Lexical Priming in Spoken English Usage

What is it about?

The focus of this book is to show how far the concept of lexical priming is applicable to spoken (English) language. To do this, in the second part of the book the focus is on naturally occurring uses of English. To find out whether corpus linguistic techniques provide the kinds of answers we are looking for, as a first step, I would like to clarify how this approach works. Both dialectology and corpus linguistics focus intensely on naturally occurring speech, investigating patterns of language usage. In this chapter, to show why I find the concept of lexical priming to be a valid one, I look at how the hypothesis came into being, approaching the concept in three different ways: Firstly, in Section 2.2.1 we look at developments in linguistics that have been taken up and further refined by contemporary corpus linguists and that form part of the concept of lexical priming. Secondly, Section 2.2.2 presents an overview of how Hoey’s (1991, 1995) ideas about bonding evolved and were tested and then described in Lexical Priming (2005). Thirdly, in Sections 2.3 and 2.4, the psychological concept of priming, first mention by Quillian (1961) is discussed. Then Section 2.5 looks at priming and the new options that have opened through the availability of corpora, while Section 2.6 pulls all the strands together.

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