Using Sketch Engine to examine
representations of MAN and
WOMAN in the BNC
Michael Pearce
Department of Culture
University of Sunderland
mike.pearce@sunderland.ac.uk
http://drmichaelpearce.blogspot.com/
Outline
• Sketch Engine
Word sketches
Word sketch difference
• MAN and WOMAN in the BNC
Power and deviance
Personality and mental capacity
Collocation
Collocation, identified by Firth (1957), is a
way of demonstrating (relatively) exclusive
or frequent relationships between words
(or other linguistic phenomenon). If two
words collocate, then they have a
tendency to occur near or next to each
other in naturally occurring language use.
Baker 2010: 24
Previous studies in gender and
collocation
Romaine (2000)
Caldas-Coulthard and Moon (1999/2010)
Collocates with man/woman and boy/girl in a three million
word sub-corpus of the BNC (from Romaine, 2000: 110)
From Moon and Caldas-Coulthard 2010
Sketch Engine
• Sketch Engine is a Corpus Query System incorporating,
word sketches, grammatical relations, and a distributional
thesaurus;
• A word sketch is a one-page, automatic, corpus-derived
summary of a word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour;
• SE is designed for anyone wanting to research how words
behave, with particular regard to the needs of lexicography;
• Word Sketches were first used in the preparation of the
Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2002,
Edited by Michael Rundell);
• In use for lexicography at Oxford University Press,
ChambersHarrap, Macmillan Publishers and elsewhere;
• People: Adam Kilgarriff, Pavel Rychly, Jan Pomikalek.
• Web: www.sketchengine.co.uk
Part of a Word Sketch showing three grammatical relations for MAN
Word Sketch Difference
‘a neat way of comparing … words: it
shows those patterns and combinations
that the two items have in common, and
also those patterns and combinations that
are more typical of (or even unique to) one
word rather than the other’
(Getting started with Sketch Engine)
MAN and WOMAN occur as subject
of the verb scream
Scream has a higher saliency with
WOMAN (18.6) than it does with MAN
(8.6)
Climb has a higher saliency with MAN
(15.9) than it does with WOMAN (1.4)
COMMON PATTERNS
WOMAN (but not MAN) is modified by the
adjectives pretty, dumpy and scarlet
MAN (but not WOMAN) is modified by
burly, balding and dirty
UNIQUE/EXCLUSIVE PATTERNS
MAN and WOMAN in the BNC
• MAN/WOMAN as Subject
• MAN/WOMAN as Object
• Attributive adjectives associated with
MAN/WOMAN
MAN and WOMAN
•
•
•
•
•
•
Power
Deviance
Social categorization
Personality and mental capacity
Appearance
Sexuality
Power and deviance
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
dig, pounce, lunge, stomp,
frolic, saw, heave, hammer,
race, plough, haul
1. Subject:
actions requiring physical
strength/endurance
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
burly, thick-set, muscular,
strong-armed, thickset,
barrel-chested
[She] was a broad-shouldered woman, though
not physically(AP0)
She is the strongest woman er heroine that
we’ve read’(K60)
2. Adjectives of physical size
and potency
• I was also worried about being tackled to the ground by
a burly woman who was deeply in touch with her
masculine side
• The cashier was a burly woman who hardly looked like
a female
• Just thinking about two burly women writhing around in
jelly
• Two burly women raided a sperm bank in Dallas,
Texas, declared themselves lesbians, and stole 37 jars
of samples “to give our lovers babies”
Favouring MAN
dominate
lead
Unique to MAN
dominate
conquer, mastermind,
build, hunt, outrank,
raid, captain
lead
possess
own
possess
own
3. Subject: general exercise of
power/ownership
Women and men own:
• property
• money
• livestock
But unlike women, men are also represented as owning:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
businesses (e.g. shops, restaurants, hotels)
shares
machinery
land
teams
estates
clothes
vehicles
educational establishments
boats
farms
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
monied
4. Attributive adjectives
associated with wealth,
power, resources
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
masked, wanted, armed,
hanged, accused, arrested,
convicted, gun-toting, evillooking, strong-arm,
vengeful, jailed
5. Adjectives associated
with deviancy
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
rape, muscle, pounce, conquer,
ransack, bludgeon, raid, mutilate,
libel, strangle, burgle, fiddle,
mistreat, oppress, abscond, con
6. Subject verbs associated
with deviancy
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
apprehend, censure, persecute
7. Object verbs
associated with
deviancy
Favouring MAN
Unique to MAN
slay, slaughter, clout, behead, knife,
devour, bite, apprehend, blindfold,
restrain, incarcerate, shackle,
handcuff
Favouring WOMAN
Unique to WOMAN
terrorise, ravish,
suffocate, gag, violate
8. Object: negative
actions
Favouring WOMAN
9. Object: ‘positive’ actions
Unique to WOMAN
IDEOLOGICAL POWER: coerce, discriminate, mistreat,
disempower, hoodwink, objectify, trivialize, penalise,
marginalize, downgrade, shame, violate, interrogate,
dislodge, limit, omit, prescribe, dump, restrict, use
Verbs of OBSERVATION, CATEGORIZATION,
ANALYSIS and INTERVENTION: section, sterilise,
conceptualise, assist, organize, immunise, define,
impregnate, cushion, equate, categorise, compensate,
nurse, highlight, construct, monitor, interpret, exhibit,
regulate, integrate, provide, direct
10. WOMAN as Object
Personality and mental capacity
Personality traits
• Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness
• Neuroticism
• Openness to experience
Extraversion
Associated with activity, friendliness, sociability, assertiveness and talkativeness
 MAN more strongly associated with words conveying activity and assertiveness
Fewer extravert behaviours and characteristics associated with WOMAN
(noteworthy that several of these have strong sexual connotations)
Talkativeness is also a marker of extraversion
MAN
WOMAN
Agreeableness
Associated with traits such as trustfulness, good-naturedness,
kindness and affection
MAN
WOMAN
Conscientiousness
Associated with traits such as efficiency, thoroughness and
discipline
MAN
Neuroticism
Associated with worry, insecurity, anxiety and depression.
MAN
WOMAN
Openness to experience
Associated with traits such as imagination, independence, creativity
and intellectual curiosity
MAN
WOMAN
Conclusions
 Collocates of MAN and WOMAN seem often to
represent gender in stereotypical ways.
But ...
 Women are presented as the objects of sociological
enquiry within a discourse which acknowledges their
subordinate status and attempts to redress it.
References
• Baker, P. 2010. Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics.
Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press.
• Moon, R. And Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. 2010. ‘Curvy,
hunky, kinky’: using corpora as tools for critical analysis.
Discourse & Society, 21(2) 99–133.
• Pearce, M. 2008. Investigating the collocational
behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in the BNC using
Sketch Engine. Corpora, 3 (1) 1-29.
• Romaine, S. 2000. Language in Society: An Introduction
to Sociolinguistics (second edition). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
• www.sketchengine.co.uk/wiki/SkE/GettingStarted
Using Sketch Engine to examine
representations of MAN and
WOMAN in the BNC
Michael Pearce
Department of Culture
University of Sunderland
mike.pearce@sunderland.ac.uk
http://drmichaelpearce.blogspot.com/