Stefan Diemer

When making pie, all ingredients must be chilled. Including you: Lexical, syntactic and interactive features in online discourse – a synchronic study of food blogs

The present study describes food blogs as a genre of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The combined approach of corpus linguistic and pragmatic methods reveals the characteristics of food blogs as a hybrid genre that mixes elements from various other discourse types. Lexical and syntactic analyses depict the use and frequencies of (1) CMC related phenomena: innovative vocabulary and spelling; (2) food related jargon: specialized vocabulary, grammatical patterns; (3) phenomena related to spoken interaction: discourse markers, hedges and address. The pragmatic analysis reviews these elements in their blog context. They contribute to creating an audience directed text through features such as humor, repetition and expert knowledge. We thus provide evidence that one of the main goals of this discourse type is interaction and describe how this interaction is systematically achieved.

It's all a bit upmessing - non-standard verb-particle combinations in blogs

This article will explore how verb-particle combinations, for a long time one of the most productive segments of English word-formation, have changed with the advent of online real-time short communication forms such as blogs or their more sophisticated social networking or microblogging varieties like Twitter and Facebook. Following up on earlier research (Diemer 2008), evidence will be presented that that the long and seemingly unstoppable trend towards verbadverb combinations and the decline of the prefixes has been partly reversed by these new forms of communication. Selected examples with the prefixes in and on will be discussed. It will be argued that the main reasons for this change are facilitation of syntax, need for innovation in specialized and peer group communication, analogy formation and the influence of other languages on English.

Das Internet als Korpus? : Aktuelle Fragen und Methoden der Korpuslinguistik

Der Artikel beschreibt aktuelle korpuslinguistische Methoden und Anwendun-gen. Nachfolgend wird die Moglichkeit der Verwendung internetbasierter Daten als Quelle fur Korpusforschung wird. Die Grenzen eines solchen internetbasier-ten Ansatzes werden aufgezeigt. Auf der Basis der aktuellen Entwicklungen im Bereich der Suchmaschinentechnologie erfolgt ein Ausblick auf mogliche zu-kunftige Anwendungen des Internets als Korpus. This article describes current methods and applications of corpus linguistics. It then investigates the possibility of using internet data as a source for corpus research. The limitations of such an internet-based approach are described. On the basis of the current developments in search engine technology, an outlook into possible future uses of the internet as a corpus is given.

Comments on Anglicisms in Spanish and their reception

The article describes the influence of English on Spanish from a sociolinguistic perspective and gives a short taxonomy of Anglicisms in Spanish. Under the influence of World English, Anglicisms, particularly lexical ones, have become more prevalent than previously documented, as corpus-based examples show. Attitudes concerning their increasing use fall into three categories: refusing to accept Anglicisms and their use in Spanish (the purist view), warning against their use while emphasizing potential negative consequences for Spanish (the moderate view) and accepting the trend as an enrichment of a modern, living Spanish (the integrative view). Traditional views have been leaning towards the purist position, with the Royal Spanish Academy (RSA) as a leading institution to enforce a restrictive language policy. Public views have been both purist and moderate, while many linguists follow an integrative approach. It is argued that the Academy’s increasingly problematic task is to strike a balance between preservation of the language character and the freedom for Spanish to adapt and develop in a global context. Der Artikel beschreibt den Einfluss des Englischen auf das Spanische aus soziolinguistischer Perspektive und gibt eine Ubersicht von Anglizismen im Spanischen sowie deren bisherige Einordnung in der Forschung. Unter dem Einfluss der Weltsprache Englisch sind besonders lexikalische Anglizismen weiter verbreitet als bisher dokumentiert, wie korpusbasierte Beispiele zeigen. Die Haltungen gegenuber dieser Entwicklung fallen in drei Kategorien: die Ablehnung von Anglizismen und ihres Gebrauchs im Spanischen (die puristische Sicht), die Warnung vor ihrem Gebrauch unter Betonung moglicher negativen Konsequenzen fur das Spanische (die moderate Sicht) und das Akzeptieren dieses Trends als eine Bereicherung eines modernen, lebenden Spanisch (die integrative Sicht). Die traditionelle Sichtweise ist uberwiegend puristisch gepragt, mit der Koniglich Spanischen Akademie (KSA) als fuhrender Institution, die eine restriktive Sprachpolitik betreibt. Es wird argumentiert, dass es die zunehmend problematische Aufgabe der Akademie ist, einen Ausgleich zu finden zwischen der Bewahrung des Charakters der Sprache und der Freiheit, sich in einem globalen Kontext anzupassen und weiterzuentwickeln.

Phrasal Verbs: The English Verb-Particle Construction and Its History

advances our ideas about how to understand literary influence, especially among artistic couples. In the case of Hughes and Plath, this involves transnational, gender, psychological and other aspects that further complicate Harold Bloom’s already intricate theory The Anxiety of Influence (1973) and many others that have followed. While Clark’s study is important as a study on literary influence, it will be mostly appreciated by students of Hughes and Plath, who will gain myriad new insights about the two. Using both well-known and obscure sources by Hughes and Plath, Clark shares a surprising number of original finds, which makes her book so delightful and readable. She, for instance, proves that the most quintessential Plath poem of all, “Lady Lazarus”, owes a great deal to Hughes’ “Quest” and “The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar”. She also suggests that Hughes’ penchant for war poetry is at least partially the result of what he feared was Plath’s emasculating influence on him. Clark’s emphasis on how Hughes may have sparked Plath’s interest in philosophy—especially Nietzsche —is fascinating to read, but it is even more illuminating that she moulded it into something of her own, adding a bit of Emerson to make it more quintessentially American. Plath was afraid that Hughes would Anglicize her, and she struggled to remain American. Clark analyses these little battles in what became not only a war between Hughes and Plath, but also between Hughes scholars and Plath scholars. In the year of the fiftieth anniversary of Plath’s death, this war may not be over, but the most significant battles are becoming increasingly clear and it is possible to grieve the losses on both sides.