Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

(hereafter, BNC) as a baseline. The data of BNC are adjusted to the ratio per 2.5 million
words, thus making them more comparable with the figures from ALC and BC. Finally, each
comparative is also considered in the counts of each basic form.
Order ALC Freq. BC Freq. BNC Per. 2.5M
1 confident 11 knowledgeable 11 concerned 37
2 clear 8 optimistic 8 worried 33
3 enthusiastic 6 cautious 7 sorry 10
4 explicit 5 serious 6 sure 9
5 positive 4 uncertain 6 happy 7
Table 6.2. Top five high-frequency adjectives in A DJ about N with BNC data
Table 6.2 above indicates that the choices of high-frequency specific adjectives are different
in ALC and BC: no common adjectives occur in both corpora. High-frequency adjectives in
ALC and BC are also different from those in the BNC: there is a clear line in the use of
high-frequency adjectives in the pattern between my corpora as representatives of academic
English in the soft disciplines on the one hand, and the BNC as a representation of general
English on the other.
Table 6.3 below summarizes the next step in the analysis, which is to identify the
semantic groups of adjectives in the pattern A DJ about N in ALC and BC. While Francis et al.
(1998) list 23 semantic groups in the pattern A DJ about N, I originally re-categorized my
data into several semantic groups that are qualitatively identified (ALC 54; BC 63) and into
other meaning group, which cannot be categorized into any of the established semantic
groups (ALC 30; BC 53). I termed the semantic groups identified by my analysis CERTAINTY,
OPTIMISM, ENTHUSIASM, NERVOUSNESS, and WISDOM respectively.
Order ALC Freq. BC Freq.
1 OPTIMISM 20 NERVOUSNESS 17
2 CERTAINTY 14 OPTIMISM 15
3 NERVOUSNESS 14 CERTAINTY 14
4 ENTHUSIASM 6 WISDOM 11
5 WISDOM 0 ENTHUSIASM 6
6 OTHER MEANINGS 30 OTHER MEANINGS 53
Total 84 116
Table 6.3. Semantic groups of A DJ about N
As Table 6.3 shows, several semantic groups in the pattern A DJ about N in both corpora
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