Paul Baker presents corpus-driven research on the differences between British and American English, where he delves into the trends of the English language, the extent to which both varieties have changed over time, as well as the direction that the varieties are moving in.
In ch. 1 Baker introduces a set of eight corpora collectively called the Brown Family, with a variety of categories spanning from the 1930s through to the 2000s, and then elaborates on how the analysis proceeds. The following chapters explore variations at different linguistic levels.
Chs. 2 and 3 focus on variations within words. Ch. 2 looks at spelling differences (e.g. or/our, dropped e, toward/towards). Baker makes generalisations via synchronic and diachronic analyses. Take the -er/-re difference, for example. British and American writers’ preference for either center or centre, and frequency of use, are examined in those corpora. In ch. 3 Baker utilizes the concept of word clusters supported by the corpus analysis tool WordSmith and the measurement of coefficient of variation (CV) to identify sequences of letters and affixes. Fifteen affixes (e.g. -ment, -ology, and -ism) are selected from morphemes reflecting the most and least frequent changes over time, showing the rise, fall, and stable patterns of change.
The next two chapters concentrate on lexical differences. Ch. 4 compares word varieties with a frequency of at least 1,000 times across four British or American corpora and relates changes of such words (e.g. the decline of Mr. and Mrs.) to the trends of development in English—densification, democratization, and informalisation. In ch. 5 the lexical frequency is reduced to at least 100 times. Analysis of lower-frequency phenomena in transport, monarchy, politics and law, business and economics, people, entertainment and leisure forms a hypothesis that British English is more inclined to adopt American words.
Chs. 6 and 7 address annotated corpora to uncover divergent patterns of variation. In ch. 6 the CLAWS7 (i.e. part of speech categorisation scheme consisting of eighteen main tags) is used, combined with calculating the CV and correlation measures. Baker compares key grammatical tags, and his findings confirm, and extend, discoveries of Leech and colleagues (Change in contemporary English: A grammatical study, 2009). Ch. 7 shifts to another scheme—a set of semantic tags based upon meaning. For example, Table 7.2 indicates semantic tag G2.1 (law and order), which is key in every time period, in which Baker explains a consistent trend of varieties in the cultural context.
Ch. 8 takes a corpus-based approach since Baker considers the restrictions of previous corpus-driven approaches. He examines several pragmatic phenomena within the categories of swearing and profanity, language and identity, and discourse markers, indicating that written English has become increasingly colloquial over time. In ch. 9 Baker concludes with predictions of future changes via linking trends of change, especially straightforward decrease or increase, to six developmental factors: Americanisation, densification, democratisation, informalisation/colloquialisation, grammaticalisation, and technologisation.
This book, with intuitive comparisons in figures and tables, serves as an insightful reference for researchers interested in on-going changes between American and British English based on a corpus approach.
