Find Collocated Words
This exercise uses
this Recipe to find collocated words within a sample text.
It applies a recipe to real textual example which is freely available on the Internet so you can do the steps yourself and see the results.
Exercise Steps
- This exercise uses Volume 2 of Thomas Macaulay's History of England which can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg.
- Choose a word of interest. In the case of the this text, power is a good choice
- How is power referred to in the text? Use the TAPoR Find Collocates Tool to explore the use of the word power.
 | Power is treated not a single entity, but is most often qualified: ‘spiritual power', 'temporal power', 'coercive power', 'arbitrary power', 'uneasy power', 'power of the sword', 'political power'. |
- As you can see we can quickly find collocated wordsa and have a fuller sense of how power is used in the context of this author's writing.
- What is the author's attitude towards the monarchy? Use TAPoR Find Collocates Tool to see how often the words 'King' and 'Charles' occur together.
| Note that the title the King is commonly used, but not King Charles or King James. The proper name Charles is used frequently, but collocation of King and Charles are rare. |
| Parliament is superior. King is ‘detested’, ‘disliked’, ‘impeached’ – moreover, never used terms ‘executed’, killed. |
| The word Court is paired with a variety of disparaging terms, ‘sycophants’, ‘concealed’, ‘quarreled with’, ‘…abused’, ‘extravagance of the …’, ‘the…excited the bitter indignation’, ‘vice and folly’, ‘disliked’, ‘faithlessness of the …’, ‘seditious’ |
| The Commons are collocated with positive terms: ‘undoubted power’, ‘should be governed’, ‘elected’, ‘ancient and undoubted power’, ‘legally’. |
- Thus, the simple task of finding coloocated words allows us to quickly appreciate what may have been themes even the author was only subliminally of.
Next Steps/Further Information
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ShawnDay - 5 November 2006
This recipe and exercise is available as a PDF download.