CHAPTER 3 CORPUS ANALYSIS
3.2 Results of the Corpus Study
3.2.2 The Distribution of Gender Roles of the Modified People
we found was the total percentages of the top two types of modified nouns; that is,
‘artifact’ and ‘place’, for charming accounted for nearly 80% of the total instances. By contrast, for pretty, it displayed a high tendency to depict ‘artifact’, account for about 50% of all the instances, followed by the types of ‘nature’ (13.76%) and ‘place’
(12.84%).
Moreover, instances tagged as ‘others’ were conventional or idiomatic expressions, accounting for 11.01% for pretty and 1.46% for charming. The results suggested that pretty had more idiomatical usages.
Table 3- 10 The Semantic Distribution of the Two Adjectives Used to Describe the Attractiveness of an Object
In general, from the results of sense analysis, it suggests that pretty and charming had similar tendencies to describe the attractiveness of a person and a thing. The main differences between them are types of attractiveness they described. In terms of a person, pretty seemed to describe someone’s physical appearance; whereas, charming in most cases indicated someone had an attractive character. For an object, pretty was likely to depict ‘artifact’. Whereas, charming tended to describe both ‘artifact’ and ‘place’.
3.2.2 The Distribution of Gender Roles of the Modified People
Table 3-11 provides information about how the two adjectives were used in relation to gender. Pretty was used more often to describe females’ outer beauty
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(72.99%). By contrast, charming was more frequently used to describe males’ inner beauty (65.66%). The results seem to correspond to social expectation that females are more likely to be pretty; that is, they tend to be attractive in a delicate way (tagged as
‘slightness’, ‘fragility’, or ‘airiness’) or have a good looking (tagged as ‘beauty’).
However, some instances (6.93%) indicated that males can also be described as pretty.
Further discussion and examples will be presented later in the collocational information in terms of noun and adjective collocates.
Table 3- 11 The Distributions of Sex Roles of Modified Nouns for ‘Pretty’ and
‘Charming’
Notes. Neutral refers to “gender neutral”
3.2.3 Collocational Information
Noun collocates—person. As previous discussed in semantic distributions in sex
roles (see Table 3-11), only a few instances (6.93%) indicated that males are pretty. The results may suggest that ‘delicacy’ and ‘beauty’ are not the traits that men are admired.
However, through observing the top 20 R1 noun collocates of the two adjectives based on the results from the COCA as showed in Table 3-12. It shows that boy and boys were strong collocates with pretty.
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Table 3- 12 Top 20 R1 Noun Collocates of ‘Pretty’ and ‘Charming’
pretty charming
(a) A young man, midtwenties. Goodlooking, too handsome for Sawyer's taste -- a pretty boy, was the FBI agent's first thought.
(b) Pretty Boy Floyd, a well-known bank robber from Oklahoma, and his drunken sidekick, Adam Righetti, were identified as being two of the gunmen and were caught a year later in Ohio.
(3-13)
(a) # RILEY # # We got ta blow the fences! # PRETTY BOY (O.S.
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國立 政 治 大 學
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
LOUDSPEAKER) # Johnson's are loaded! # # RILEY # # Yeah, but they're capped!
(b) My little boy, Wexford Junior, was at that time four and a half. Bright as a polished pebble… And pretty, pretty as an angel.
Examples (3-12) and (3-13) indicate that not only sex roles but also the ages of modified people may be related to the discourse functions of pretty. Pretty can be used to express both compliment and insult. In (3-12-a), it shows that the FBI agent thought that the pretty boy wasn’t suitable for the job. Being pretty seems to be a negative trait of men. On the other hand, in (3-12-b), pretty boy was used without judgments. It was used as someone’s nickname, referring to a man who is attractive and good looking.
Unlike the previous examples, pretty boy sometimes can also be used to describe females. In (3-13-a), Pretty boy was used as a name of a female soldier in a movie—
Land of the Dead. In this instance, Riley is talking to Pretty Boy and there is a war happening. It may not be possible to definitively conclude which meaning, positive or negative, was applied. It may only imply that she has an ability to fight but lacking of physical strength. Although in example (3-13-b), boy was not the R1 collocate of pretty.
It may show that a pretty boy can be used to describe a little boy as pretty as an angel.
It is undoubted that a pretty boy here is a compliment.
These examples show that pretty has both positive and negative meanings which can be seen in the phrasal usages pretty boy. The results may exhibit a slight disagreement with the findings of Haily and Jung’s study (2015, p. 132). They found that pretty boy seems to have the purpose of causing insult to males by degrading males’
masculine (e.g. …pretty boy, cursed with beauty) or criticizing their toughness (e.g. a pretty boy wuss). Whereas, we found that pretty boy can be used to imply men who lack masculinity (3-12-a) and to describe a little boy’s attractive appearance (3-13-b).
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N a tio na
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In additional to the examples discussed above, other collocational information can also show the representation of gender in language. From Table 3-12, woman is one of overlapped noun collocates between the two adjectives within the top 20 (showed in shaded). Compared to pretty, charming was relatively less used to describe females. By further examining in all the concordances of charming woman found in the COCA, the results may suggest that charming woman has at least three meanings. The first meaning is that a woman is beautiful and has sexual attractiveness. Men are likely to be enchanted by her (example 3-14-a). Secondly, the charm of a woman is not only restricted in her outer beauty, but the charm reflects on her inner beauty. In example (3-14-b), a woman with physically challenged (i.e., a club foot and a squint) shows her attractiveness by intelligence. In (3-14-c) the characters of the woman, being spirited, seem to be an essential factor of her charm. In (3-14-d), we can also find that no matter what a woman looks like, people want to have a good relationship with her since her charming personality. For the last meaning is that a woman makes effort to think like a man. She alters the traditional stereotypes of females (example 3-14-e). In summary, a charming woman can refer to a female who is attractive in outer beauty or inner beauty and sometimes it may be used to describe a woman who tries to break the gender stereotype.
(3-14)
(a) That night he had realized that the twelve-year-old hellion Zarabeth who used to take him fishing and endlessly taunt him had become a woman—a beautiful, charming woman he wanted with every breath.
(b) A clever and charming woman will always attract wise lovers, even if she has a club foot and a squint.
(c) Her Majesty is a charming woman, Jeffrey. Not beautiful, exactly, but she is
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N a tio na
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so spirited, it scarcely matters.
(d) She could be the most charming woman you ever saw. People loved to be around her.
(e) …Stephens presents Siefert as a charming woman poet who lacked the genius of her male counterparts. # The inspiration of Siefert's poetic writing in Les Stoiques, for example, alternates between feminine sentiment and abstract thought, which was considered an attribute of the male mind.
Noun collocates—object. In terms of noun collocates for object, Table 3-12
displays the collocational data, and some similarities and differences are showed. For the ‘artifact’ type, we found that pretty often collocated with the things that people wear such as dress, and clothes. In contrast, charming tended to collocate with descriptions of events such as story and book. As for ‘place’, charming showed the tendency to collocate with a community of people such as, town and village; a building where people live in, for instance, cottage. In terms of ‘nature’, pretty was commonly used to describe flower. Whereas, the results of the top 20 R1 noun collocates did not provide much information about pretty’s tendency to collocate with words associated with
‘place’ or charming’s tendency to ‘nature’.
Therefore, Table 3-12 shows that the two adjectives had different preferences in noun collocates in terms of ‘art’ ‘place’ and ‘nature’. These results may be in agreement with those of sense analysis—pretty was apt to describe outer beauty; whereas, charming tended to describe inner beauty. Example (3-15) below shows some coordinating nouns with pretty and charming respectively.
(3-15)
(a) A pretty dress helps an at-home holiday dinner feel more festive.
(b) John and Josie found so many pretty flower designs in the wallpaper-baskets
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(c) A charming book that helps children see why manners are useful in our society, even if not required of dogs and other animals.
(d) Manteo is a cozy, charming town, small enough to be accessible on foot.
In example (3-15-a) and (3-15-b), people were pleased or attracted by the visual impression; that is, pretty dress and pretty flower. By contrast, in example (3-15-c) and (3-15-d), the impressions came from moral lessons from the book, atmosphere or culture of the town. These things are more like the inner beauty of a person, those need people to think and to experience their attractiveness.
Adjectives collocates. Table 3-13 provides the data of the adjective collocates of
pretty and charming. There was one overlapped coordinating adjective—smart (shaded). The results may be related to the meaning developments of the two adjectives.
The original sense of pretty is ‘cunning and tricky’ from Old English (Online Etymology Dictionary [OED]).In terms of charming, it is present-participle adjective from charm (verb.) which means ‘to recite or cast a magic spell’ from Old French charmer (13 century) (OED).
Table 3- 13 Top 20 Adjective Collocates of ‘Pretty’ and ‘Charming’ (within a span of eight words)
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N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
sweet 67 feminine 5.11 smart 34 charming 7.23 beautiful 62 slender 5.09 lovely 32 gracious 7.2 bright 54 slim 5.07 warm 30 intelligent 6.49
blond 53 pretty 4.97 sweet 29 funny 6.16
blue 52 ugly 4.65 attractive 26 polite 5.93
dark 52 handsome 4.58 nice 26 entertaining 5.91 blonde 47 shiny 4.37 charismatic 25 lovely 5.71 tall 46 neat 4.37 friendly 25 attractive 5.24
thin 46 smart 4.26 quaint 23 friendly 5.08
sexy 40 skinny 4.16 personable 21 romantic 5.04
ugly 38 cute 4.12 historic 21 brilliant 4.82
petite 36 delicate 4.05 romantic 20 smart 4.67 popular 36 sweet 3.92 delightful 19 historic 4.52
In example (3-16), it appears that both pretty and charming can be used to describe a person who has an ability to achieve things in clever ways.
(3-16)
(a) It finds on a single college campus every imaginable youthful type: a track star on an athletic scholarship (Omar Epps), who is convinced he is being exploited; his very smart, very pretty girlfriend (Tyra Banks), who is coolly intent on using the system to her advantage.
(b) Continuing our story now about Michael Backman, the con man, the conniver, charming, smart and slick. So slick, he came up with an outrageous plan -- a plan to actually erase the criminal part of his life.
As for adjectives used to describe people, from Table 3-13, we can see that pretty shows the tendency to collocate with adjectives for modifying physical appearance, such as blond, blonde and petite. As for adjectives for describing character, such as funny, witty, friendly, were more frequently collocated with charming. Only one
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adjective related to appearance (handsome) co-occurs with charming shown on the top 20 list.
For adjectives used to describe objects, it is apparently to see that charming tends to collocate with adjectives time-related, like historic, and quaint. The examples in (3-17) show that charming was frequently used to describe old places.
(3-17)
(a) Historic Villa Rica Ghost Tour, “a 1.5-mile guided walking tour through the charming and historic downtown district that puts a paranormal twist on the
town's rich history, from the time Native American tribes called the area home up to the mid-1900s.
(b) At Wimbledon, class is a continuum. The surrounding village is quaint, charming and accommodating.
In summary, the findings of word senses and collocation analyses discussed here provided us with an understanding of the differences between pretty and charming.
Both adjectives can be used to describe attractiveness of a thing and a person. Moreover, they had positive and negative meanings. On the contrary, the main differences between them were types of modified nouns. Pretty had preference in depicting physical appearances of people and objects (e.g., face, dress). Whereas, charming tended to describe inner beauty (e.g., personality) and experiences of beauty which need thinking or feeling (e.g., book).
In the next section, a comparison of pretty and charming in varied genres in the COCA was conducted. As previous mentioned in Chapter 2, Edmonds and Hirst (2002) proposed that stylistic variation is one of aspects that indicates differences of near-synonyms. Moreover, it is expected that the genre distribution of the two adjectives could help English learners have a better understanding of choosing appropriate words
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3.2.4 Comparison of ‘Pretty’ and ‘Charming’ in Different Genres in the COCA