The lexico-phraseological profile of professional film reviews published by the British media: A corpus-linguistic study

Tatiana Szczygłowska

University of Bielsko-Biala, Poland

Tatiana Szczygłowska works at the Institute of Neophilology, University of Bielsko-Biala, Poland, where she lectures on translation theory and text analysis to students of English philology. Her main research and teaching interests lie in linguistics and translation with a special focus on academic discourse and corpus linguistics. She has also conducted studies in the area of students’ attitudes to target language culture and pronunciation.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5051-4080

Abstract

Using corpus linguistic techniques, this exploratory study is intended to provide a descriptive insight into frequent lexical bundles, keywords and key terms as well as selected lexical markers of style used in a corpus of professional film reviews. The research material includes 210 domain-specific texts from the years 2020-2021, extracted from the websites of six British newspapers, magazines and institutions offering guides for moviegoers. The results show that the analyzed reviews make frequent use of general cinematic terms and more specific lexis denoting the different types and (sub)genres of cinematic productions represented by the reviewed films. Other salient lexical features include a high concentration of referential but low concentration of stance bundles, though attitudinal items, particularly evaluation adjectives, significantly enrich the lexical inventory of the reviews. The presented data may have important pedagogic applications in the area of teaching authentic English to future film reviewers and film journalists.