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Dynamics of English gratitude expression: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK government COVID-19 briefings – ERRATUM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2024

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Abstract

Type
Erratum
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

The publisher regrets incorrect typographical treatment in the published article.

In Table 2 (p. 7), words are highlighted in bold while the text refers to words ‘highlighted in grey’. The word ‘grey’ has been replaced by ‘bold’ to correctly refer to the table:

Table 2. Frequencies of gratitude expressions in the Corpora

In brief, among the eight expressions of gratitude, thank you, thank + a third-person object and grateful (highlighted in bold) occur more in both corpora. Although “pay” [] {0,3} “tribute” (highlighted in bold) has a lower frequency than thanks in the Experts’ Corpus, it is used far more frequently than thanks in the Politicians’ Corpus.

In the text on pages 12–13, words should have been emphasised in italics. Italics has now been applied to the relevant words:

In the Politicians’ Corpus, seven more intensifiers occur. These modifiers reflect that intensified gratitude is expressed by highlighting the degree (e.g. so), describing the metaphorical dimensions (WIDTH: immensely, enormously, hugely; DEPTH: deeply and profoundly) of gratitude or, in one case, showing sincerity (e.g. really). In the Experts’ Corpus, most intensifiers relate to degree, but sincere gratitude is highlighted once by the adverb truly.

In Table 6 (p. 14), words are highlighted in bold while the text refers to words ‘highlighted in grey’. The word ‘grey’ has been replaced by ‘bold’ to correctly refer to the table:

Table 6. Frequencies of gratitude expression patterns in the Corpora

As Table 6 shows, Pattern 1, the performative pattern of thank, is the dominant one in both corpora. It has four variants, with Pattern (1a) (highlighted in bold) having the highest frequencies and Pattern (1b) enjoying a similar popularity as Pattern (1a) in both corpora. Patterns (1c) and (1d) have fewer cases, but they can be used to express prospective thanking together with Pattern (1a). Among the thank you patterns, Pattern (2b) (highlighted in bold) has the most occurrences in both corpora. It was adopted to express retrospective gratitude. In contrast, Patterns (2a) and (2c) were involved in prospective thanking. Regarding the grateful patterns, Pattern (3a) (highlighted in bold) is a little more frequent than Pattern (3b) in the Politicians’ Corpus, though it has the same cases as (3b) in the Experts’ Corpus. Contrary to Pattern (3b), it was employed for prospective thanking, together with Patterns (3c) and (3d) in the public discourse.

The previous formatting leads to information potentially being misconstrued, and the article has therefore been corrected. The publisher apologises for the errors.

References

Wei, J. and Murphy, M.L. (2024) Dynamics of English gratitude expression: a corpus-assisted analysis of UK government COVID-19 briefings, Language and Cognition, 120. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2024.25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Table 2. Frequencies of gratitude expressions in the Corpora

Figure 1

Table 6. Frequencies of gratitude expression patterns in the Corpora