Milizia Spinzi 2008 Politics Identities Corpus

The terroridiom principle between spoken
and written discourse*

Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi
University of Bari / University of Naples
This paper focuses on phraseology used within the domain of politics, both in
written and spoken discourse. We concentrate on the lemma TERROR and on
the recurrent sequences in which it is embedded, reflecting how native speakers, both American and British, tend to use it in preferred environments making
routinized blocks of language. The data come from two corpora: the spoken corpus includes speeches of George W. Bush and Tony Blair, and the written corpus
is made up of articles from The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. Since text
is nothing but phraseology of one kind or another (Sinclair 2008), our attempt
here is to uncover which of the two varieties lends itself more willingly to creating phrases that are handled like single units. The two pieces of software used to
retrieve such units (n-grams and concgrams) are WordSmith Tools (Scott 2004),
and ConcGram (Greaves 2005).
Keywords: concgram, clusters, origin, proto-typical, canonical
1. Introduction
By the late 20th century lexis came to occupy the centre of language study previously dominated by syntax and grammar (Francis et al. 1996), and over the last two
or three decades research in Corpus Linguistics has shown that lexis and grammar
are closely interdependent. Evidence accumulates daily to suggest that lexical and
syntactic choices correlate, and not that they vary independently of each other.
Some scholars go even further and argue that it is folly to decouple lexis and
grammar (Tognini-Bonelli 2001).
In his early days of the study of lexis, Sinclair (1966) felt that it would be necessary to modify the traditional concept of the word, and later studies have proved
that the unit of meaning is the phrase rather than the word. Research has shown
that words or phrases are co-selected, not chosen one at a time (Sinclair et al.
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13:3 (2008), 322350. doi 10.1075/ijcl.13.3.05mil
issn 13846655/e-issn 15699811 John Benjamins Publishing Company
The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 323
2004: xxi). Words are not randomly distributed, they have preferred patterns, they
favour relationships with certain words and not others, being attracted or indifferent to some words, and repelled by others (Renouf & Banerjee 2007a). All the
same, some words are found in each others company more than would happen by
chance, and, just like people, they may be found 20 or more positions apart, yet
still within the same group (Scott & Tribble 2006:36): they collocate within the
same group but keep away from each other. According to Scott and Tribble, the
fact that we find two people close to one another does not tell us whether they like
each other or not: it suggests merely that they belong to the same set. Conversely,
words may occur at a certain distance from one another and still be attracted and
be part of the same concgram: for this reason, in this investigation, we have used
a search engine which manages to handle contiguous and non-contiguous collocations. Stubbs (2007) uses the term phrase-frame an n-gram with a variable
slot which is very similar to collocational frameworks identified by Renouf and
Sinclair (1991), i.e. discontinuous pairings which enclose characteristic groupings
of words.
The terminology we adopt here concgram, proto-typical, canonical is
based on Cheng et al.s (2006) work, but these concepts date back to 1970 when,
in the OSTI Report (Sinclair et al. 2004), Sinclair spoke of the canonical form that
would be the prototype of a phrase and the canonical form, distilled by the computer, with all the possible variations. In this work we attempt to identify the prototype of some phrases and their possible variations, around the lemma TERROR,
in spoken and written political corpora, taking into account two varieties: British
English and American English.
The outline of the present paper is as follows: Section2 starts with a theoretical
basis of the study; Section3 explains the methodology we have adopted, how our
corpora have been assembled, introducing the search engines that have guided our
analysis, WordSmith Tools 4.0 (Scott 2004), and ConcGram 1.0 (Greaves 2005). In
Section4 we show the distribution of the word forms of TERROR across the four
sub-corpora and the kind of phraseological constraints the lemma is subject to, in
both spoken and written political discourse.
The main findings are analysed in Sections5 and 6, where we explore the behaviour of our node word in spoken and written collections of texts and the clusters it is willing to create, corroborating Stubbs assumption that different phrases
occur with different frequencies in different text-types. The aim is to compare
the findings of the spoken medium with those of the written medium to find out
which one is more inclined to create n-grams and concgrams, bearing in mind
that formal political speeches are written-to-be spoken, hence they do not always
reflect how people really speak.
324 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi
2. Mapping the theoretical framework

It is a truism that grammatical and lexical phenomena are totally interdependent
and that a large amount of language occurs in more or less fixed form. Ranging
from fillers to collocations and idioms, and also to lengthy standardized chunks
of language, phraseologies can be very different in terms of lexical composition
and function. Adopting a very flexible definition, phraseology can be seen as the
co-occurrence of a form of a lemma or a lexical item and one or more additional
linguistic elements of various kinds which is more frequent than expected on the
basis of chance and which functions as one semantic unit in a clause or sentence
(Gries 2008:6). It appears that two or more elements may build up a phrase, which
may include words or grammatical patterns, where a larger distance is contemplated together with the immediately adjacent elements. Accordingly, the phrase
works as a single semantic unit.
There has long been an interest in the role of multi-word units in language
(Bolinger 1976) even though generative grammarians considered them as peripheral in language. Hymes (1968:126), for instance, maintained that a vast proportion of verbal behaviour [] consists of recurrent patterns of linguistic routines
but there was no means of proving that it was more than a marginal phenomenon.
It was only with the empirical support coming from corpus studies that the extent
of our reliance on prefabricated language (prefabs) became clear and its block-like
character has been labelled differently as lexical bundles (Biber et al. 1999), prefabricated routines (Erman & Warren 2000), formulaic language (Schmitt 2004),
or concgrams (Greaves 2005).
Whatever designation is preferred, the common thread is that words are not
chosen freely, but are placed on a cline between the open choice principle and the
idiom principle (Sinclair 1991). The latter governs prefabs, where content is not
given by its individual item but is attached to the whole phrase. Thus, meaning is
made either by the unit as a whole, working in accordance with phraseological conventions, or it is given by isolated words operating on the basis of grammar rules.
With Sinclair (1991) and Hunston and Francis (2000), grammar has been redefined as comprising information about lexis as well as about syntax, casting doubt
upon traditional orthodoxies, such as the distinction between lexis and grammar
or the rigid word-class categorisation. Reinterpreting their findings, Hoeys (2006)
theory of lexical priming argues that the lexicon is complexly organized in the
human mind and that grammar is an incomplete and leaky product of the lexicon
and in principle different for every language user.
Implications for phraseology as the crucial aspect of language have been
worked out (cf. Wray 2002:93ff), and relevant functions have been identified, highlighting how central these multi-word units are to language use and acquisition.
Among the different roles pointed out, such as supporting comprehension, aiding fluency and thus language learning, what is relevant for our research is the
function prefabs perform in human communication. As Wray argues (2002:72),
lexical phrases are employed to signal group membership and more particularly
for the promotion of the self. In other words, when we want to be perceived as a
member of a certain group, we do not trust to novel constructions but we rely on
already known prefabricated lexical phrases.
Further support for the prevalence and importance of prefabs in language
comes from psycholinguistic theory according to which these phrases reflect the
way language is acquired by the human brain (see e.g. the contributions in Robinson & Ellis 2008).
3. Data and methodology
This analysis is based on two corpora representing political language in its written
and spoken forms. The corpus of written political language, the News Discourse
Corpus (NDC), derives from two quality news-based journals The Wall Street
Journal and The Economist, the former representing American English, the latter
British English. Neither contains the highly specialized language of economics and
finance: both are accessible to a wider readership and are all-inclusive in terms of
topics. Words related to the international political scenario, such as Middle East,
Iraq, Islam were typed into the search box of the political section and texts from
June 2005 to June 2006 were downloaded. The other corpus we used, BBB, is a
10-million-word collection that includes speeches of George W. Bush, Tony Blair
and Silvio Berlusconi; for the purpose of this paper speeches produced by the Italian politician have not been taken into account. We have looked only at Bushs and
Blairs speeches delivered from June 2005 to June 2006. Table1 gives details about
the corpora we have investigated.
The language of politics, however, and the language in formal speeches and
statements in particular, is clearly pre-prepared, written-to-be-spoken, as it were;
Table1. The written and spoken corpora of political English: BBB and NDC
Size
Number of texts
Medium
Publication date
Bushs speeches
Blairs speeches
601,350 words
292
spoken
June 2005 to
June 2006
602,175 words
178
spoken
June 2005 to
June 2006
The Wall Street

Journal
522,925 words
401
written
June 2005 to
June 2006
The Economist
537,269 words
504
written
June 2005 to
June 2006
in some cases the written text may be prior to the spoken (Chilton & Schffner
2002:7). This implies that read-out written statements follow the norms of written
language (Milizia 2007), hence they cannot be regarded as fully representative of
spoken language. In this respect, Sauer (2002:115) talks of hybrid forms, that is
the written text of an oral performance. BBB includes such formal speeches and
statements, but also press conferences and interviews, which are certainly more
extemporaneous or at least semi-spontaneous. It is here that we usually find the
most typical features of spoken discourse, including false starts, clearing of the
throat, repetitions, swift changes of topic, and structures which Eggins and Slade
call abandoned clauses (in Halliday 2004:21). What we have noticed, however,
is that the speeches delivered by our politicians have been purged of all noise
and dirt (Ahmad 2005) before being posted on line: transcripts have clearly
been edited, hence both Bushs and Blairs speech transcripts do not contain any
pauses, fillers or hesitations like er, erm, um, typical of spontaneous talk. The
same can be said of the presence of re, the contraction of are in combination with
they, we and you, common to spoken language, and of contractions like wanna
and gonna.
As mentioned earlier, the two pieces of software we have used to retrieve collocations and concgrams are WordSmith Tools 4.0 (Scott 2004) and ConcGram 1.0
(Greaves 2005). Scott (2001:4748) compares WordSmith Tools to a Swiss army
knife with its various components: Concord is the tool most akin to the standard
large penknife blade; it provides concordance lines through which it is possible to
get at parts the others cannot reach.1 The second major tool, WordList, is perhaps
the Swiss army knifes scissors. After being pruned of all function words, which
have little lexical content and little referential meaning, the list of nouns shown in
Table2 was obtained. It is interesting to note how the four corpora we have investigated contain the same content words with very similar ranking.
Table2. Nouns and their respective rankings in the four word lists provided by WordSmith Tools
Bush
people (rank 19)
country (rank 64)
world (rank 69)
government (rank 71)
America (rank 74)
American (rank 81)
Iraq (rank 97)
security (rank 116)
war (rank 117)
Blair
people (rank 25)
world (rank 72)
countries (rank 78)
Europe (rank 93)
country (rank 97)
European (rank 100)
years (rank 111)
Iraq (rank 112)
The Wall Street Journal

Bush (rank 51)
year (rank 54)
President (rank 56)
oil (rank 58)
world (rank 61)
Government (rank 65)
war (rank74)
military (rank 78)
security (rank 79)
The Economist
American (rank 60)
year (rank 63)
America (rank 64)
Iraq (rank 66)
oil (rank 72)
people (rank 74)
world (rank 75)
war (rank 85)
A close look at the nouns in the four corpora will allow any reader to report
who and what dominated the agenda in the UK and in the US over the period for
which we have data.
It is immediately evident that the major players of the agenda in the period
in question are President Bush and the American government. Other significant
players are the situation in Iraq, war (presumably in Iraq) and security. The main
concern of both Bush and Blair seems to be people (ranking 19 and 25, the first
content word in both spoken corpora). Conversely, Europe and European do not
seem to be as consistent as the other nouns, being at top of the list only in Blairs
speeches.2
If it is accepted that word lists give us insights into what is important and
what the text is about, it is indeed KeyWords, the screwdriver in Scotts metaphor,
which gives a reasonably good clue as to what the text boils down to, once we
have steamed off the verbiage, the adornment, the blah blah blah (Scott & Tribble
2006:56), avoiding any trivia and insignificant detail. Keyness is thus part of what
Phillips (1989) calls aboutness.
Obviously, none of the words in Table2 would occur in a keyword list, since
they occur in all four corpora (with the exception of Europe and European): the
frequency of these nouns is roughly the same in the four lists and as a consequence
they will not seem as significant, even if frequent. They would get, almost certainly,
filtered out: most words would be filtered out but a few outstanding ones would
remain.
The other search engine we have used to access our corpora and retrieve ngrams and concgrams is ConcGram 1.0. The difference between n-grams and
concgrams lies in the fact that n-gram searches are helpful only in finding instances of collocations that are strictly contiguous in sequence, whereas concgram searches identify also non-contiguous associations. ConcGram 1.0 is able
to handle constituency variation (i.e. AB, ACB), namely even when one or more
words occur in between the associated words, as well as positional variation (i.e.
AB, BA), namely when the associated words occur in different positions relative
to one another. An example of constituency variation with ally and terror as origin
is a phrase like a steadfast ally in the global war on terror, as opposed to an ally in
the war on terror: only the latter would be identified with other search engines that
only pull out contiguous word combinations. Thus, a phrase with one or more
intervening words, in this case two intruding adjectives steadfast and global
would be overlooked. In the study of the phrase fight against terrorism, as used
mainly by Tony Blair, fight against organized crime and terrorism would go unnoticed because the three intervening words, organized/crime/and, would cause
turbulence. Cheng et al. (2006:412) claim that this is a big limitation in that most
collocations typically occur in non-contiguous sequences, hence they risk going
undiscovered. An example of positional variation is a phrase like in the war on terror we have no better ally and a valuable ally in the war on terror.
In a ConcGram search, the node does not stand in a hierarchical position with
respect to its collocates. Rather than focusing on the node, ConcGram highlights
all of the associated words of a concgram in each concordance line: this feature
shifts the users focus of attention from the node to the concgram. In other words,
word associations become the focus of attention, and the node is not the sun
around which collocates orbit in a subordinate relationship (Cheng et al. 2006).
For this reason, the term origin is used by Cheng et al., as opposed to node used
by Scott: the origin can be single, double or triple (this will be discussed in further
detail in Sections5 and 6).
4. Distribution of the word forms of the lemma TERROR across corpora
A glance at Table3 displays the discrepancy of usage between terror and terrorism
across the two cultures and discourses. The graph shows a strong preference for
terror and terrorists in Bushs language, whereas terrorism seems to be the favourite
word in Blairs speeches. In the written language terror and terrorism display the
same frequency of usage while terrorist is more heavily used as an adjective.
There is some consensus that frequent words have strong phraseological tendencies, and the more frequent a word is the more likely it will appear in multiword units. Summers (1996:26263) and Sinclair (1992:162) have pointed out that
many words are frequent because of their strong collocational tendency: they appear in frequent phrases. This is probably why terror in Bush (with 369 instances)
Table3. Distribution of the different word forms of terror across spoken and written
discourse
0.09
0.08
0.07
0.06
Bush
0.05
Blair
0.04
The Economist
0.03
Wall Street Journal
0.02
0.01
0
terror
terrorism
terrorist
terrorists
tends to create so many clusters, and the same is true in Blair with terrorism (511
instances). The word terror, in fact, creates 105 three-word clusters in Bush, and
the word terrorism 113 in Blair. This is statistically measured and supported by
the clusters feature provided in WordSmith Tools, which shows that terror and its
word forms do not lend themselves to creating three-, four-, five-, and six-word
clusters in an even manner across the four sub-corpora. Tables4 and 5 clearly illustrate our point.
On the evidence so far, our data seem to suggest that around the word terror
a different type of phraseology has surfaced in the two politicians speeches with
respect to the written part.
Of all the clusters that have emerged, we have decided to focus our attention
on the one which ranks first in all the four sub-corpora: war on terror. These days
the word war has a strong tendency to co-occur with terror. The phrase war on
terror has become widely known and has been endlessly repeated throughout the
world and, if given the word war, a hearer or reader can easily predict what the
following words will be, namely the preposition on and the noun terror. We could,
of course, expect other collocational features on the syntagmatic axis, such as war
on terrorism, war against terrorism, war against terror, but they are nothing like
as frequent as war on terror. These multi-word units are not frequent in our data:
war on terrorism occurs only twice in Bush, and 9 and 21 times respectively in The
Economist and in The Wall Street Journal.3
Words, just like people, may be attracted, or indifferent, or even hostile to
other words (Renouf & Banerjee 2007b): for this reason in our data we find many
instances of fight against terrorism in Blair and of war on terror in Bush, but zero
occurrences of fight on terror or fight on terrorism; war against terrorism is almost
non-existent in both the spoken and written corpora.4 War seems to be indifferent
to against and terrorism (Milizia 2006:55): although this three-word cluster forms
what Chomsky would define a well-formed phrase, it does not seem to be typical
in the four corpora. This corroborates the idea that corpus linguistics is based primarily on typicality and on quantitative studies of language, and is concerned with
what speakers do say (cf. Stubbs 2001:61), rather than with what speakers can say.5
It seems that our data bear out Hymes (1972:286) claim that something may
be possible, feasible and appropriate, and not occur: formally possible (grammatical), psycholinguistically realizable (feasible), sociolinguistically appropriate
(for a fuller account of attraction, indifference and repulsion between words in the
language of Bush, Blair and Berlusconi, see Milizia (2006)).
Following Hoey (2004:386), each lexical item is primed for colligational and
collocational use. War is primed for collocational use with on and with terror, and
avoids keeping company with the other possible variants. Not one instance was
found of fight on terror and fight on terrorism, only one of fight against terror in
Table4. Three-, four-, five-, and six-word clusters around the word forms of terror in
American English: Bush and The Wall Street Journal
terror
terrorism
terrorist
terrorists
Bushs speeches
3-word clusters = 105
4-word clusters = 2
5-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 4
6-word clusters = 6
The Wall Street Journal

4-word clusters = 9
5-word clusters = 9
6-word clusters = 2
4-word clusters = 5
5-word clusters = 4
6-word clusters = 2
6-word clusters = 8
3-word clusters = 9
4-word clusters = 3
5-word clusters = 2
6-word clusters = 1
Table5. Three-, four-, five-, and six-word clusters around the word-forms of terror in
British English: Blair and The Economist
terror
terrorism
terrorist
terrorists
Blairs speeches
4-word clusters = 4
5-word clusters = 1
6-word clusters = 0
5-word clusters = 3
6-word clusters = 1
4-word clusters = 4
5-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 0
4-word clusters = 3
5-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 0
The Economist
3-word clusters = 8
4-word clusters = 5
5-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 0
4-word clusters = 9
5-word clusters = 5
6-word clusters = 2
5-word clusters = 2
6-word clusters = 1
3-word clusters = 6
4-word clusters = 1
5-word clusters = 0
6-word clusters = 0
the written corpus, none in Blair vs. four instances in Bush. We can safely say that
fight avoids keeping company with terror and seems to repel the preposition on
altogether (Milizia 2006:60).
Fight against terrorism, as mentioned earlier, is Blairs favourite cluster; it occurs only once in Bush (four and five occurrences in The Economist and The Wall
Street Journal). As Hoey (2006) has suggested, priming is a property of the person
and not of the word, and corpora can only indirectly give us evidence about a persons likely primings. Furthermore, priming is temporary and might, over time, be
weakened to the point of unimportance (Hoey 2006).
It is of interest to notice that Blair, in the period for which we have data, uses
the clusters war on terror and war against terror not even on one occasion,6 nor
the clusters war on terrorism and war against terrorism. Fight against terrorism
seems his preferred choice (Schmitt & Carter 2004:10), or, we would rather say,
his only choice, occurring 22 times (fight as a verb, together with combat and defeat preceding terrorism are also heavily used). Nevertheless, although the Prime
Minister takes great care in trying to avoid the co-occurrence of certain words, the
cluster war on terror has migrated from American political discourse into British
political discourse (Milizia 2007), and not all British politicians seem to be happy
with this phraseologism borrowed from the Americans. Recently there have been
attempts in the British media to stigmatize the phrase war on terror, as we read in
The Observer (10 December 2006):
Cabinet ministers have been told by the Foreign Office to drop the phrase war
on terror and other terms seen as liable to anger British Muslims and increase
tensions more broadly in the Islamic world.

Its about time, said Garry Hindle, terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Military terminology is completely counter-productive, merely contributing to isolating communities. This is a very positive move.
Many senior British politicians and counter-terrorism specialists have always
been uneasy with the phrase war on terror, coined by the White House in the
week following the 9/11 attacks, arguing that the term risked inflaming opinions
worldwide.

Though Blair has not used the phrase war on terror since June, President
Bush continues to employ it liberally. A spokesman for the US State Department told The Observer that there was no question of dropping the phrase. Its
the Presidents phrase, and thats good enough for us, she said.

Not all British government figures are abiding by the advice. Writing in the
Sun recently, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, referred to our
police and armed forces in the front line of the war on terror.
In The Guardian Unlimited (24 January 2007) we read as follows:7

Sir Ken Macdonald, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, pointed to the
rhetoric around the war on terror which has been adopted by Tony Blair and
ministers after being coined by George Bush to illustrate the risks.

We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such
a thing as a war on terror, just as there can be no such thing as a war on drugs. The
fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of
crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged
by their infringement.
5. A search of concgrams in the environment of the lemma TERROR in the

spoken corpus (BBB)
As mentioned before, in ConcGram the notion of origin is highlighted with respect to the notion of node, in that it better foregrounds the fact that associated
words are at the heart of every search. As clearly illustrated by Cheng et al. (2006),
the primary function of ConcGram is to perform fully automated searches. The
absence of any intervention by the user makes the search a truly corpus-driven
analysis (Tognini-Bonelli 2001:84). The software works automatically or can carry
out user-nominated searches. In this paper, user-nominated searches have been
performed, namely we specified the words we wished to investigate, i.e. the lemma
TERROR and the words associated with our origin.
Let us start with the word ally in the vicinity of the lemma TERROR. As Table6
clearly shows, we found positional variation and constituency variation. With respect to positional variation ally/terror and terror/ally only a few instances of
terror/ally (line 14) have emerged: e.g. terrorist allies (line 13) and in the global
war on terror we have no better ally than Australia (line 40). The most frequent
positional variation is ally/terror. The two words, of course, never appear contiguously; line 5 displays the only example of an ally of terror, and from line 9 to line
29 an ally in the war on terror appears on 21 occasions.8 Therefore, we take this
seven-word cluster as the structure which constitutes the base form carrying the
proto-typical meaning (cf. Cheng et al. 2006). We can safely say that the plural
form, allies in the war on terror, from line 30 to line 33, is basically as stable as the
singular form, and adds minimal or maybe zero turbulence to the canonical form.
In a few instances, ally is modified by strong, steadfast, important, new, other, capable, and valuable. Following Cheng et al. (2006), with anything from two to four
intervening words, the instances still conform to the proto-typical meaning and
display minimal turbulence in their adherence to the base forms meaning.
Table6. Terror/ally in Bush

1
at have been attacked by al Qaeda and its terrorist allies since September the 11th, 20
errible cost in lives.
ss destruction to outlaw states and their terrorist allies. We are working to prevent a
istan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror
Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as
government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civil
ocation for al Qaeda and its allies. The terrorists fought this moment with all their
king with our friends and allies to seize terrorist assets and choke off their funding
king with our friends and allies to seize terrorist assets and choke off their funding
and defend itself; an ally in the war on terror; and someone who will deny that which
10
will be an important ally in the war on terror, will serve as a devastating defeat for
11
end themselves, be an ally in the war on terror, and deny safe haven to al Qaeda. That
12
racy, we will gain an ally in the war on terror. By helping Iraqis build a democracy, w
13
hat will enable a new ally in the war on terror to govern itself, sustain itself, and
14
gion, and a steadfast ally in the war on terror.
15
in Iraq is to have an ally in the war on terror and to help that young country establis
16
democracies and as an ally in the war on terror.
With the emergence of this government
Today, as Iraqis look to their new go
17
achieve a goal of an ally in the war on terror that can defend itself, sustain itself.
18
e do, they will be an ally in the war on terror and theyll be an example for others to
30
rengthening two new allies in the war on terror, and youre bringing hope to millions
31
rrorist states into allies in the war on terror. And the nation of Libya has renounced
32
f our most valuable allies in the war on terror. These countries are joined by the larg
33
and that serve as allies in the war on terror. Afghanistan and Iraq are taking their
34
ates and other allies, helped break up a terror cell in London. Working together, we f
35
ng and capable ally in the global war on terror.
The new government in Iraq is also a
36
ted a valuable ally in the global war on terror.
I dont know if you remember this,
37
ate a valuable ally in the global war on terror.
Our mission must be to stay on the of
38
region and an ally in the global war on terror. The terrorists understand the threat a
39
le and our allies.
40
ble to all nations. In the global war on terror we have no better ally than Australia
Information from the terrorists in this program has helped us to
41
our allies will not be shaken. And, the terrorists will fail because the American
42
our allies will not be shaken. And, the terrorists will fail because the American mil
43
an ally in the global war on terror. The terrorists understand the threat a democratic
44 ally of the United States in the war against terror. Ive made that clear on every
With respect to constituency variation, we found minimal turbulence in lines

3538 with one intervening word, global, in an ally in the global war on terror.
These instances would not have been picked up if we were to look only at adjacent
sequences. Many collocational patterns do not occur contiguously all the time,
and searches which focus on contiguous collocations present an incomplete picture of the attraction between words.
Greater turbulence is displayed in line 44 (a steadfast ally of the United States
in the war against terror) where four intervening items between ally and in the war
can dilute the collocation (Sinclair & Warren 2006). Nevertheless, ally and terror
are still collocates and can be termed endocentric, in that they are seen as combining to create a single semantic entity (Sinclair & Warren 2006). Following Sinclair
and Mauranen (2006:24), while in endocentric relations the items involved collaborate in the construction of a single linguistic entity, in exocentric relations
the items related have quite different syntactic roles, and extend the expressive
possibilities of the language.
In the speeches Bush delivered in the period for which we have data, 45 instances of ally in the vicinity of terror emerged vs. one only in Blair:
allies because we believe that their fight against terrorism is our fight too
In the instance above, ally and terrorism are collocates, despite the fact that the
British Prime Minister employs the noun fight rather than war, and the preposition against rather than on. There has, of course, been some sort of diversion
(Sinclair & Warren 2006) from the configuration that we have defined as canonical, but what is typical and recurrent in one culture is not necessarily the same in
another, let alone idiolects that characterize an individual speaker. As mentioned
earlier, priming being a property of the person and not of the word, it came as no
surprise that two cultures and, as a consequence, two speakers use two different
clusters which share the meaning but not the form.
A recurrent associate of ally is friend, in both its singular form, friend and ally
and in its plural form friends and allies. Only six occurrences of ally and friend
were spotted, hence friend and ally appears to be the proto-typical form. Turbulence is therefore minimal. In line 1 of Table7 the two nouns appear contiguously,
without the conjunction and, typical of binomials, whose function is to connect
two roughly synonymous words.9 The same turbulence is found in the lines 4651
below, where friend and ally are not always linked by means of the conjunction,
and something from one to four intervening words intrude in between:
46
intact. And thats why were working with friends, with allies, with Security Council mem
47 friends. Romania and the United States are friends, and were allies. And as such, weve ha
48
Were working with France. France is a friend. France is an ally. France has got a grea
49 ESIDENT BUSH: Its good to be here with my friend and close ally. We just had a wide-rangin
50
Iraq will result in a democracy that is a friend or America and an ally in the war on terr
51
with you, Mr. President. Youre a staunch friend, youre a faithful ally, youre a strong
Table7 displays greatest turbulence relative to the proto-typical form where the
noun ally becomes alliance, and friend becomes friendship, like in instances 47, 52,
53, 61, and 6365 below.
47
r leadership. And we are very proud of our friendship and alliance with Hungary. PRIME MIN
52
were glad youre here. Thanks for your friendship, thanks for your alliance, and thank
Table7. Friend/ally in Bush

1 sult you. But diplomacy is out talking to friends, allies, and others about a common objecti
2 ly what youd expect, I would say, from a friend and ally.
3
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of
any means, that we want them as a strong friend and ally. But I also made it clear that we
4 stated publicly before: Israel is a close friend and ally of the United States, and in the
5
Im able to call Prime Minister Koizumi, friend and ally, is because Japan became a democra
6 garian people that were proud to be your friend and ally. And so it is in the spirit of res
7
our bilateral relations with a strategic friend and ally in the Middle East region. The
8 lso thank you. Lithuania has been a great friend and ally for the United States, a full mem
9 ent Basescu of Romania. Romania is a good friend and ally, a NATO partner now, and has been
30 e got a lot to talk about, because were friends and allies. And so I welcome you, glad
31 were going to continue to work with our friends and allies to present a united front to th
32
always felt like its best to work with friends and allies to solve the problems. And so
33 ety. And its up to us, working with our friends and allies, to defeat the ideology of hate
34 g forward on a number of fronts with our friends and allies at the United Nations Security
35 are common values and together, as close friends and allies, are tackling of a wide variety
36 e security of the United States, and our friends and allies; and why it deserves the suppor
37 honor to offer a toast to you and to our friends and allies, the people of Japan.
(A toast
38 self succeed everyplace unless weve got friends and allies willing to participate in the
39 iddle East. (Applause.)
As we work with friends and allies, it is important to remember
40 partners in the Security Council and our friends and allies elsewhere to address this in a
41 the things I will continue to remind our friends and allies is the danger of a nuclear-arme
42 t five others. So were talking with our friends and allies on the subject.
Q Mr. Presiden
43 ur government must constantly remind our friends and allies the nature of the enemy and the
44 rtant for the United States to work with friends and allies to accomplish our objectives. A
45 ull find that we will work closely with friends and allies to come up with the best candid
54
their way in the future to be strategic friend and partner of all of us, and that they wil
56 nister has brought to our close ally and friend.
We had a lot of discussion on important
57 iki, and Im proud to call him, ally and friend (Applause). Iraqs new government has
58 ieties. But we will work with allies and friends to achieve this objective. And part of
59 eace. Im going to remind our allies and friends in the neighborhood that the United
60 he United States working with allies and friends, is to send a clear message that spon
62 ect when youre talking to an ally and a friend and a good strategic thinker.
The
65 k. Germany is a valued ally. Weve got a friendship thats important. We share common
62 ation with our allies. We will work with friends. Well bring people to justice. In the
53
61
friend. Mr. Prime Minister, our strong friendship has grown out of the strong alliance
have built a strong alliance and a close friendship. Decades ago, our two fathers lo
63 ally. And so it is in the spirit of respect and friendship that I would like to offer a toa
65
Germany is a valued ally. Weve got a friendship thats important. We share commo
64 and strengthen with our friends and allies around the world. Americas alliance
It cannot be denied that the strength of attraction between words declines with the
growing distance from each other, and that intervening words can dilute the collocation, but our nodes here are certainly collocates comprising a single component
Table8. Cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Blair

3
4
nternational solidarity in our fight against terrorism, If you remember after the attacks
between European countries in fighting this terrorism is essential. In respect of the cit
5 cooperating strongly now on the fight against terrorism, and we also support very closely th
6
ve a full fledged ally in the fight against terror, against radicalism, against fanaticism
can really be our ally in the fight against terrorism?
Prime Minister:
Well there a
urther our unity in our fight against terrorism. Question: Prime Minister, given all
nhance the cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and there will be a strong stateme
10
eaffirm our solidarity in the fight against terrorism. The meeting of the G8 leaders and A
11
to our conviction. And in the fight against terrorism we see a lot of uncertainty. We have
12
efforts in struggling and fighting against terrorism. And there are still people who have
13
standing together again to fight the war on terror, to secure democracy and freedom in Ira
14 action and co-operation in the fight against terrorism. We welcomed the agreement rea
15 e of Spain. Cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Europe was stepped up after Sep
16 l continue to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. I would like to thank the Pres
17 enhance the cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and there will be a strong state
18
19
years the cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and all the issues to do with c
detail our cooperation in the fight against terrorism and I would like to pay tribute
20 dged their full support in the fight against terrorism. Can the Prime Minister update the
21 -operating strongly now on the fight against terrorism, and we also support very clos
22
because we believe that their fight against terrorism is our fight too; because if t
23 be a part of that coalition to fight against terrorism. We in our own sub-continent
in the discourse and can be termed endocentric (cf. Cheng et al. 2006). Ally and
friend, in the vicinity of the lemma TERROR, do not seem to attract each other in
Blairs speeches as they do in Bushs. We managed to find only three instances of
this binomial, and we noticed that the British Prime Minister has a different favourite way of expressing the concept of an ally in the war on terror, as the citations
in Table8 clearly illustrate.
As the evidence of the data shows, cooperation in the fight against terrorism
seems to be the British counterpart of an ally in the war on terror. Cooperation is
often substituted by other nouns or noun groups such as full support, solidarity,
unity.
Another very frequent associate of the lemma TERROR is harbor: it occurs so
frequently often with terror in the form of harbor a terrorist that it was easy
to determine the canonical form. Obviously, the plural harbor terrorists or the different forms of the verb harbors, harbored and harboring are as stable as the base
form. The only diversion from the base form was noticed in the first four lines in
Table9, which display both positional and constituency variation with considerable turbulence. In the base form you was the subject and terrorists was the object,
consistently throughout the concordance lines. Here terrorist regimes, those, and
the countries are the subjects which harbor weapons or harbor and support them.
Table9. Terror/harbor in Bush

1 going to be tough when it comes to terrorist regimes who harbor weapons. On the other hand,
2
between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because
ld not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them. So we
4
5
no distinction between the terrorists and the countries that harbor them. If you
overnments that support or harbor terrorists are complicit in the murder of the innocent,
6 lear to all nations, if you harbor terrorists, youre as guilty as the terrorists, youre
7 lear to all nations, if you harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists;
8
at supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent,
at supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent
10
and when I said, if you harbor a terrorist, youre equally as guilty as the terrorist, I
11 ghanistan, I said if you harbor a terrorist, youre as guilty as a terrorist. I know full
12 the doctrine that if you harbor a terrorist, youre equally as guilty as the terrorist.
13
ooting at our aircraft, harbored terrorists. The world is better off without Saddam
14
when I said that if you harbor a terrorist, youre as guilty as the terrorists, the
15 the doctrine that if you harbor a terrorist, youre equally as guilty as the terrorist.
32
making it clear, if you harbor a terrorist the short-term strategy of dealing with
33
d States of America. He harbored terrorists. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He
34 our duty. I said, if you harbor a terrorist, youre equally as guilty as the terrorist.
35
mind, which is to stop harboring terror and to help the Iraqi democracy evolve. They know
36 y country that if they harbored a terrorist, they would be held to account. And when the
37 y country that if they harbored a terrorist, they would be held to account. And when the
38,
if we find somebody harboring a terrorist, theyre just as guilty as the terrorists. And
39 vicious tyranny that harbored the terrorists who planned the September the 11th attacks.
40
young girls had harbored these terrorists; they provided safe haven. These folks were
41 e: Nations that harbor or support terrorists are equally guilty as the terrorists, and
42 that harbor them. If you harbor a terrorist, you are just as guilty as the terrorists and
43 harbor a terrorist, youre as guilty as a terrorist. I know full well that when the Preside
44 harbor terrorists, youre as guilty as the terrorists, youre an enemy of the United States
45 harbor a terrorist, youre as guilty as the terrorists, the Taliban didnt take me seriousl
46 harbor terrorists, you are just as guilty as the terrorists; youre an enemy of the United
47 harbor a terrorist, youre just as guilty as the terrorist, and youre an enemy of the Unit
Line 41 in Table9 shows a minimal constituency variation, with two intervening words, or and support, and lines 39 and 40 employ the use of the determiners
the and these in place of the canonical indefinite article.
Not one instance was found of the concgram terror/harbor in Blairs speeches,
bearing in mind that harbor is the American spelling of the word (harbour never occurs in all the 602,175 words spoken by Blair in the period for which we have data).
In the written corpus there does not seem to be a great strength of attraction between these words either. The cluster has emerged only once each in both corpora:
1 must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder.
1 in Nairobi, they strongly deny harbouring terrorists, disavow terrorism, and invite diplomat
Another highly frequent two-word concgram occurring in the American English

part of the spoken corpus concerns terror/haven, with 34 instances in Bush (and
zero occurrences in Blair).
A close look at Table10 shows that both configurations, give/provide/deny the
terrorists a safe haven and deny/become/provide safe haven for terrorists, appear
to constitute the proto-typical form, in that they are both prominent in terms of
frequency. Terror and haven are collocates in this configuration and they combine
as a single component in Bushs discourse; indeed, we can safely claim that terror
Table10. Terror/haven in Bush
1 to topple moderate governments and establish terrorist safe havens.
Imagine a world in whic
2 unched operations across the world to remove terrorist safe havens, and capture or kill terrorists
3 two nations claim their freedom and deny the terrorists safe havens from which to launch fur
4 itions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven from which to launch attacks
5
6
Iraqis build a democracy, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven to plan attacks against Amer
achieving victory in Iraq, we will deny the terrorists a safe haven from which to plot and
7 itself and govern itself. That will deny the terrorists a safe haven.
You know, al Qaeda ha
defend themselves, be an ally in the war on terror, and deny safe haven to al Qaeda. Thats
are beaten for missing prayer meetings, and terrorists have a safe haven to plan and launch
10
ppressed young girls had harbored these terrorists; they provided safe haven. These fol
11 e at home, I also said that if you harbor a terrorist, if you provide safe haven to a terrorist
12 ubled region will have a better future. The terrorists will lose their safe havens and thei
13 desire to change the conditions that create terror. It would give the terrorists a safe haven
14 at by allowing states to give safe haven to terrorist networks that we made a grave mistake
15 zens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our nati
16 ure it never becomes again a safe haven for terrorists.
17
We also discussed recent developme
that will never again be a safe haven for terror, that will be a model of freedom in a tr
18 et worse. Iraq will become a safe haven for terrorists. Theyll use it in order to launch attacks
19 the Middle East will provide safe haven for terrorists and extremists. It will embolden tho
20 aken down regimes that were safe havens for terrorists, or that we had reason to believe we
21 a terrorist, if you provide safe haven to a terrorist, youre equally as guilty as the terrorist.
22
23
states are attractive safe havens for terrorists and tyrants and international criminals
a country that will deny safe haven to the terrorists.
I disagree with the assessment tha
24 derstand the need to deny safe haven to the terrorists who have caused such turmoil and hav
25 rutalized women, and gave safe haven to the terrorists who attacked America.
Today, the terror
26 we are determined to deny safe haven to the terrorists. Since the day our country was attacked
27 we are determined to deny safe haven to the terrorists. Since the day our country was attacked
28
Iraq that will not be a safe haven for the terrorists. And of all the countries in the Middle
29 when Iraq is no longer a safe haven for the terrorists. Victory is will be achieved when
30 untry that we must deny safe haven to these terrorists whod like to do us harm. And so I s
31 ere Iraq is not a safe haven from which the terrorists al Qaeda and its affiliates ca
32 ere Iraq is not a safe haven from which the terrorists al Qaeda and its affiliates ca
33
terrorist safe havens, and capture or kill terrorist operatives and leaders. Working with
34 , that it doesnt become a place from which terrorists can plot and plan. So were wat
Table11. Terror/haven in The Economist and in The Wall Street Journal

1
Whatever the new rulers say, international terrorists may seek a haven in their domain.
and becoming a haven for international terrorists. The government is right that cla
may seek a haven in their domain. Jihadist terrorists of Somali origin have been active
4 haven for all manner of hustlers, gangsters and terrorists.
Alan Doss, the UNs special env
1 people, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country
and safe haven are collocates, in that not one occurrence of haven alone was found
in the 601,350 words uttered by the President of the United States. The only instances that display some degree of diversion from the base form are lines 31 and
32 (which seem to be two repeats): Iraq is not a safe haven from which the terrorists
can plot and plan, and line 34. The absence of the adjective safe in the four instances we found in The Economist, and its presence in the hapax in the The Wall
Street Journal (Table11), would seem to suggest that this concgram may be more
characteristic of American English than of British English.
6. The phraseological environment of terror in the written corpus (NDC)
Since the media tend to interpret the language of politicians and fashions it into a
familiar media frame and then transmits it to the wider public (Jackson 2005:20),
we would expect to find similar patterns in written political discourse.
A glance at the cluster distribution in the written corpus (Tables4 and 5) reveals how in the American newspaper terror attracts more words than in the British journal, on the contrary terrorism clusters prevail in The Economist, whereas
the word form that gives birth to the highest number of multiword units is terrorist
in The Wall Street Journal.
Terror has independent existence as a single item, but it tends to change its
meaning when found embedded in strings of language. A study of the denotative
meaning of terror as a noun points to the meaning of great fear, violence, disapproval (cf. Cobuild Dictionary 2001) when interpreted according to the openchoice principle:
will not allow a despotic Tehran that exports terror and threatens its neighbors
Do they want to live in terror, or do they want to live in peace?
(from The Wall Street Journal)

e small minority of foreign militants, intent on exporting terror around the region anto western in
telligence services can more easily transport terror to the United States
Stifling its economy will feed resentment and terror, not a peace-friendly
(from The Economist)
As mentioned earlier, the most frequent cluster found in the written discourse
having terror as origin is war on terror, where the abstract noun, terror, names
not a nation, but an emotion and the acts that create it. Thus, when faced with it
as a chunk (Sinclair & Mauranen 2006), a language user decodes the concgram
metaphorically, and there is a blending of the two meanings of fear/violence and
terrorism.
One of the most surprising aspects of this comparison across the spoken and
the written language is the level of consistency in some phraseological patterns
(e.g. war on terror and fight against terrorism) of the discourse and the complete
absence of others in the written corpus compared to the spoken. There is little deviation from the central phraseological formations around our lemma, unless considered in terms of frequency. As Carruthers (2000:191) argues, studies back the
view that the media takes its cues from officials in framing and describing violent
events, often using the exact same words. In fact, even in the written discourse,
the concgram war on terror, though less frequently occurring, exhibits a degree of
inflexibility and appears as an element of more or less long standardized phrases
as in positive adjective + ally/ies in the war on terror.
Major turbulence is displayed in line 1 (The Wall Street Journal) in Table12,
where lexical variation (alliance) makes the concgram formally different, but nevertheless it adheres to the canonical meaning of the base form.
When preceded by the preposition against, terror allows a syntagmatic relation with war, but there is usually a choice on the paradigmatic level, where items
belonging to the semantic field of war surface:
saying the nation remains on the offensive against terror networks
Singapore yields to no one in the fight against terror.
They are not happy Mauritania is active in joining the war against terror.
nations in the world into an organization that says its against terror.
the NSA program as an e ssential element in his campaign against terror,
(from the WSJ)
Table12. Terror/war/ally in The Wall Street Journal and in The Economist

1
2
3
remain such useful allies in the war on terror. Even the Poles, who take Americas
tween two important allies in his war on terror, spoke to the Pakistani president,
AEs status as an American ally in the war on terror (it has arrested
several senior
1 rong alliance with the U.S. during the war on terror, in contrast to France and Germany. The
2
of the U.S.s strongest allies in the war on terror and rejected speculation that ties betw
UAE had been an important ally in the war on terror in a part of the world where we need allies.
4 the U.A.E. as an important ally in the war on terror; since 9/11, it has been involved in ar
This paradigmatic relation does not seem to characterize the cluster war on terror,
which is then processed as a single lexical phrase, whereas the search for concgrams shows that the lemma and its word forms attract various collocates when in
company of against, as shown in the following tables.
Table13. Terror/against in The Economist
1
when he accused Israel of practising state terrorism against Palestinians.
But still,
2Iraq denounced the events at the mosque as terrorism against innocents. This fiery lang
3
the past few years have
committed numerous terrorist acts against Israeli civilians as wel
4 hifted dramatically after the September 11th terror attacks against the United States. While
5 ilitants succeeds in
6
mounting a spectacular terrorist attack against foreign interests in
many Muslims had come to equate the war on terrorism with a war against Islam.
This is an
7 coalition governments recent draconian anti-terrorism laws are really directed against them
8
of casualties, or doubt that the war on terror is as important as the struggle against
9 of casualties, or they doubt that the war on terror is as important as the struggle against
10 are depressing support for the wider war on terrorism.
How to turn your best weapon against
11een states, but part of the amorphous war on terror that America had been prosecuting, against
12
in Iraq or in the broader struggle against terrorism. Articles by subject: Topics:
13 k the tide Jun 2nd 2005
The war against terror can be won Alamy Get article backgro
14 ation to re-enhancing their systems against terrorist attacks, he says. Meanwhile, the com
15 ld focus more on a broader strategy against terrorism, one that might include fostering dem
16 ng, defended the massacre as a blow against terrorism and called for enhanced regional secu
17
a better job of protecting America against terrorism and military threats, while 45% prefe
18 s that Mr Abbas is not doing enough against terror have followed every previous violation o
19 a applauds Andijan as part of a war against terror because it has long represented its cond
20
the moral high ground in their war against terrorism. As for the behaviour of the Iraqi go
21
armoury of legal and other weapons against terrorism, no one should be under any illusions
22
the moral high ground in their war against terrorism. As for the behaviour of the Iraqi go
23 pported the international coalition against terrorism and efforts to re-kindle the Middle E
24 re the price of increased vigilance against terrorism. The long, long half-life Jun 8th 200
25
try to justify harsher retaliation against terrorist attacks as
self-defence against aggr
26 e staid faction in the global fight against terror gathered in one of the resorts luxury
27 that ministers say are wielded only against terrorists and drug-runners.
28 are the burden in the global
Foreign visitors
fight against terrorism. When the Islamic insurgents have lar
29 tline state in Americas global war against terror. President Taya had made it an important
30 he Economist print edition. The war against terror can be won. Alamy. Get article
31 ential ally in its campaign against Islamic terrorism. China quietly acquiesced in a
32 ational matters, especially against Israel, terrorist groups sponsored by Iran have
33 hrough the global campaign against Islamist terrorism. But this intrusion was in
34 tional matters, especially against
Israel, terrorist groups sponsored by Iran have
35 West as a whole in its war against Islamist terrorism, it comes far below Iraq on Mr
36 am itself must be turned against Pakistans terrorists. In a speech this week, Ge
37
forces will intervene against the pawns of terrorism, no matter if they are women or child
38 e a heavy blow against al-Qaeda and Islamic terrorism in general.
Unfortunately, the issue
39 used only against those with known links to terrorist groups and only international calls
Table14. Terror/against in The Wall Street Journal

1
effect in the Muslim world could be volcanic. Terror against America would increase. Islam c
fighting Russian rule but denies any tie to a terrorist plot against the U.S. or knowing
Chirac warned that any state considering using terrorist means against us might face a nucle
tension between the two sides, that could fuel terrorist strikes against Western targets in I
Americas ties to Israel have escalated terrorist attacks against the U.S., undermined
tension between the two sides, that could fuel terrorist strikes against Western targets in I
decide if they wish to work with us to prevent terrorist attacks against their own country or
9
10
he wiretapping program is central to combating terrorism and warned against public disclosure
11 the wiretapping program is central to combating terrorism and warned against public disclosure
12
13
14
people, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot attacks against our country
Washington, to foster a popular front to fight terrorism by lifting restrictions against the
drug and human smugglers are using Americas terrorist concerns to exact revenge against ri
15 and drain them of support. And as we fight, the terrorists must know the world stands united
16Singapore yields to no one in the fight against terror. Would being located in a region where
17 eace and democracy. They stand together against terrorism. These shared values resonate deeply
18 Mauritania is active in joining the war against terror. Mr. Taya survived overthrow attempts
19
rebuild the Gulf region while guarding against terrorists. The key, they said, is that Washin
20
the nation remains on the offensive against terror networks and citing dramatic progress
21thinkers, too, accept now that the fight against terrorism is a real war.
U.N. Talk, Bush Urg
22 rips with the shadowy 21st century wars against terrorists and guerrillas. The Army and Marine
23
with U.S. diplomatic initiatives against terrorism and nuclear proliferation. In
24
they are. Sen. John McCain The war against terrorism is a new kind of war.[Geneva Convent
25 rebuild the Gulf region while guarding against terrorists. The key, they said, is that Washin
26 eficits and hampered the broader fight against terrorism. Ms. Farrell told the group that the
27
Just 18% cite the presidents efforts against terrorism, 10% his response to Hurricane Katrin
28 ips with the shadowy 21st century wars against terrorists and guerrillas. The Army and Marine
29
Of Presidents Authority
In Fight Against Terrorism By JOHN D. MCKINNON
Staff Reporter o
30 battle of ideas is crucial for winning against terrorism. Click to format this article for
31
into an organization that says its against terror. U.S. and Israeli intelligence officia
32
change in order to defend the nation against terrorists who could acquire a nuclear weapon o
33
power to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and their supporters. He molded a th
34
be a higher priority than guarding against terrorist attacks. He agreed they were the mor
35
of this moment in the larger war against terrorism as described by Rep. Tom Cole (R., Ok
36
the rule of law and weaken the fight against terrorism. Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasso
37
in the Bush administrations fight against terrorism that bit players often have been
38Mauritania is active in joining the war against terror. Mr. Taya survived overthrow attempts i
39as an essential element in his campaign against terror, adding that it was a shameful act for
40
many other countries are waging a war against terrorism. For our country this war often takes
41 of the world, and we strike a blow against the terrorists, who feed on anger and resentment. O
42
43
44
contribution to the defense against global terrorism.
NATOs mission in the age of terror
overseas, have much value against an Islamic terrorist target or any hard target protected b
windows to protect them against vandalism.
Terror Trials, Torture Policy Take Center Stage
45
46
offers no protection against the forces of terror, as evidenced by recent warnings from
the American people against the threat of terrorism. White House officials see Thursday
47 on the offensive against critics of his war on terrorism. The event, beginning little more tha
48
ourselves against ruthless enemies. And these terrorists are some of the most ruthless enemie
49 evidence against them, prevent further acts of terrorism, or hold them for legal proceedings.
50against continuing efforts to aid extremist and terrorist groups and against pursuing a nuclear
If we analyse the left associates of against terrorism in both tables, we notice that in
both corpora there are war-related words such as struggle, fight, offensive, strategy,
efforts, coalition. We then have different instances (see for example lines 31 and 33
in Table13 or line 42 in Table14) with some intervening words, in most cases an
adjective (Islamic, Islamist, global), or a noun (the pawns of terrorism in line 37,
Table13) and, despite the minimal turbulence, we can argue that this configuration warfare noun + against + terrorism constitutes a single discourse component
and, hence, the base form with the proto-typical meaning. Conversely, in lines
4749 (Table14), the single components of the same congram are not associated
as a single phrase in discourse and they are not collocates.
When in company of the preposition against the word terrorist seems to be embedded in a phraseological environment, constituting the phrase terrorist + noun
+ against. An intervening noun (plot, means, attacks, strikes) intrudes between terrorist and the preposition against, contributing to the proto-typical meaning of the
configuration terrorist * against usually followed by the name of a country.
In Table15 terrorist is mainly used as an adjective and is primed for collocational use with attack/s. The two words are included in a prepositional phrase,
which shows other frequent associates. The phrase performs the function of introducing a time reference with terrorist as word form since only one occurrence of
terror with the same function has been registered in The Wall Street Journal.
Table15. Terror/September in The Economist
1
First, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, civic and public
regime. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, America and its
nation, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 2001. One exhibit contains a
background EVER since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, George Bush has been
official scrutiny after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Figures from the
rity two months after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the Doha round
7
8
9
Francis Fukuyama. If the terrorist atrocities of September 11th 2001 changed the world
Amazon.co.uk If the terrorist atrocities of September 11th 2001 changed the world
n the wake of the terrorist attacks in America of September 11th 2001. No
10
before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, America had 28,000 troops in the region
11
ents as the September 11th terrorist attacks, the Iraq war (even though France opposed
This concgram (terror/terrorist + noun + of + September 2001), which allows both

constituency variation and positional variation (September 2001 terrorist attacks),
organizes and functions as a discourse signal. In this case the concgram encodes
the temporal background against which the process takes place. As Hoey argues
(2005:13), lexical items tend to prefer or avoid certain grammatical structures or
functions. Thus, this concgram identified as a collocation is primed to colligate
with definiteness.
The major deviation from the spoken data discussed above is given by the
tendency of the lemma to form compounds with the prefix anti- in the written
corpus, more precisely in the Economist (see Table16).
Table16. Anti/terror in The Economist
1 to calls to intervene in failed states, while an anti-terrorist special forces unit will be
2
3
4
the 10,000-man exercise in eastern China an anti-terrorist operation. But
it is hard to
expulsion. More police are to be deployed on anti-terrorist duties. Checks on mosques and
measures. The opposition feared a draconian new anti-terrorist law, but Mr Pisanu reassured
5 have seen was a move to improve co-ordination of anti-terrorism efforts. Italy has three poli
6
police forces, each with a unit responsible for anti-terrorist investigations. Individual
with the Interior Ministry, but want a chief anti-terrorist prosecutor. A former president
of Silvio Berlusconi plans to strengthen anti-terror laws (see article). In Spain, the
9 IMF and World Bank says countries action on the anti-terror recommendations lags efforts to
10to calls to intervene in failed states, while an anti-terrorist special forces unit will be
11
12
13
14
coalition governments recent draconian anti-terrorism laws are really directed

fear retribution under Americas long-reaching anti-terrorism laws, have so far come to
it would be the fourth attempt to toughen anti-terror laws since 2000. More legislation
has moved quickly to tighten Britains anti-terrorism laws.
Of the three new laws
15 That, more than any tight-lipped statement from anti-terrorism officers, suggests more attack
16
17
18
Karimov, was quick to join the American-led anti-terror coalition. Within weeks, American
The French government has promised a new anti-terrorism law by the end of this month,
European countries considering tougher anti-terrorism measures are increasingly
19on cue, the French government has promised a new anti-terrorism law by the end of this month,
20same lines as France. Britain is considering new anti-terrorism laws (see article). Germany,
21 costly pursuit The total cost of complying with anti-terror financing regulations is difficu
22
Times by Populus shows strong support for new anti-terrorism measures: 89% of those polled
23
which resisted several of the measures in the anti-terrorism law Mr Blair struggled to pass
24 outside the Home Office after agreeing that new anti-terrorism measures should be sped throug
25America and other allies to reconsider their own anti-terrorism laws. On Monday, President
26 kept out of the deal with Mr Clarke to speed up anti-terror legislation. Mr Blair, on the
27week the government was talking of toughening an anti-terror law that had been defanged to fit
28wants to limit free speech even further in a new anti-terror bill. This would reintroduce jail
29
30
31
32
33
to defence spending. Mr Gul insists that the anti-terror law is needed to deal with the
Turkeys laws are harsh enough. They see the anti-terror law as part of a bigger battle
fear retribution under Americas long-reaching anti-terrorism laws, have so far come to
While Britains security services have strong anti-terror powers and London has among the
have arrived in Uzbekistan to build an anti-terrorism centre there, and Russian
34
35
attack. This week its government announced new anti-terrorism legislation, including a
to speed up the implementation of proposed anti-terrorism measures, including the
The origin is here associated with words suggesting the idea of reinforcing the existing laws against terrorism. The phraseological environment highlights the presence of an adjective (new, strong) or a verb with the same referential meaning (to
strengthen, toughening) in the left co-text of the compound, immediately followed
by a noun, in most cases law or a semantically-related noun.
Table17. Anti/terror in Bush and in Blair
1 as found in 2000 by British police during an anti-terrorist raid in London a grisly al Qa
2 tep back. Were going to continue to conduct anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan, as we
1 a defeat in parliament or in the courts. The anti-terrorism legislation of course passed in
2
3
4
has already been stated, there will be new anti-terrorism legislation in the Autumn. This
He spoke about the south Asia earthquake, anti-terror legislation, the Respect agenda,
idence that came out of torture in cases of anti-terrorism, where one wouldnt include
5 etropolitan Police Commissioner, the head of anti-terrorist policing, the Association of Chi
6 o compromise in ways I didnt want to on the anti-terrorism legislation, but let me make it
7
Question: Prime Minister, given all the anti-terror measures that you are considering,
as possible by agreement with people. These anti-terrorist measures are necessary, not in t
situation. Question: Just going back to the anti-terror laws, is there a sense in which Cha
10 mbrance. There is then the issue of further anti-terrorist legislation. During the passage
11 e. Weve had the Terrorism Act of 2000, the Anti-terrorism and Security Act 2001, the most
12 s from terrorism or organised crime or just anti-social behaviour in the streets, and I am
What is noteworthy is that anti-terror/ism/ist abounds in The Economist compared to The Wall Street Journal (two instances), whereas twelve occurrences were
found in Blairs language and only two in Bushs speeches (see Table17). As Hoey
(2004:393) has observed, collocational priming is not a feature of the word, but it
is connected to each new encounter, and the media contribute to harmonizing the
priming of linguistic communities, reinforcing, as in this case, the individual use
of language.
The occurrences of the item anti-terror/ism/ist in the British part of our corpora may be due to the meta-narrative of defending civilization by the use of legal measures, aiming to maintain the sense of belonging to an exclusive political
community, since a shared identity is a prerequisite for nationhood (Jackson
2005:61).
7. Conclusion
This paper has attempted to illustrate how the use of a search engine like ConcGram has been crucial in highlighting all the possible word associations found
in a corpus, contributing to the elucidation of the phenomenon of phraseology.
Coming a long way from the presumption that the word constitutes the unit of
meaning, our attention has focused on the lexical phrase as the primary carrier of
meaning and not on the node, a term replaced by origin in concgram searches (cf.
Cheng et al. 2006). Not only has the identification of all the patterns contributed
to the study of extended units of meaning, uncovering the full extent of the idiom
principle (Sinclair 1991), it has also improved our understanding of political language, across language and cultural varieties, confirming that what is typical and
recurrent in one language variety is not necessarily so in another (e.g. to harbor a
terrorist and safe haven for terrorists as parts of Bushs idiolect).
As to the clusters found in the written discourse, where relatively analogous
distribution patterns may be partly explained by the similar ideological slant of the
two selected journals, the phrase war on terror may be seen as a formula intended
as a fixed unit that is both institutionalized and metaphorical. The use of different
phrases (war on terror in Bushs language and fight against terrorism in Blairs) reflects two different political ways of facing the dangers of the post-9/11 world. Indeed, the two pre-cooked (Partington 1998:20) expressions are used mainly for
signalling a different cultural and political identity: Bush assumes a more overtly
warlike style with respect to his counterpart. This would seem to be corroborated
by Bushs repeated use of the binomial allies and friends, in close proximity to the
expression war on terror, whereas Blair tends to choose nouns such as co-operation, solidarity, unity and support, when speaking of the fight against terrorism.
The evidence that the spoken corpus appears to be more governed by the idiom-principle (for instance, to harbor terrorists occurs only twice in the written discourse) supports the theory of saving processing time (Partington 1998) and effort
when listening to a conversation. In written political media discourse fixed expressions represent meaningful choices from the writer performing a text-organizing
function (cf. Moon 1998). Accordingly, prefabs are less common in the written
language of our corpora, though they do occur, above all because they contribute
to balancing the new information with what is already known. Thus, written language, just as spoken, draws from a stock of ready-made phrases, which exist in a
continuum from the entirely fixed to the more variable (Nattinger & DeCarrico
1992:81).
Notes
* For practical purposes, Denise Milizia is responsible for the introductory part and Sections3
and 5, whereas Cinzia Spinzi is responsible for Sections2, 6 and the conclusion. Section4 is the
result of a cooperative work.
1. Scott seems to have borrowed the phrase from the lager firm, Heineken, which in 1972
launched the following slogan: Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach. It was so
successful that it became possible for the firm, within a very short time, to assume everybody
knew it. The early success of the slogan gave it the status of a catch phrase, and enabled copywriters to begin playing with its language, knowing that people would readily bring to mind the
original version (cf. Crystal 2002:389).
2. A consistent item is one which is to be found in many texts (Scott 2001:57). Not surprisingly,
Europe and European in Bush rank respectively 420 and 837, and America and American in Blair
rank respectively 218 and 100.
3. It seems that war on terrorism is the terminology preferred by the Pentagon (The Observer,
10 December 2006).
4. It has been stated that a pattern has to occur at least three times to be worthy of consideration
(Sinclair 2005).
5. Conversely, Chomskyan linguistics is only concerned with a very idealized man-in-the street:
an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogenous speech-community, who knows his language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance (Chomsky 1965:3).
6. As Table5 illustrates, the word terror in Blairs speeches is not willing to create a large number of clusters; this clearly shows that the Prime Minister uses the word mainly with its original
meaning of fear (24 occurrences), as in the impact of bloodshed and terror, or despite it all,
despite terror, violence, kidnapping. The most frequent cluster around the word terror in Blair is
politics of terror.
7. We are very grateful to John Sinclair and Christopher Williams for providing us with these
two articles, and more importantly for their precious and constant suggestions.
8. For reason of space, lines 1929 have been deleted.
9. It has been stated that although binomials are usually made up of two synonymous words,
at least a slight difference in emphasis is always there. The second term is perhaps felt to carry
more weight, even semantically (Koskenniemi 1968, in Bugaj 2006). The existence of reversible
binomials (e.g. friends and allies and allies and friends) has been noticed mainly in legal writings
by Bugaj and Wlodarczyk (2006:9293).
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Authors addresses
Denise Milizia
Faculty of Political Science
University of Bari
Corso Italia 23
70123 Bari
Italy
Cinzia Spinzi
Faculty of Political Science
University of Naples Federico II
Via L. Rodin 22
80138 Naples
Italy
d.milizia@scienzepolitiche.uniba.it
cinzia.spinzi@unina.it

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The terroridiom principle between spoken

and written discourse*

University of Bari / University of Naples

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 323

324 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

2. Mapping the theoretical framework

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 325

The Wall Street

326 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

The Wall Street Journal

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 327

328 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

Wall Street Journal

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 329

330 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

The Wall Street Journal

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 331

332 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

In The Guardian Unlimited (24 January 2007) we read as follows:7

5. A search of concgrams in the environment of the lemma TERROR in the

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 333

Table6. Terror/ally in Bush

errible cost in lives.

gion, and a steadfast ally in the war on terror.

democracies and as an ally in the war on terror.

With the emergence of this government

Today, as Iraqis look to their new go

ng and capable ally in the global war on terror.

The new government in Iraq is also a

ted a valuable ally in the global war on terror.

I dont know if you remember this,

ate a valuable ally in the global war on terror.

Our mission must be to stay on the of

le and our allies.

Information from the terrorists in this program has helped us to

With respect to constituency variation, we found minimal turbulence in lines

334 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 335

Table7. Friend/ally in Bush

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of

As we work with friends and allies, it is important to remember

56 nister has brought to our close ally and friend.

We had a lot of discussion on important

336 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

Table8. Cooperation in the fight against terrorism in Blair

can really be our ally in the fight against terrorism?

23 be a part of that coalition to fight against terrorism. We in our own sub-continent

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 337

Table9. Terror/harbor in Bush

at supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent,

at supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent

d States of America. He harbored terrorists. He had used weapons of mass destruction. He

338 Denise Milizia and Cinzia Spinzi

Another highly frequent two-word concgram occurring in the American English

Imagine a world in whic

You know, al Qaeda ha

We also discussed recent developme

I disagree with the assessment tha

Today, the terror

The terroridiom principle between spoken and written discourse 339

Table11. Terror/haven in The Economist and in The Wall Street Journal

4 haven for all manner of hustlers, gangsters and terrorists.

Alan Doss, the UNs special env

(from The Wall Street Journal)