Variation according to speaker type:
the word lovely

Do you think the word lovely is used more in speech or writing? Do you think men use the word more or less than women? Does the age of the speaker matter?

First log on to BNCweb.

In the New Query box type in the word lovely and start the query.

Now click the box that contained had the word Thin... in the previous diagram, but go down to the word Distribution and click Go!

What is the frequency per million words for

• spoken texts?
• written texts?
• the whole corpus?

Take a look at the other tables for a moment, just to see the different categories.<\p>

Unfortunately most of the categories shown are for written texts.

To get the distribution of lovely in spoken texts only, by male/female, pick Speaker:Gender in the top Categories box.

What is the frequency per million words for

• females?
• males?

To look at speakers by age, change the box to Speaker:Age.

Now let's look at speaker age and gender together: make the top Categories box Speaker:Gender and make the second box ("for crosstabs only") Speaker Age. What can you say about the use of lovely according to the age and gender of the speaker?

Don't close your BNCweb window - we will be using it again in this session...