The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts

This paper aims at describing how about, at least and nearly are used in the nineteenth-century subcorpus of the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English, which gathers instructional texts exclusively written by women. While still retaining their approximative sense, about, at least and nearly...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Elena Quintana Toledo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2024-07-01
Series:Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas
Subjects:
Online Access:https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/rdlyla/article/view/20577
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1841561464923488256
author Elena Quintana Toledo
author_facet Elena Quintana Toledo
author_sort Elena Quintana Toledo
collection DOAJ
description This paper aims at describing how about, at least and nearly are used in the nineteenth-century subcorpus of the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English, which gathers instructional texts exclusively written by women. While still retaining their approximative sense, about, at least and nearly have a large potential to build and maintain writer-reader interpersonal relationships. The most frequent collocational patterns have been firstly identified by using corpus tools to later analyse the major pragmatic functions of specific examples following Zhang’s (2015) framework for elastic language. Findings reveal that collocations with numerical expressions are common to about, at least and nearly while other patterns only emerge with about and nearly. It also seems that pattern and function are tightly interwoven. In general, the approximators surveyed here fulfill a variety of interpersonal functions, most notably, just-right elastic, rapport elastic, mitigating elastic, self-protection elastic, and intensifying elastic.
format Article
id doaj-art-1812980ed07b4199bb365470c11a38cd
institution Kabale University
issn 1886-2438
1886-6298
language English
publishDate 2024-07-01
publisher Universitat Politècnica de València
record_format Article
series Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas
spelling doaj-art-1812980ed07b4199bb365470c11a38cd2025-01-03T01:34:16ZengUniversitat Politècnica de ValènciaRevista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas1886-24381886-62982024-07-011916417410.4995/rlyla.2024.2057719770The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive textsElena Quintana Toledo0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1583-808XUniversidad de Las Palmas de Gran CanariaThis paper aims at describing how about, at least and nearly are used in the nineteenth-century subcorpus of the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English, which gathers instructional texts exclusively written by women. While still retaining their approximative sense, about, at least and nearly have a large potential to build and maintain writer-reader interpersonal relationships. The most frequent collocational patterns have been firstly identified by using corpus tools to later analyse the major pragmatic functions of specific examples following Zhang’s (2015) framework for elastic language. Findings reveal that collocations with numerical expressions are common to about, at least and nearly while other patterns only emerge with about and nearly. It also seems that pattern and function are tightly interwoven. In general, the approximators surveyed here fulfill a variety of interpersonal functions, most notably, just-right elastic, rapport elastic, mitigating elastic, self-protection elastic, and intensifying elastic.https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/rdlyla/article/view/20577approximatorswomen’s instructive textsnineteenth centuryelastic languagecollocational patternsinterpersonal functions
spellingShingle Elena Quintana Toledo
The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
Revista de Lingüística y Lenguas Aplicadas
approximators
women’s instructive texts
nineteenth century
elastic language
collocational patterns
interpersonal functions
title The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
title_full The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
title_fullStr The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
title_full_unstemmed The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
title_short The approximators about, at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth-century women’s instructive texts
title_sort approximators about at least and nearly as interpersonal devices in nineteenth century women s instructive texts
topic approximators
women’s instructive texts
nineteenth century
elastic language
collocational patterns
interpersonal functions
url https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/rdlyla/article/view/20577
work_keys_str_mv AT elenaquintanatoledo theapproximatorsaboutatleastandnearlyasinterpersonaldevicesinnineteenthcenturywomensinstructivetexts
AT elenaquintanatoledo approximatorsaboutatleastandnearlyasinterpersonaldevicesinnineteenthcenturywomensinstructivetexts