ENG116 Discover the Writer in You Assessment 2 Brief | SU

Choose ONE of the following tasks: Task A or Task B below

Read the instructions for each task
Read the additional instructions on style and formatting, word count and deadline

Style and formatting

Do not write your name or student number on the paper or in the file name: the system will match it for you after the essay has been marked anonymously.

Save your file as (not capital-sensitive):
ENGL116_Assessement2_TaskA or ENGL116_Assessment2_Corpus; or ENGL116_Assessment2_TaskB or ENGL116_Assessment2_Pragmatics

You can use tables/graphs/figures, but each of them will need to have a number and a caption and will need to be referred to in text, e.g. “as table 2 below shows…/ as illustrated in table 2 above.”

Example sentences (e.g. taken from a concordance) will need to be numbered, as you see in academic publications: e.g.

(1) I love writing essays.

If you refer to a portion of dialogue, you need to include the specific excerpt you are commenting on in your essay.

When you refer to a portion of dialogue in your text, include line numbers: e.g. “lines 2-3 show an example of overlap”, “there are two clear cases of interruption (11.2-3 and 11.55-57)”.

Both in-text citations and the bibliography need to follow the Harvard or APA citation style. Make sure that you include in the bibliography only the texts you cite in your essay, not just any text you have read.

Include at least 6 different sources in your bibliography. You are encouraged to go beyond the compulsory sources used in the lecture. All sources need to be reliable (e.g. books, chapters, articles)

Do not use footnotes for references. All references need to go in a separate Bibliography section.

Font will be Times New Roman or Calibri 12; 1,5 line spacing.

You are encouraged to use section titles (e.g. Introduction, 1. Synonymy, 2. The BNC, etc).

Important: Please read the guidance on Generative AI here before submitting.

Word count

You need to develop only ONE of the two essays: either Task A or Task B.
Range: 1,800-2,200 words.
Tables, examples and snippets of dialogues are all included in the final word count.
The bibliography is not included in the word count.

Task A: Corpus Linguistics

Choose two near-synonymous words (e.g. sick/ill, completely/entirely, house/home, freedom/liberty, etc.) and conduct a contrastive study using the BNC accessed via CQPWeb online.

Your essay will need to include the following:

Define what a corpus is.
Include an outline of the BNC and a brief critical evaluation of the corpus, considering its appropriateness as a data source for your task.
You will have to critically define (near-). You will find it beneficial to revise this concept within the semantics literature. Consider whether Corpus Linguistics is a suitable approach (cfr theory/methodology) for synonymy studies.
Discuss the meaning/use of the two contrasting words, taking into account notions such as collocation, colligation, semantic association, and semantic prosody.
Do not forget to introduce/define all technical terms before applying them to your discussion of the data. All definitions will need to be appropriately referenced.

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You will have to research both words then compare and contrast them. This comparison will include lexico-grammatical patterns and will be based on an approach such as the one seen in the narrated PowerPoint slides on “word profiles”.
You will have to establish appropriate cut-off points if your dataset is too large (e.g. deciding to consider only the first 50 collocates, or take a random sample of 200 concordances). You will have to motivate your choices.
You may find it appropriate to look at the distribution in various genres/domains. Be careful when making comparisons (you may find it useful to consider the notes on quantitative analysis and the associated narrated PowerPoint).
Include a brief discussion of at least one area in which this study could find applications.
To obtain a high grade, you will need to go beyond description, add some (plausible)interpretation, and approach the concepts and the methodology used critically. You can relate this study to knowledge acquired in other modules if relevant for your critical evaluation (e.g. gender studies could be relevant for terms such as girl/woman, etc).

Task B: Pragmatics

You need to carry out both Part A and Part B.

Approximately 1000 words

For each of the following examples, make a brief note of a possible context and then specify what might be the locutionary and illocutionary acts:

(i) That bull is about to charge.
(ii)Do you know the way to the nearest hospital?
(iii)Let me buy you a drink!

According to Grice’s theory of conversation, in the utterances produced by the second speakers in the following four extracts, there is a difference between ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’. For each extract, explain:

What is the difference?
How did you reach that interpretation

(iv) G: I’m thinking of wearing my new suede boots today.
P: The weather forecast was for rain.

(v) T: What did you have for dinner last night?
B: Food.

(vi) A: I’m sorry – I’ve spilt my drink on your new jacket.
S: Well, that’s just perfect.

(vii) R: Do you think that Danny will be going to the party this evening?
E: I know that Maria is going.

B. Approximately 1000 words

Consider the attached script from the film Meet thhowe Parents (Jay Roach, 2000). In this scene, Pam, who now lives and works in Chicago, brings her new boyfriend Greg home to meet her parent on Long Island.

Use the pragmatic frameworks that you have studied to analyse this excerpt. You might want to refer, for instance, to the politeness strategies used by the characters and to the ways in which ‘what they imply’ may differ from ‘what they say’. Keep your answer closely related to the text by quoting and/or using line numbers to identify relevant features of the script