VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
University of languages and international studies
Faculty of post-graduate studies

ĐÀO THỊ NGỌC NGUYÊN A corpus-based study on collocations of
keywords in English business articles
ABOUT THE EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS (Nghiên cứu tập hợp cụm từ của các từ khóa trong các bài báo tiếng
Anh kinh tế về cuộc khủng hoảng nợ châu Âu)

M.A. COMBINED PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60 22 15
Hanoi - 2012
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TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 17
III.1. Data collection instrument 17
III.1.1. Construction of corpus 17
III.1.1.1. Database 17
III.1.1.2. Extracted business articles 19
III.1.2. Concordance program 20
III.2. Data collection procedures 21

CHAPTER IV: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 22
IV.1. Quantitative results 23
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IV.2. Collocation analysis of content keywords 26
IV.2.1. DEBT and CRISIS 26
IV.2.2. ECONOMIC 44
IV.2.3. MARKETS 50

Chapter V: CONCLUSION 57
V.1. Major findings 57
V.2. Pedagogical implications and suggestions 59
V.2.1 Improving collocation competence among language learners 59
V.2.2 Corpus-based activities for learner‘s collocation development in ESP
class 62
V.3. Suggestions for further studies 67

REFERENCES 68

APPENDIX

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Table 24: MARKETS Concordance (markets as ‗a particular country, area or section of
population that might buy goods‘)
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Concordance Program‘s main screen
Figure 2: String matching of CRISIS from the corpus
Figure 3: String matching of DEBT from the corpus
Figure 4: String matching of ECONOMIC from the corpus
Figure 5: String matching of MARKETS from the corpus
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
I.1.Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
The importance of vocabulary in language learning has always and long been recognized,
although there were times when vocabulary was treated as separated from grammar and skills.
However, under the light of recent studies, vocabulary has even gained much more attention.
Essential and crucial as it has become, vocabulary has been highlighted as the basis of
language and communication. Wilkins, an outstanding British linguist, once stated "without
vocabulary nothing can be conveyed". Obviously, a rich knowledge of vocabulary not only
makes one's ability of using the language recognized and appreciated but also makes him or
her be more successful in communication.
However, no matter how convinced learners of English in principles of the importance of
vocabulary, the vocabulary acquisition actually poses enormous difficulties to them. One of
the most complicated problems arising when vocabulary is dealt with is how to combine and
use words appropriately in accordance with culture or language conventions, which is often

help to business learners of English as well as those who find themselves interested in English
semantics and collocation-related issues.
I.2. Aims of the study
The aim of this research is to conduct a close investigation into collocations of keywords from
a corpus of a certain number of business articles written about the European debt crisis. To be
specific, it identifies words with high frequency of occurrence within the chosen corpus and
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examines their collocations. The research, therefore, is carried out to answer the following
research questions:
 What are the top high-frequency words in the corpus of written articles about the
European debt crisis?
 What are significant patterns and features of collocations of such keywords?
I.3.Scope of the study
This study is about to discuss keywords and their collocations in 15 written articles about the
European debt crisis. The designed corpus of over 20,000 words is taken from online business
articles from websites of high reputation such as The Washington Post, Money CNN,
….Keywords chosen for analysis of significant patterns of collocation within the study are
those which can distinguish the business genre of the selected articles.
I.4. Structure of the thesis
The study is organized as follows:
 Chapter I-Introduction- is firstly introduced, briefly stating the rationale, aims, scope and
organization of the study.
 Secondly, chapter II-Theoretical Background- deals with the theories setting the
background for the study.
 Thirdly, chapter III- Research Methodology- is a presentation on the methodology of the
research, referring to the research design, data collection procedures and data analysis
procedures of the study.
 Next, on chapter IV-Results and Discussion-, a detailed discussion of collocations
keywords in the selected corpus is carried out, through which some interesting aspects can

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used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. By grouping the uses of a particular word
or phrase on the computer screen or in printed form, the researcher shows the patterns in
which the given word or phrase is typically used. A large collection of a word‘s patterns then
can be created very quickly and effectively. Thus, CL has been widely employed in other
areas of linguistics and lexicography, where corpora can be used to help dictionary markers to
spot new words and identify contexts for new meanings (Meyer, 2002).
In addition to its crucial function in language study in general, the role of CL in language
pedagogy has become increasingly prominent. McEnery and Wilson (1996) argue that foreign
language teachers usually produce simplified examples, which will raise difficulties for
students when these are confronted with real, more complex language that sometimes they are
incapable of processing. CL can thus contribute to rendering learning a foreign language more
effective since students will be faced with real language. Authentic materials can motivate
learners in the language classroom whereas non-authentic materials may not because they do
not reflect real applications of language and thus students will lose motivation in learning in a
target language.
The essence of exposure to authentic materials even becomes more accurate in the case of ESP
classes where all lessons are highly purpose-driven. CL, therefore, takes an essential part in
ESP, bringing a great deal of benefit to the teaching and learning on ESP courses. However,
among the many different types of corpora available such as written and spoken corpora,
general reference corpora, special purpose corpora, monolingual and multilingual corpora,
synchronic and diachronic corpora, open and closed corpora, and learner corpora (Biber,
1998), specialized corpora are preferable in ESP classes since they offer access to specialized
vocabulary in specialized contexts. In a specialized corpus, context has considerable influence
on the language choice; and the choice of language in turn plays an essential role in the
shaping of the text genre.

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metonymy.
II.3.1. Metaphor
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:105), "metaphor is the transference of meaning from one
object to another based on the similarity between these two objects". Traditionally, metaphors
have been viewed as implicit comparisons. Flood…poured in, oozes, and stern in the
following sentences are all examples of metaphors.
 A flood of protects poured in following the announcement.
(a large quantity of…came in)
 He oozes geniality. (displays all over)
 The government still hopes to stern the tide of inflation.
(resist the force of)
However, if the fact of resemblance is explicitly signaled, by a word such as like, as in protest
came in like a flood, this is considered not to be metaphor but simile.
According to Nguyen Hoa (2004:109), metaphors may be of three types.
Living metaphors are those involving words used in unusual meaning and metaphors may be felt
as such. (Beauty is a flower which wrinkles will devour.)
Faded metaphors lost their freshness because of long use and became habitual. (dying capitalism,
to fall in love, golden youth)
Dead metaphors are words which have lost their direct meanings and are used only figuratively.
(to ponder, capital, sarcasm)
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Additionally, metaphors may be divided into different subgroups. Following are some
commonly and widely used subgroups of metaphors in English.
 A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of human body transferred to other objects.
Typical examples include the nose of a plane, the head of the school, or the leg of the table.
 A subgroup of metaphors comprises names of animals transferred to the human beings.
For example, a cunning person is a fox; or a hard working person is a bee.
 A subgroup of metaphors comprises proper names transferred to common ones. For
instance, a jealous person is called an Othello; and an eloquent speaker is a Cicero.

of its parts, or vice versa. Roof, strings, and bite in the following sentences are examples of
synecdoche.
 They all live under the same roof.(in one house)
 At this point the strings take over. (stringed instruments)
 Let's go and have a bite.(have a meal)
II.3.3. Other types of meaning transference
Besides metaphor and metonymy, there are other types of meaning transference involving
hyperbole, litotes, irony, and euphemisms.
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Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be understood literally. However, the
effect is powerful.
For example:
 It is a nightmare.
 A thousand thanks
Litotes is really an understatement. It is traditionally defined as expressing something in the
affirmative by the negative of its contrary. For instance, not bad is often used to mean good; or
rather unwise to mean very silly.
Irony is used to express meaning by words of the opposite sense. In irony, intonation plays an
essential role. For example, nice in "You have got us into a nice mess." means bad.
Euphemisms involve the use of a milder expression for something unpleasant. For instance,
restroom or bathroom are used instead of WC.
II.4. Collocation
II.4.1. Definition of collocation
It is not easy to define what collocation is. In the linguistic literature, it is often discussed in
contrast with free word combination at one extreme and idiomatic expression at the other;
collocation occurs somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. A free word combination can be
described using general rules; that is, in terms of semantic constraints on the words which
appear in a certain syntactic relation with a given headword. An idiom, on the other hand, is a
rigid word combination to which no generalities apply; neither can its meaning be determined

language with no general syntactic or semantic rules applied.
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Additionally, many linguists have tried to define collocation by presenting its functions.
Halliday (1966) and Sinclair (1966) introduced the notion that patterns of collocation can form
the basis for a lexical analysis of language alternative to, and independent of, the grammatical
analysis. They regarded the two levels of analysis as being complementary, with neither of the
two being subsumed by the other. Holding the same idea, McIntosh (1961:328) and Mitchell
(1971) presented the lexical and grammatical analyses as interdependent: "Collocations are to
be studied within grammatical matrices which in turn depend for their recognition on the
observation of collocation similarities" (Mitchell, 1971:65). Later, Halliday (1966:151&157)
argued that the collocation patterns of lexical items can lead to generalization at the lexical
level. Sinclair (1966:412 & 1974:16) proposed that a lexical item can be defined from its
collocation pattern.
In conclusion, definitions of collocation vary across research projects by different linguists.
The fact that collocation is observable in large samples of language has led to the important
role collocation plays. Actually, collocation is used in various applications and the information
about collocation is significant to many linguistic areas such as dictionary writing, natural
language processing, and language teaching. "In all kinds of texts collocations are essential,
indispensable elements…with which our utterances are very largely made" (Kjellmer,
1987:140); "Even very advanced learners often make inappropriate or unacceptable
collocations" (McCarthy,1990:13). The above quotes make two points relevant to the English
learners in the learning of collocation. Firstly, collocation relations are an important part of the
language to be mastered. Secondly, it is an area which "resists" tuition and, therefore, requires
special and systematic attention.
II.4.2. Properties of collocation
In discussion of the nature of collocation, linguists have been trying to generalize what
characteristics collocation has in common. Generally, collocation has three major features as
follow.
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decision.
The characteristics above lead to the fact that what is perfectly acceptable collocation in one
language may be unacceptable in another. Take the case of eat in English and ăn (eat) in
Vietnamese as a typical example. Although these two words are equivalent to each other, they
cannot go with the same range of nouns. While such collocations as ăn hối lộ, ăn bữa tối,
không ăn lương, ăn Tết are acceptable in Vietnamese, the verb eat in English actually cannot
co-occur with these corresponding nouns. Instead, the equivalent phrases must be take bribes,
have dinner, without pay, enjoy Tet in which different verbs are employed.
As collocation differs from language to language, students are put to a lot of troubles in
learning collocation of a foreign language. Unconsciously, students fall into the habit of
translating a word combination from their first language to the foreign language and
eventually get an unacceptable collocation. For example, instead of saying ride bicycle,
Vietnamese learners sometimes says go bicycle because đi xe đạp (go bicycle) is totally
correct in Vietnamese.
II.4.2.3. Collocation is recurrent in context.
While the two properties mentioned above indicate difficulties in determining what is an
acceptable collocation, on the positive side it is clear that collocation occurs frequently in
similar contexts. It is possible to observe collocations in samples of language. Generally,
collocations are those word pairs which occur frequently together in the same environment,
but do not include lexical items which have a high overall frequency in language. This
property, in fact, has exploited by many researchers in natural language processing in identify
collocation automatically. 15

II.4.3. Classifications of collocation
In an effort to characterize collocation, linguists present a wide variety of individual
collocations, attempting to categorize them as part of a general scheme. Eventually, linguists
end up in different classifications of collocation corresponding to their view of collocation.

a structure. For example, the phrase kick the bucket is considered a unique collocation,
meaning "to die" used for bad men like thieves or murders. While other nouns and verbs can
be substituted in the phrase to form other meaning phrases such as kick the door, and lift the
bucket, the word combinations in these other phrases are no longer cohesive patterns in the
way that kick the bucket is.
2. Strong collocations are those in which any knowledge of a pattern can be incomplete
without some idea of its strong collocate. Trenchant criticism and rancid butter are two
examples of collocations of this type.
3. Medium-strength collocations form the great part of what we say and write. This is
considered the most common and typical type of collocations. Instances of medium-strength
collocations include hold a conversation, highly complicated, or direct equivalent.
4. Weak collocations are often common patterns that help structure a sentence but do not
carry much specific meaning by themselves. For instance, a weak collocation might be let's +
verb, which is used for suggestion. This is a commonly used structural pattern into which a
variety of verbs can be inserted without any changes in meaning of the phrase as a whole.

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CHAPTER III
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The study is a corpus-based analysis of the data in business articles. It attempted to investigate
high-frequency words together with their collocations in a comparative number of different
business articles and reports. The following chapter, as denoted by its name, will outline the
methodology of the research. It starts with the fundamental data collecting instruments
employed in the study. Procedures for data collection are addressed next, followed by
procedures for data analysis.
III.1 Data collecting instruments
III.1.1 Construction of Corpus
Since the study is primarily a corpus-based analysis of collocations, its findings come from a
linguistic analysis of a substantial number of written articles. The corpus of the study is

position in the world of economics and finance, making up one third of the global financial
market data with estimated revenue of $6.25 billion in 2009.
The mentioned-above newspapers were chosen to serve as the database for the study because
of their reliability and reputation for famous authors, prestige presses and worldwide use in the
world of economy.