody between Chinese English learnersand English native speakers may lie in negative language transfer and improper language input.Firstly, negative transfer of L1interferes with Chinese English learners’ recognition ofmeanings as well as semantic prosody of the word. In addition, traditional English teachingmaterials are imperfect in terms of providing the knowledge of semantic prosody, which is notconducive to the raising of semantic prosodic consciousness for Chinese English learners, andsometimes may even mislead them.This study also carries some pedagogical implications. The native English speakers’corpora can be employed in teaching practice to remedy the imperfection of traditionalteaching materials.