<p>Within the last few hundred years, English has gone from being a rather small peripheral language to what it is today – a world language, spoken by millions of people worldwide. The best-known dialects to Swedish learners of English are British English (RP, Received Pronunciation) and American English (GA, General American). Traditionally, British English has been the variety taught in Swedish schools, but due to the recent and growing influence of American English, more and more pupils are using the American dialect. The purpose of this essay is to determine which of these dialects is more common among students in one Swedish school. I have also investigated if the teachers’ English pronunciation and their opinions of the different dialects, as well as the students’ own, have an impact on what variety the students choose to use.</p><p>The results of the study show that although all students mixed both dialects, American features were predominant. A small number of students spoke mainly British English. A majority of the students claimed to be influenced more by the media than by their teachers. When it comes to the students’ opinions of the two dialects it appeared that the students who used more features from one dialect proved to be more positive towards that dialect. Many students found British English to be snobbish. It was also seen as slightly more classy and beautiful than GA. American English was generally considered cool but cocky. It was not considered as intelligent-sounding as RP, but instead more friendly and reliable.</p>

<p>Today English is a world language; it is spoken by millions both as first and second language almost all over the world. The varieties best known to Swedish pupils are the varieties British and American English. Another variety of English, which is spoken by both native and non-native speakers, is a mixture of British English and American English called Mid-Atlantic English. As long as the English language has been a part of the Swedish curriculum, the leading variety taught has been British English, but lately American English has influenced Swedish teenagers because of its prominent status in media. Since both British English and American English are used in Swedish schools, different attitudes can be perceived among pupils and teachers towards these two varieties. The aim of this paper is to determine if Swedish pupils are using British or American English or if they mix these two varieties. Attitudes and prejudice amongst pupils and their teachers towards these two varieties are looked into as well as whether the pupils speak the variety of English they claim they speak. The question of why the pupils speak the variety they do is also investigated. The results show that most pupils mix British and American English and that American English features predominate in the mix. According to this investigation, teachers and pupils find British English to be a bit “snobbish” while American English can sound a bit “cocky” to them. This investigation concludes that the two major influences on the pupils are their teachers and different kind of media.</p>

The overall aim of the present study is to investigate syntactic variation in certain Present-day English noun phrase types including the quantifiers all, whole, both and half (e.g. a half hour vs. half an hour). More specific research questions concerns the overall frequency distribution of the variants, how they are distributed across regions and media and what linguistic factors influence the choice of variant. The study is based on corpus material comprising three newspapers from 1995 (The Independent, The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald) and two spoken corpora (the dialogue component of the BNC and the Longman Spoken American Corpus). The book presents a number of previously not discussed issues with respect to all, whole, both and half. The study of distribution shows that one form often predominated greatly over the other(s) and that there were several cases of regional variation. A number of linguistic factors further seem to be involved for each of the variables analysed, such as the syntactic function of the noun phrase and the presence of certain elements in the NP or its near co-text. For each of the variables, all factors were ranked according to their strength of correlation with particular variants. The study also discusses a possible grammaticalisation process concerning NPs with half and the possibility of all sometimes having another function than expressing totality: to express large quantity. The whole idea of grammatical synonymy has been questioned by some scholars, but the conclusion drawn in the present study is that there are variables that are at least very close to each other in meaning, and that a number of linguistic and non-linguistic factors influence our choices of variant. A great deal of the information obtained was too detailed to be useful for pedagogical purposes, but in several cases the results could clearly be used to improve school and reference grammars.

This essay focuses on studying senior high school students’ usage of and attitudes towards American and British English. It also investigates what influences for the students’ use of English and attitudes towards the two varieties can be found in school and outside of school, and how that affects the students’ own variety of English. The study has been carried out using a questionnaire as method and the results have been analyzed through theoretical perspectives. The results show that American English is the favored variety of the two, both in usage, attitudes and influences outside of school. However, a majority of the students states that they use a mixed variety consisting of both American English and British English. The results show that this is also the most commonly variety actually used by the students. A mixed variety is what a large part of the students express is being taught in school as well. This shows that the teaching of English in Swedish schools today follow the directions in the policy documents set up by the National Agency of Education stating that communicative skills are desirable. A mixed variety is accepted and there are no restrictions concerning variety used.

<p>This quantitative corpus study discusses and compares the distribution of the inflected genitive (’s- or zero-genitive) with that of the of-construction in East African, Indian, American and British English using data collected from the ICE-EA, ICE-IND, Frown and FLOB corpora. This study also discusses the semantic categories of the inflected genitive in the varieties mentioned.</p><p>The first conclusion of the study is that the distribution of tokens according to semantic categories is similar in all varieties examined. Furthermore, it is concluded for the modifier classes that animateness-biased classes are more common with the inflected genitive, while inanimateness-biased classes are more common with the of-construction; this distribution is similar in all varieties.</p>

<p>For many non-native speakers of English it can be difficult to distinguish semantic differences between near-synonyms. In order to create idiomatically correct sentences in a language it is important to know which word to use in a specific context. This study deals with the emotion adjectives <em>terrified, petrified </em>and <em>horrified, </em>which all refer to an emotion of fear of something that can or will happen. The present research aims at exploring the meanings of these adjectives, in American English and British English, and to discover which words these adjectives tend to collocate with. To obtain data a British Corpus and an American corpus were used with fiction and newspaper as subcorpora. A quantitative method was used where the frequencies of <em>terrified, petrified</em> and <em>horrified</em> were counted. Secondly, the most frequent left- and right-hand collocates were studied. Due to the variety of collocations found, it was discovered that the meanings between the adjectives differ somewhat. The literal meaning of <em>petrified</em> is to be hard as a stone while the non-literal meaning is to be extremely afraid. The literal meanings of <em>terrified</em> and <em>horrified </em>are to be very afraid, but unlike <em>terrified,</em> <em>horrified</em> also seems to refer to being shocked. It can be stated that in accordance with how vague the adjective is in its meaning the more frequently it is used, i.e. <em>terrified</em> is the most frequent adjective in all subcorpora and in both varieties of English most frequently used while <em>petrified</em> is least frequently used.</p>

For many non-native speakers of English it can be difficult to distinguish semantic differences between near-synonyms. In order to create idiomatically correct sentences in a language it is important to know which word to use in a specific context. This study deals with the emotion adjectives terrified, petrified and horrified, which all refer to an emotion of fear of something that can or will happen. The present research aims at exploring the meanings of these adjectives, in American English and British English, and to discover which words these adjectives tend to collocate with. To obtain data a British Corpus and an American corpus were used with fiction and newspaper as subcorpora. A quantitative method was used where the frequencies of terrified, petrified and horrified were counted. Secondly, the most frequent left- and right-hand collocates were studied. Due to the variety of collocations found, it was discovered that the meanings between the adjectives differ somewhat. The literal meaning of petrified is to be hard as a stone while the non-literal meaning is to be extremely afraid. The literal meanings of terrified and horrified are to be very afraid, but unlike terrified, horrified also seems to refer to being shocked. It can be stated that in accordance with how vague the adjective is in its meaning the more frequently it is used, i.e. terrified is the most frequent adjective in all subcorpora and in both varieties of English most frequently used while petrified is least frequently used.

Abstract This essay is based on an investigation carried out with the help of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Taking the system of transitivity as its theoretical base and using spoken and written discourse as its primary source, this study aspired to find out what kinds of actions Americans perceive Fate to perform, for example physical, mental or verbal, in order to control what happens to people. It also aimed to reveal what actions people are said to perform in their attempts to control Fate. Do Americans deem Fate capable of, for instance, “deciding”, “talking” or “conspiring” and do they say that people, for example, “challenge”, “defy” or “defeat” Fate? Furthermore, a comparison was made in terms of the actions performed by Fate and people between the different domains of discourse represented in the corpus: spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper and academic. Among other things, this investigation shows that in American discourse both Fate and people are perceived to resort to physical strategies rather than mental or verbal ones in their endeavor to control one another.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how Swedes writing in English construct number concord with collective nouns. This was done by studying three primary corpora: the Swedish English Newspaper Corpus (SWENC) and the press sections of Frown (American English) and F-LOB (British English). The findings were compared with the results in the Blogs in English by Swedes Corpus (BESC), Frown (American English) and F-LOB (British English). The SWENC contains texts from three online newspapers and one corporate newsletter in English, all of which are written by Swedes. The BESC contains texts from Swedes blogging in English. Frown and F-LOB contain texts from fifteen text genres in the 1990s. The results in the SWENC are discussed and compared with the press sections of F-LOB and Frown. The results are also compared with the BESC, Frown and F-LOB in order to see whether there is regional and stylistic variation. The results show that Swedes prefer singular verbal concord with collective nouns even though plural forms occur which seem to be closer to F-LOB Press (BrE) than Frown Press (AmE). In contrast, the SWENC differs from the press sections of Frown and F-LOB in constructing pronominal number. This difference could be influenced by Swedish usage which allows both singular and plural pronominal number with collective nouns. The study also shows that plural forms of political parties that seem to constitute collective units show variation in Sweden whereas such nouns take only plural concord in both American and British English.

Within the last few hundred years, English has gone from being a rather small peripheral language to what it is today – a world language, spoken by millions of people worldwide. The best-known dialects to Swedish learners of English are British English (RP, Received Pronunciation) and American English (GA, General American). Traditionally, British English has been the variety taught in Swedish schools, but due to the recent and growing influence of American English, more and more pupils are using the American dialect. The purpose of this essay is to determine which of these dialects is more common among students in one Swedish school. I have also investigated if the teachers’ English pronunciation and their opinions of the different dialects, as well as the students’ own, have an impact on what variety the students choose to use. The results of the study show that although all students mixed both dialects, American features were predominant. A small number of students spoke mainly British English. A majority of the students claimed to be influenced more by the media than by their teachers. When it comes to the students’ opinions of the two dialects it appeared that the students who used more features from one dialect proved to be more positive towards that dialect. Many students found British English to be snobbish. It was also seen as slightly more classy and beautiful than GA. American English was generally considered cool but cocky. It was not considered as intelligent-sounding as RP, but instead more friendly and reliable.