The message I'm clipping below was posted on the Corpus Linguistics list
recently; I thought it might be relevant to the "as it were" discussion.
There's a summary of historical patterns after the token-count stuff.
-- Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Mark Davies
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 2:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Studies of 'as it were', 'so to speak' and
'in a manner of speaking'?
Raf,
>From the 400 million word Corpus of *Contemporary* American English
(www.americancorpus.org):
2312 tokens for "so to speak": http://www.americancorpus.org/?q=3467834
1593 tokens for "as it were": http://www.americancorpus.org/?q=3466390
144 tokens for "in a manner of speaking":
http://www.americancorpus.org/?q=3467842
>From the 400 million word Corpus of *Historical* American English
(alpha version; not publicly-available yet; just screenshots):
6321 tokens for "soToSpeak": http://corpus.byu.edu/images/soToSpeak.gif
2750 tokens for "as it were": http://corpus.byu.edu/images/asItWere.gif
161 tokens for "in a manner of speaking":
http://corpus.byu.edu/images/inaMannerOfSpeaking.gif
>From the 100 million word British National Corpus
(corpus.byu.edu/bnc/):
353 tokens for "so to speak": http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/?q=3468024
27 tokens for "in a manner of speaking":
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/?q=3468346
Can't search "as it were" with BYU-BNC, because of BNC MWE /
architecture mismatch
>From the 100 million word TIME Corpus [1920s-2000s]
(corpus.byu.edu/time)
191 tokens of "so to speak": http://corpus.byu.edu/time/?q=3468086
178 tokens of "as it were": http://corpus.byu.edu/time/?q=3468061
Only 13 tokens of "in a manner of speaking":
http://corpus.byu.edu/time/?q=3468107 (too few for any real analysis)
Summary:
Historical:
"As it were" has been decreasing since the early 1800s, steepest
decrease of the three during the last 20 years
"In a manner of speaking" increasing early 1900s-1970s, some decrease
since then
"So to speak" increase through the late 1800s, gradual decrease since
then
Note: the TIME Corpus doesn't show these shifts as well. May be due to
one genre / one source, and these seem to be stylistically-marked
constructions
>From a genre-based perspective, it is interesting that in both COCA and
the BNC, "in a manner of speaking" is so much higher in fiction. With
direct searches, you can see other genre comparisons and
American/British differences in the two corpora, as well as look at
collocates, etc.
Best,
Mark D.
============================================
Mark Davies
Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics
Brigham Young University
(phone) 801-422-9168 / (fax) 801-422-0906
Web: http://davies-linguistics.byu.edu
** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
============================================
From: [log in to unmask] [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
[log in to unmask] [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 7:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Corpora-List] Studies of 'as it were', 'so to speak' and 'in a
manner of speaking'?
Can anyone point me to useful literature on any of these expressions?
Does the following seem like a normal use of 'as it were'?
********
"The tracks!" said Pooh. "A third animal has joined the other two!"
"Pooh!" cried Piglet "Do you think it is another Woozle?"
"No," said Pooh, "because it makes different marks. It is either Two
Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or Two, as it might be, Wizzles
and one, if so it is, Woozle. Let us continue to follow them."
So they went on, feeling just a little anxious now, in case the three
animals in front of them were of Hostile Intent. And Piglet wished very
much that his Grandfather T. W. were there, instead of elsewhere, and
Pooh thought how nice it would be if they met Christopher Robin suddenly
but quite accidentally, and only because he liked Christopher Robin so
much. And then, all of a sudden, Winnie-the-Pooh stopped again, and
licked the tip of his nose in a cooling manner, for he was feeling more
hot and anxious than ever in his life before. There were four animals in
front of them!
"Do you see, Piglet? Look at their tracks! Three, as it were, Woozles,
and one, as it was, Wizzle. Another Woozle has joined them!"
>From A.A. Milne, 'In Which Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch
a Woozle' (Chapter 3 of Winnie the Pooh).
********
Thanks. - Raf
Professor Raphael Salkie, Tel: (+44) 01273 643335
School of Humanities, Tel: (+44) 01273 643337
University of Brighton Tel: (+44) 01273 600900
Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9PH
England.
Fax: (+44) 01273 641873
Email: [log in to unmask]
Home page: http://artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/research/academic/salkie
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