A Beautiful Wife Makes a Happy Husband Bachelor’s thesis

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A Beautiful Wife Makes a

Happy Husband

A CADS-based study on collocates to ‘husband’

and ‘wife’ throughout times in both movies and

contemporary culture

Bachelor’s thesis

Author: Anna Strandberg Supervisor: Jukka Tyrkkö Examiner: Magnus Levin

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Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the differences between what collocations are used for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in films and contemporary culture. The comparison spans through different decades and the decades will also be compared and analysed. The thesis will investigate if the collocates reflect the societal change and if so, can the results relate to existing power structures/gender roles? The background for the thesis consists of information about marriage history, films and their influence on culture, what a collocation is and previous research on collocation. The method used for this thesis was Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies which includes both corpus studies and discourse analysis. Consequently, a more in-depth understanding of the results and tables were given. To classify the collocates collected from the Movie Corpus (which represents movies) and the Corpus of Historical American English (representing culture) the results are presented Caldas-Coulthard and Moon’s categorisation schema. After this, in the discussion, the proportional distribution is presented because the corpora are different sizes and this way they can be compared correctly. The conclusion is that movies reflect culture somewhat, but it lacks in some areas. However, some patterns can be found. ‘Wife’ and ‘husband’ are discussed differently, and the difference in collocates shows that. Moreover, the results seem to reflect typical stereotypes that do exist and has existed.

Key words

Collocates, Corpus, Husband, Wife, The Movie Corpus, The Corpus of Historical American English, CADS

Acknowledgments

I give many thanks to my supervisor, Jukka Tyrkkö, for the excellent advice and guidance given during the process of this thesis.

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Appendices

Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3 Appendix 4 Appendix 5 Appendix 6 Appendix 7 Appendix 8

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1 Introduction

Films are today a prominent media outlet that many use for entertainment, education, or relaxation. For example, the movie Extraction that came out in 2020 has 99 million views on Netflix the streaming service claim (Gajanan 2020).

Although it is much easier today to be influenced by films because there exist many more compared to the ‘40s; they reflect today’s culture, films have done this since they came to exist (Movies and Culture 2016). Many films use the narrative of love and marriage. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary (2020) marriage is

“the state of being united as spouses in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law”. This institution has had its changes throughout time, and it has been based on both love and only kinship (Coontz 2005). Because of the changes over time, the definition and power structures within marriage must have changed from decade to decade and reflected in films accordingly. Moreover, because of this change, the language must have changed accordingly. Do we refer to ‘wives’ as beautiful and ‘husbands’ as handsome? Or is there a difference in how we described the two parts that constitute a marriage? This development can be investigated through a corpus-based study looking at collocates. Collocations refer to when a speaker uses certain words together (Lindquist & Levin 2018). Moreover, do the changes in culture reflect in films?

Therefore, this study will investigate which words speakers often link with

‘husband’ and ‘wife’, more specifically which adjectives are associated in terms of collocations with the previously mentioned words. Adjectives were chosen to narrow the topic and because we use them to describe something and therefore adjectives modify a word. The primary material that will be used comes from two Brigham Young corpora, the Movie Corpus, and the Corpus of Historical American English. The study will focus on gender roles/power structures in movies and how the different collocates are assigned to specific genders, and how they change over time and comparing this to how films reflect culture. This investigation is

interesting because movies are a prominent media outlet that many uses in their spare time and how these two words are used can indeed influence the audience.

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1.1 Aim

The aim will be to investigate if there are differences in the collocations between

‘husband’ and ‘wife’ in movies and compare the findings with contemporary culture, as reflected in the COHA corpus. In addition, this thesis investigates if the collocates reflect societal change and if so, can the results relate to existing power structures/gender roles? The research questions then will be as following:

 To what extent do films reflect real-world values in marriage?

 How much do movies reflect culture over time, and how do the values change?

 To what extent do the results reflect typical stereotypes in our culture that exists or existed?

2 Background

Firstly, this section will present how marriage has developed, and the institution’s different norms during different decades. Moreover, I will discuss how different historical events have influenced the marriage institution. Then this section will present how movies reflect culture. The information about how films reflect culture will help to understand the results and the discussion about them. Of course, this will be tested later when the findings are compared with the COHA corpus. A small section on what a collocate is will also be presented. Lastly, previous research on gender and collocates will be presented, which will be used in the discussion part and in how to categorise the collocates in the results.

2.1 Marriage history

In Stephanie Coontz’s book Marriage, a History (2005) marriage is examined across history, and the book explains how the marriage institution has developed and why. This major piece of scholarship explains the fascinating story of marriage and gives a broader picture of the institution most of us are familiar with. From the beginning of times, marriage was often not forged out of love but rather out of kinship; to join families, or maybe for power. People have of course fallen in love but in early history that was not often connected with marriage and love was not the

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main reason for getting married (Coontz 2005:15). In ancient India, it was frowned upon to fall in love before marriage. In China love disturbed the peace of the extended family, and their word for love instead meant a socially approved

relationship (Coontz 2005:16). Today scholars trace marrying for love to around the protestant reformation during the 16^th century (Coontz 2005:123).

During the ‘40s, many men went to war and left their women at home, which reversed the previous trend of a male breadwinner, and the female workforce increased by 60%. Many women began working jobs that were previously unthinkable for them like plumbers, welders, and mechanics (Coontz 2005:221).

When the war ended the mostly female workforce also decreased. The aftermath of war made the society have a “renewed enthusiasm for marriage, female

homemaking, and the male breadwinner family” (Coontz 2005:222). When the 1950s came around, it seemed that many were happy with the post-war effect on marriage and the stereotypical gender roles and left the memory of the women’s working days behind and replaced that with homemaking. Many began to marry much younger, and many did not postpone weddings anymore because of lack of funding. The post-war marriage was characterised by male breadwinners and housewives (Coontz 2005:230).

Then came the ‘60s. This decade was the era of change. Anew era of women’s liberation came to life. The couples who raised their children post-war encourage the children that they were the generation of change, and they took that further than intended. The political changes during the ‘60s and ‘70s tossed out the old gender roles of the 50’s. They married later and did not want to live like their parents, they instead wanted to self-express and question society (Coontz 2005:250⁠–251). Today that change is evident. A partnership of marriage often must work to have a healthy marriage. Today marriage is not always the only way to live a fulfilling life. Also, equality seems to be a priority, and couples must figure out what a good partner is in modern times because one cannot rely on mid-20^th century standards (Coontz 2005:281-285).

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2.2 Films and their influence on culture

In Understanding Media and Culture (2016)¹ they explain how movies mirror culture. Movies often reflect the culture, and because of this, they often reflect the ongoing concerns, attitudes, and beliefs we have in our society. Movies produced in the 40’s often reflect the conservative times and the socio-political arenas that existed then. When the 60’s came around the films often revolved around the youth and their opposition to the existing dominant institutions and establishment. Stances toward sexuality and violence became more liberal. That itself is a large contrast and reflects what was happening during those decades. Events that are important to history are also often portrayed, such as September 11, 2001, which inspired many movies about the event and the horrendous attack’s aftermath (Movies and Culture 2016). Major historical events often inspire moviemaking, and the attack of 9/11 proves that. It is important to note that even though movies reflect the current culture, they can also influence the current one. An example was the case with the movie Flashdance which was released in 1983. The movie many say influenced and formed the hallmarks of fashion during the 80’s, such as legwarmers and torn T- shirts. In connection with this, as films became more part of the mass culture the viewers became more influenced by them (Movie and Culture 2016).

Many often imitated the actors’ behaviour and speech on the screen, which can be positive and negative. For example, the movie Birth of a Nation was released in 1915. The film indeed reflected the times, but it was angled to the Ku Klux Klan’s advantage and portrayed the Afro-Americans of the south as lazy, morally

degenerate, and dangerous. Consequently, the unfair angle sparked outrage for many and influenced and reinforced racist views in many. In contrast, many movies try to change the perspective and enlighten viewers or educate them on specific issues (Movies and Culture 2016). To conclude, movies and culture reflect each other because they both influence people. Movies are influenced by how society is

1 The original author and publisher of the book removed their name from the publication when it was republished. Therefore, they are anonymous, but their work is still valid for this study and others.

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and take a stance against it or validate the current times. Culture can be influenced by films and define a whole decade but can also influence negatively.

2.3 Collocations

It is important to define and describe what a collocation is for the work done in this thesis. Lindquist and Levin write about collocations in their book Corpus

Linguistics and the Description of English (2018). People tend to link words together as multi-word units or phrases, and it is a subject that is well researched throughout the linguistic field. The linkage often comes naturally, which is “the key to native-like fluency” (Lindquist & Levin 2018:72) when it comes to English. The linguist Firth has a saying that “[y]ou shall know a word by the company it keeps”

(1957:11). Moreover, the emphasis here is that the “meaning of individual words is influenced by other words that it frequently occurs together with” (Lindquist &

Levin 2018:73). There are two definitions given in the book about what a collocation is, where one is

“[t]he more-than-average co-occurrence of two lexical items within five words of text” (Krishnamurthy in Sinclair et al. 2004:xiii).

The other definition comes from Palmer which is,

“[a] collocation is a succession of two or more words that must be learnt as an integral whole and not pieced together from its component parts” (1993:title page)

These two definitions differ from each other, and it is important to know the difference. Palmer’s idea of collocations Lindquist and Levin calls ‘adjacent collocations’ and are defined as words that come naturally (or more likely) after the word we just used, and the words we are going to use. Moreover, it is statistically proven that some words are used after another more often and influence each other (Lindquist & Levin 2018:79). This definition is not as statistical though as the first one mentioned, which Lindquist and Levin call ‘window collocates”. The latter type of collocation mentioned is called collocates, and they do not have to have a

grammatical relationship with a word but can occur close to it. In a corpus, the search can be the words on both sides spanning from, for example, -4 to + 4 and this is called a window. Important to note is that a wider span can lower the significance

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(Lindquist & Levin 2018:74). To distinguish collocates and know the different definitions are important for this thesis because it is the study’s core. To get a consistent study, a definition must be chosen for collocation.

2.4 Previous research on collocations

The subject of collocates and gender is something that has been studied before and in various ways. Two of them are Caldas-Coulthard and Moon (2010) who did two studies in one paper about gender representation in media which researched firstly about how the British tabloids versus quality newspaper used the words curvy, hunky and kinky to investigate gender patterns and sexualization. In the second study, they investigated premodidying adjectives of ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘girl’ and

‘boy’ in broadsheets and tabloids. In connection with that, they categorised the premodifiers to then analyse further. They mention that previous studies found that married woman is more common than married man. Moreover, wife and mother often have higher occurrences than husband and father. To categorise they used Van Leeuwen’s schema (1996:54) and modified it to their own which looks like this:

Table 1. Van Leuween’s schema with Caldas-Coulthard & Moon’s modification

Category Subcategory Example

Functionalization occupation, role,

function Identification

classification age, gender, provenance, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, wealth, religion, politics, etc.

relational kinship, work

relationship, personal relationship

physical size, colouring,

appearance, clothing, etc. attractiveness

personal emotional state,

behavioural traits, intellect, morality, etc.

Appraisement general evaluatives and

affectives

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Van Leeuwen had originally three main categories which are as follows:

‘functionalisation’, ‘identification’, and ‘appraisement’. The first category contains collocates that are identified with a person’s role in life are or occupation; which means what does the person do? The second category is about what a person is and to break it down further it has three subcategories (and a fourth that is added by Caldas-Coulthard and Moon). The first one is ‘classificational which refers to eho the person is, the second one is ‘relational’ which refers to the person’s relationship.

The second to last subcategory refers to the person’s physical attributes. The last subcategory is ‘personal’ which defines how the person is. The last main category concerns evaluative adjectives which can be nice or lovely. The modification that was added to the schema was a fourth subcategory to identification which is

‘personal’. Lastly, the second modification is that attractiveness was added under physical (Caldas-Coulthard & Moon 2010:110–111).

The study found that under functionalisation ‘man’ had words like, best man, right- hand man and, working man as attributes that are semi-lexicalised or lexicalised compounds. These are all used in some way to signalise power. Surprisingly,

‘woman’ has more profession-based adjectives such as, career woman, lawyer, cop, etc. which was found in ‘man’ but not to the extent that ‘woman’ had (Caldas- Coulthard & Moon 2010:112, 115).

In the second main category identification under the subcategory classification,

‘woman’ was referred to, with adjectives, as someone wealthy and rich more than

‘man’ was. The ‘woman’s collocations were, successful, wealthy powerful, etc. and

‘man’s collocations were top, main, rich, self-made, etc. (Caldas-Coulthard & Moon 2010:113, 116). The second subcategory relational the collocates for ‘man’ is limited and they are, married, single, old (as in old husband/father), etc. The same case goes for ‘woman’ which had similar, new, married, single, etc. (Caldas-

Coulthard & Moon 2010:113, 116). The third subcategory which is physical showed that ‘man’ had lesser attractiveness attributes than ‘woman’. ‘Woman’ collocates such as beautiful, pretty, lovely, gorgeous and ‘man’ had sexiest, scruffy, and handsomest (Caldas-Coulthard & Moon 2010:113–14, 116–117). The last subcategory which is personal ‘man’ had many positive collocates which can be described as qualities to be admired, examples are, brave and baddest. ‘Woman’

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had some stereotypical female emotions/attributes, hysterical, terrified and, distressed but many were also positive, strong and, warm (Caldas-Coulthard &

Moon 2010:114, 117).

Lastly, it is the category appraisement. ‘Man’ had generally positive evaluatives such as nice, great, and lucky. Some negative existed, horrible, sad and, strange.

‘Woman’ did also have mostly positive evaluative collocations and lesser negative collocates than ‘man’. Some examples are wonderful and remarkable (Caldas- Coulthard & Moon 2010:114, 117–118). From their study, it will be interesting to see the difference between ‘man’ and ‘woman’ to ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. It can be assumed that the results will be similar that ‘wife’ will have more ‘attractiveness’

collocates than ‘husband’. Moreover, that stereotypical collocates will be linked to

‘husband’ and wife’. Because of this, this study will be a good background to refer to and compare the result to the study I conduct.

Another similar study to Caldas-Coulthard & Moon (2010) is Gesuato (2003). She also investigated ‘woman’, ‘man’, ‘girl’, and ‘boy’ and determined if the usages of the collocates of these lexemes are within the same discourse or if they have some specific context use for one particular group. The material that was used in this study is from Usbooks, Ukbooks, Time and Today which are all in the Cobuild one- line Corpus. Gesuato (2003) does not categorise and use semantic fields in the same manner as Caldas-Coulthard & Moon (2010) with a schema but puts the collocates in social domains of discourse.

For ‘woman’ she found the discourse domains to be physical attractiveness, age, physical appearance, family and personal relations, women’s liberation, religion, (groups of) people and labelling (Gesuato 2003: 253). With ‘man’ some of the domains were similar to ‘woman’ but the word had a larger diversity. The domains were age, physical appearance, family, and personal relationship, (groups of) people, negative states, the military, sex, negatively connoted physical force or action and non-physical attractiveness (Gesuato 2003:253). Gesuato finds that

“WOMAN and MAN partly occupy different semantic spaces” (2003:253). That is because, as mentioned, that ‘man’ has more semantic fields which can point to that it is used more and has a larger versatility. Moreover, although the lexemes are used

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in the same semantic fields the usages can differ. This is the case in physical appearance because ‘man’ has a bigger focus on the size while ‘woman’ has more about the quality which indicates that it is more important for ‘woman’ to have a visible visual effect (Gesuato 2003:253).

The conclusion of the study suggests that ‘woman’ is more connected with negative attributes, appearance, and beauty. In addition to that ‘woman’ is also more

associated “with notions of passivity, negativity, and physicality” (Gesuato 2003:262). ‘Man’ has more positive attributes but those are also evenly distributed with the negative ones. They also show that the domains within ‘man’ focus more on intellectual qualities and social roles. Moreover, ‘man’ is often more associated, in contrast to ‘women’, with “notions of activity, positivity, and cognitivity”

(Gesuato 2003:262). With this, it can be concluded that when the qualities of the different genders keep their company in this way as shown in the study, the social ideologies that are developed with them and they affect the gender roles (Gesuato 2003:262). Different perspectives are important when conducting a thesis and Gesuato’s view on how to categories collocates add an additional way to categorise.

3 Method

The method I will use is Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) (Taylor, Duguid & Partington 2013). The method is used because this thesis is a corpus study, but the analysis will also include a discourse analysis. CADS as a method aims to study non-obvious meanings which may not be found at initial glance.

Therefore, is the method applied because just analysing the collocates for ‘husband’

and ‘wife’ might not give any meaning. However, by incorporating background with the marriage institution and how films reflect culture, a deeper understanding might be discovered. According to Paul Baker, this takes the research “beyond simple list of frequencies” (2006:175). Combining corpus and discourse studies biases can be minimised because the material is broader. Moreover, it is harder to be selective to too many texts combined rather than just one text. The overall pattern that the results show in the corpus study should be prominent enough (Baker 2006:12).

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The collocates used in this study are gathered from both the COHA corpus and the Movie corpus. The collocates’ search and gathering were the same for both corpora so that the outcome would be as similar as possible, and the comparative aspect would be more legitimised. In both corpora, the collocate search function was used, and in the part-of-speech box, ‘adjective’ was written in. The searches had a span of 4 words left and right to give a broader result. After this, the top 25 collocates were identified in both corpora, for both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, and under the different decades. From this 400 collocates were collected under eight different Tables (which can be found under appendices). These 400 collocates were then later classified in semantic fields according to the meaning they hold. The definition of collocations investigated in this thesis is Lindquist and Levin’s ‘window

collocations’ called collocates (2018:74). The explanation for this is because of how the search in the corpora was conducted.

The semantic fields used to classify the collocates were Caldas-Coulthard and Moon’s version of Van Leeuwen’s categorisation schema (2010). It would be possible to classify according to Gesuato (2003) as well, but the first-mentioned classification schema brings a more in-depth understanding of the analysis. The social domains brought up by Gesuato (2003) can instead be used for discussion under the discussion section to analyse the data further. Caldas-Coulthard and Moon’s (2010) version of Van Leeuwen’s schema (Table 1.) will help the analysis to have a deeper understanding of the collocates and how they are (and was) used.

The collocates in this thesis were analysed in what context they were used in so they could be categorised correctly from Caldas-Coulthard and Moons’ schema.

Moreover, the concordance lines were checked under each collocate for correct classification and relevancy for each category. Consequently, some collocates were omitted from the study because they did not modify ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ or used as a collocate to them (see section 3.1 for further explanation). The category

‘functionalisation’ was removed because no collocates fit the description for that category or were similar to it. In section 5, the discussion, the frequencies were counted together for each decade to get a total amount of how many collocates they each had. After that, the collocates were divided with the total sum for its decade to calculate the percentage. The corpora are different sizes, but when the collocates are

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calculated this way, they can be compared and represented right. The figures that are presented (1-4) are then connected with the background material. The

calculation was done to compare the decades and help to answer the aim and research questions better.

Because the concordance lines were investigated for each collocate, the

classification of particular words can be different. Moreover, some words meanings can be ambiguous and need further explanation. Good husband or wife can be classified under both ‘appraisement’ and ‘morality’ in ‘personal’, the subcategory.

According to the Merriam-webster dictionary (2020) good means “of favourable character or tendency” and under definition 2a(1) when referring to a good person the synonyms are virtuous, right commendable. With this as background, good seems to be a morality trait more than an appraisement for someone. Therefore, the collocate is placed under ‘morality’ in the subcategory ‘personal’. Another collocate that can belong to different categories is lawful. The collocate is often used in wedding vows, and therefore it can be assumed that it belongs under ‘relational’.

However, a different interpretation is that it also can be under ‘morality’. The reason for this is because the marriage is morally conducted, and the ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ is moral because the marriage is legitimate. The latter classification is therefore used in this thesis and identifies lawful as something moral. The word poor can refer to someone who is economically lacking and someone who others feel sorry for.

Because of this, the concordance lines were investigated to classify poor, and the results vary. In some cases, poor is classified under ‘appraisement’ and other instances it is classified under the subcategory ‘classification’ as ‘wealth/status’. To sum up, the collocates were carefully investigated so that the correct classification could be done. Because of this, some words can be classified differently. It is important to mention this, so no confusion occurs.

3.1 Omitted collocates

In Table 2. the omitted collocates are presented, and after that, an explanation on why they did not qualify. Although this is a corpus study, this extra step was taken to investigate if these collocates qualified in this study or not. Some examples of the omitted collocates are that the collocate was not referring to the word (‘wife’ or

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‘husband’) or it did not modify the words in question. Moreover, even if the corpus qualified the word as a collocate, this study tries to be as consistent as possible. The way that this thesis was done does not dismiss other studies done in the other way, because it is a more frequently used method. It was an extra step that was made in this study for a more in-depth analysis.

Table 2. Omitted collocates

Decade Movie COHA

Husband Wife Husband Wife

1940s Right, sure Old, sure, Other, able, sure

Other 1960s Sorry, other,

afraid, sure

Sure, sorry Other, sexual Other, best 1980s Little, alone,

other,

Sure, sorry Other, sure Sure 2000s Other, sure,

beautiful

Sorry,

fucking, sure

Beautiful, only, other, small

Other

Other is a collocate that is prevalent in this table. This collocate is omitted because it is not used to modify ‘husband’ or ‘wife’. It shows as a collocate, but it is used like this, “my wife and the other son” (COHA). Here it is referring to something else. Some instances of the collocates used in the study were omitted because they had the same issue as other. They are, old, sexual, beautiful, best, little and, small.

They do not modify ‘husband’ or ‘wife. Like old under ‘wife’ in the Movie Corpus in the 40’s the collocate modify other words like man, “the wife’s old man”

(Movie). Another collocate that is under many of the decades is sure. It is used as

“yes I’m sure that my wife agrees” (Movie). This example does not modify the main word either, but it shows up as a collocate because the two are in the same sentence often. Beautiful under husband in both corpora is omitted because when

investigating closer in the corpora it often modifies ‘wife’ instead and should be a collocate for ‘wife’. Still, it lists as a collocate for ‘husband’. Therefore, it is omitted because even if it modifies ‘wife’ the search was for ‘husband’. To sum up, all the omitted collocates either modify another person or thing, or it does not modify anything at all as in sure.

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3.2 Material

This thesis’s primary material was collected from two corpora: the Movie Corpus (Movie) and the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA). The corpora are available publicly online on a server based at Brigham Young University. The Movie Corpus has a large amount of data which contains 200 million words that stem from 25,000 movies that span from the 1930s to the present time. One can search by genre, year, country, etc. and divide up the results however one wants (Movies). In this study, the collocate that was found was only divided by decade.

The Corpus of Historical American English has the largest structured amount of data on historical English. It consists of more than 400 million words and the period is 1810 to 2009. It contains fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic journals. The sources are by genre, country, source and the title of the text (COHA).

4 Results

Under the results section, the collocates are presented in tables by decade and the categorisation schema according to Caldas-Coulthard and Moon (2010). However, first the frequencies for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ are presented over the timeline in both corpora to show the different sizes of the corpora. After the collocate is presented in the schema, the frequency count is presented. Remember that, for example, the frequency 24 can be a high number in the ‘40s but a low number in the 2000s.

Moreover, the reason for discussing the counts instead of calculating standardised frequencies is because the thesis investigates the proportional distribution between the different categories. Under each table, the results are discussed. In the discussion (chap. 5), there is a compilation of the results and changes during decades in

frequencies that are connected to the background for a deeper understanding. This section gives a more in-depth understanding of how the collocates rose and shrunk during the decades in frequencies.

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4.1 Frequencies for ‘husband’ and ‘wife’

Table 3. Frequencies per million words for ‘husband’ and ‘wife

Decade Husband

COHA

Wife COHA Husband Movie

Wife Movie

1940s 3945 6221 2873 4163

1960s 3331 6285 2257 3939

1980s 3696 6268 2503 4745

2000s 5473 6968 7471 14562

As presented in Table 3. ‘wife’ has higher frequencies in both corpora. The COHA has overall higher frequencies compared to the Movie Corpus except for ‘wife’ in the 2000s. Because there is a big difference between them in terms of frequencies section 5.1 compilation of the results will show a better representation of the collocates’ distribution.

4.2 Identification

4.2.1 Classification

Table 4. Classificational collocates 1940s

Movie COHA

Age: old (7) Age: young (12) Age: old (45), young (41)

Age: young (92), old (38)

Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity:

American (21) Class/status/Weal

th: poor (7)

Class/status/weal th: rich (10)

Class/status/Weal th: poor (9), high (6), rich (6), little (6)

Class/status/wea lth

An interesting difference is that the COHA has American under ‘wife’. The Collocate is used like this in most cases in the corpus, “That an American wife was something quite different from an Italian wife, shut up in the house with her children” (COHA). It could be connected to the fact that many became stay-at- home-wives in the late ‘40s, especially in America after the war ended (Coontz 2005:222). Surprisingly, class and status are more common as a value in contemporary culture than in movies. ‘Husband’ has more negative values with poor, and little and ‘wife’ only has one status marker, which is positive, rich.

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Therefore, this may indicate a difference in how movies and culture are portrayed.

The frequencies do have not a big difference between them under this category. In connection with this, it indicates that status is more important with ‘husband’ in culture and that status does not matter for ‘wife’. However, ‘husband’ has two positive values instead of one. In movies, it seems that more focus is on old husbands and young wives whereas, in culture, both values are used. Although the collocates occur much more in frequency in the COHA. Whether this depends on that there were fewer movies at this time or that age mattered more in contemporary culture is hard to say.

Movie COHA

Age: young (16), old (11)

Age: old (17), young (15)

Age: young (28), old (19)

Age: young (73), old (28), younger (15)

Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity:

th: poor (14), rich (11)

Class/status/weal th: rich (9)

Class/status/Weal th: rich (11), poor (10), little (9)

There is no difference here when it comes to ‘age’. Only younger in the COHA under wife is added, and the frequency of young is much higher in the COHA than in the Movie Corpus. According to these numbers, the value age is more important in contemporary culture than in films for wives. There is no difference in usages between young and younger, and it is used as a positive attribute. Old seems to be more used in a negative way with ‘husband’ in the movie corpus than in the COHA.

Here is an example that does not differ that much from the other results, “[l]ong before her bent-over old husband gets back” (movies) compared to the COHA, “to go upstairs and leave her goofy old husband alone at the counter” (COHA). In the COHA corpus under ‘wife’, American is present as a value, which is used often in a generic way in the corpus, “[i]t dramatizes the disagreement of a Frenchman and his American wife” (COHA). The example emphasises what nationality the wife has.

Status or class is prominent for ‘husband’ in both COHA and the Movie Corpus, with both negative and positive values. ‘Wife’ does only have a status marker in

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movies which is positive but not in culture. The frequencies do not differ much between ‘husband’ in the COHA and Movie Corpus that is noteworthy.

Movie COHA

Age Age: young (14),

old (16)

Age: young (25), old (12), older (5)

Age: young (74), old (41)

Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity:

American (5)

Ethnicity:

th:

Class/status/Weal th: rich (10), poor (10)

Age is not classified in ‘husband’ under the Movie Corpus whereas the other sections have young, younger, old. Old ‘wife’ is often referred to as something negative, “you’re gon na be left with nothing but that sagging old wife of yours”

(Movies). However, old seems to be negative for ‘husband’ as well, “you are a little man, a weak man, an old man like my husband” (COHA). Young is mainly used as a positive value for all the categories, for example, “[f]air, young wife and this land and no children to pass it on to” (Movies). Age is much more mentioned in the COHA for ‘wife’ which indicates that the value is more important in culture. In the COHA corpus, both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have American as ethnicity, but no instances were found in the Movie Corpus. American is used more though to describe ‘wife’. Here only ‘husband’ has something indicating status or wealth in the COHA and nowhere else. Thus, it indicates that status/wealth was more important for husbands in culture than films.

Movie COHA

Age: old (16) Age: old (37), young (36)

Age: young (28), old (21), younger (11)

Age: young (60), younger (13), old (12), older (11) Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity Ethnicity:

th

Class/status/weal th

Class/status/Weal th

Class/status/weal th

All had a collocate or more in the age category. Although more focus seems to be on ‘wife’ and more so in culture than in films. Young is often used as a neutral value

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in ‘husband’ in both culture and film. For example, “Aleesha’s young Hispanic husband picked her up and dropped her off for work every day” (COHA) and, “he was the one with whom she had slept while her young husband was fighting a war”

(Movie). While for ‘wife’ it is used in both culture and movie as something positive,

“our king, who does not envy me such a beautiful young wife” (COHA) and, “in addition to these he had a lovely young wife” (Movies). The only instance for

‘ethnicity’ is under ‘wife’ in the COHA. It is only used to inform, and it does not seem to be used as either a positive or negative attribute. For example, “Guimard, whose wife was American and Jewish, took refuge in New York before the

outbreak” (COHA). The frequency is not as high though compared to the rest of the values. There are no collocates for status or wealth.

4.2.2 Relational

Table 8. Relational collocates 1940s

Movie COHA

Wedded (32), married (12), new (11), future (9),

Wedded (55), future (18), married (12)

New (26), married (8), future (7), only (9), present (7)

New (32), married (17), present (11) The collocate wedded seems to all be from wedding vows in the movie corpus.

There are no instances of wedded in COHA. Otherwise, there are no real differences between them. It seems to be mentioned more with ‘wife’ than ‘husband’. The Movie Corpus has future under both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, but the COHA only has it under ‘husband’. It seems that future is used in the same way under all the

collocates. The collocate is often used for an existing person who will be a ‘wife’ or

‘husband’ and a hypothetical one that they want to find or have. New is present under the Movie Corpus husband and in both ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ under the COHA. It is used in the same way, “[s]eems her brand new husband” (Movies) to classify marriage as new. It seems that it is more common to talk about a new wife and new husband in culture than in movies. Present, which only occurs in the COHA, is used to signal that this is their current relationship, “[m]iss Bett is the daughter of Knight’s present wife” (COHA). Often it indicates that it has been a previous ‘wife’ or ‘husband’. It is more used for ‘wife’. Married does not differ that

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much between films or contemporary culture, and it is used in the same way.

Married wife seems to be used a bit more though.

Movie COHA

Wedded (15), new (15), married (14), future (10)

Wedded (23), new (15), married (11)

New (21), future (13), married (11), only (6), wedded (6)

New (41), estranged (12) married (11), only (11), future (10)

Wedded is used in the Movie Corpus under both ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ but just once under ‘husband’ in the COHA. Thus, this can be because wedding vows are not depicted in a text in culture, but weddings are often present in films where they act out the wedding ceremony. Married are present in both corpora under both

‘husband’ and ‘wife’. The frequencies are almost the same, so in this case, this word in movies seems to reflect culture. An interesting collocate that only occurs under

‘wife’ in the COHA is estranged which is used like, “[h]is estranged wife, Patricia, described him as a man with “funny habits” (COHA). From Table 8. it can be concluded that it is more common to mention an estranged wife in culture. New, which is present under both corpora, is used to signal a new relationship or a newer one than the former one. Only which only occurs in the COHA is used as a marker for that this person is the only person (in many ways). For example, “Wendy was the only wife I had that made me hit her” (COHA). Here it indicates that the

‘husband’ has had more wives, but he has only hit one. It has other usages as well like ‘the only person in my life’. Otherwise, films and culture seem to reflect each other in the ‘60s.

Movie COHA

Wedded (24), married (14), new (12), right (5), only (5)

New (21), wedded (21), married (18), other (9), old (16)

New (22), future (14), estranged (6), married (5), right (5)

New (51), estranged (17), only (11), legal (10), married (10)

The collocate wedded only occurs on the movie corpus with no considerable difference between ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. When it comes to married the collocate

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shows up in all four sections. There are more instances for married under ‘wife’ in both the corpora. The collocate other is interesting here. All the usages of other have been omitted except here. It is used as in “the other wife” (Movies). Old stand out under ‘wife’ in movies, and it refers to a former wife, “Linda is the old wife”

(Movies). It seems that estranged only occurs in the COHA, which indicates that imperfect relationships where a couple loses contact do not really exist in the movie world. ‘Wife’ does have a higher frequency in the collocate estranged, which indicates that it might be more usual to talk about estranged wives than husbands.

According to Table 9. it is also more usual to speak of a new wife than a husband in the COHA and the Movie Corpus. The frequencies vary between the two corpora, but it still reflects that new wives are more talked about. Overall, the COHA and Movie Corpus reflect each other. The major difference is that the COHA reflects a

‘worse’ side of marriage. The frequencies are higher in the COHA but still reflect the Movie Corpus.

Movie COHA

Wedded (50), future (37), new (48)

New (92), wedded (57), future (44), married (38)

New (72), future (33), estranged (12), married (7)

New (69), future (19), married (17), only (13), estranged (11) In the Movie Corpus under ‘husband’, the collocates’ occurrences are much lower than the others. However, the collocates under ‘husband’ in the Movie Corpus does appear under the other categories. ‘Wife’ in the Movie Corpus has more collocates and higher than ‘husband’. They are all used as positive or neutral. New occurs under all the categories and is used in the same way, “he had a new wife by the end of the year” (Movies), and the collocate is used as a neutral value. The Movie Corpus under ‘wife’ has the highest frequency. It seems that in the COHA corpus negative values as estranged are commonly used, but this is not used in the Movie Corpus. Because of this, it reflects that perfect marriages are more depicted in films than in culture.

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Physical

Table 12. Physical collocates 1940s

Movie COHA

Size Size: little (34) Size Size: little (40), small (13) Appearance Appearance: Appearance Appearance:

blonde (12) Attractiveness:

fine (11)

Attractiveness:

beautiful (18), lovely (looking) (12), pretty (11), fine (19)

Attractiveness:

fine (6)

Attractiveness:

beautiful (27), pretty (18), fine (12)

Other: late (25), dead (32)

Other: sick (14), dead (25)

Other: dead (24), late (15), ill (6)

Other: dead (28), pregnant (19), ill (10)

The category ‘size’ only has collocations under ‘wife’ in both the corpora. They all refer to small wives. They are not used negatively, but as a compliment, “[w]ell, there’s nothing like having a little doll-faced wife to spread around charm for you”

(Movies). ‘Wife’ has significantly more collocates under ‘attractiveness’ than

‘husband’. Under both corpora ‘husband’ has fine which is used as, “I think he’d make a fine husband” (Movies). It implies that he has attractive qualities and is used positively. The frequencies for the ‘attractiveness’ categories are much lower under

‘husband’ than ‘wife’. In the COHA and under ‘wife’ the collocate has the only instance in ‘appearance’ with is blonde. The COHA ‘wife’ has pregnant as a quality which is interesting because the Movie Corpus does not have that. They all have qualities under ‘other’ that connect with death or sickness, and the frequencies do not vary that much. This table implies that the COHA and the Movie Corpus reflect each other except for pregnant.

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Movie COHA

Size Size: little (28) Size: small (9), big (5)

Size: little (23), big (14), small (13)

Appearance Appearance: Appearance Appearance Attractiveness: Attractiveness:

beautiful (29)

Attractiveness: Attractiveness:

beautiful (32), pretty (23), attractive (12) Other: late (26),

dead (21), alive (6)

Other: dead (28), alive (16), late (8)

Other: dead (29), late (19), alive (6)

Other: dead (26), pregnant (16), sick (15)

Under ‘size’ both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have collocates in the COHA corpus, but the Movie Corpus only has it under ‘wife’. Small under ‘husband’ is used with a

negative connotation and refers to a small penis or small stature. For ‘wife’ it is used as a positive or neutral attribute, “[w]e need your little wife” (Movies).

Important to note is that small wife occurs many times more and is more used than small husband. Under ‘attractiveness’ there are no occurrences under ‘husband’, but ‘wife’ has it under both corpora. There are more collocates under the COHA.

They are all used as a positive attribute, “his beautiful young wife” (COHA). Under the ‘other’ category they are very alike and in the frequencies. The only one who sticks out is pregnant under ‘wife’ in the COHA. The depiction of ‘husband’ and

‘wife’ does not match each other during this decade. There are many likenesses between the two corpora, but there are more differences.

Movie COHA

Size: big (5) Size: little (31) Size Size: little (31), small (11) Appearance Appearance: Appearance Appearance:

beautiful (38)

Attractiveness:

Sexual (5), handsome (5)

Attractiveness:

beautiful (23), pretty (13) Other: late (25),

dead (22), alive (9)

Other: dead (41), alive (15)

Other: late (27), dead (13), sick (5), alive (5)

Other: dead (22), pregnant (18), ill (10)

During this decade both the corpora have little or small under ‘wife’. Husband only has one collocate relating to size, which is big. Both little and big are used as

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something positive. Under ‘attractiveness’ ‘husband’ in the Movie Corpus is the only one who has not got a collocate. ‘Wife’ has beautiful and pretty, but ‘husband’

also has sexual. It is used as “[i]n those marriages where the husband considers the sexual relationship satisfactory” (COHA). Interestingly, this only occurs under

‘husband’ which can implicate that it is too taboo for the ‘wife’ to handle. The frequencies are higher under both ‘wife’ under ‘attractiveness’, indicating that appearance is more important in a ‘wife’. Under ‘other’ the results do not stick out that much besides pregnant under the COHA.

Movie COHA

Size Size: little (70) Size: long (8) Size: little (26) Appearance Appearance: Appearance Appearance:

beautiful (156), perfect (32), pretty (30), fine (45)

Attractiveness:

handsome (9)

Attractiveness:

beautiful (32), pretty (15) Other: dead (80),

late (54), alive (27)

Other: dead (120), pregnant (74)

Other: late (51), dead (39)

Other: dead (50), pregnant (36), late (29)

Under ‘size’ ‘wife’ has little under both corpora. It is used as a positive attribute as in, “[s]weet little wife and mother (Movies). It is mentioned a lot more in the Movie Corpus than in the COHA. ‘Husband’ also has a ‘size’ collocate, which is long as in

“[m]y husband’s long fingers, thin and bony” (COHA). Little is used as something cute, whereas long is used to describe more factual things. Under ‘attractiveness’

‘wife’ has many more collocates whereas ‘husband’ only has one in the COHA, which is handsome. Beautiful has a higher frequency in the Movie Corpus than in the COHA. Under ‘other’ there are many more dead wives under the Movie corpus under ‘wife’ than under any other. Pregnant appears under both the COHA and the Movie Corpus under ‘wife’. However, the Movie corpus has a higher frequency.

Overall, the two corpora match each other except that ‘husband’ has an

‘attractiveness’ value and a ‘size’ value in the COHA. The frequencies are much higher though in the Movie corpus compared to the COHA.

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4.2.3 Personal

Table 16. Personal collocates 1940s

Movie COHA

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (15), loving (8), jealous (7)

Emotion/behavio ur: charming (17), nice (16)

Emotion/behavio ur: jealous (9), nice (7), sick (6)

Emotion/behavio ur: charming (10)

Morality: good (38), lawful (19), devoted (8), bad (7)

Morality: good (73), lawful (34), bad (10)

Morality: good (45),

Morality: good (66), devoted (15)

Under ‘emotion/behaviour’ ‘wife’ only has positive values, but ‘husband’ has some negative values. ‘Husband’ has jealous and sick. The latter is used as “your husband is a very sick man” (COHA). Under this category, the Movie Corpus and the COHA do reflect each other. Under ‘morality’ both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ have bad as a collocate which is negative sounding. It often refers to something else like, “[h]as your wife got a bad temper?” (Movies). That means that the ‘wife’ or ‘husband’ is not bad per se, but they have a bad quality which is morally bad. They all have good under ‘morality’, and the frequency for all of them is high. ‘Husband’ in the Movie Corpus has many more collocates referring to ‘morality’ than any of the others. The corpora do reflect each other to an extent, but there are a few differences. The Movie Corpus does provide more collocates.

Movie COHA

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (12), jealous (9), loving (8), nice (6)

Emotion/behavio ur: nice (14), happy (13), loving (8)

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (14), nice (6), angry (6)

Emotion/behavi our

Morality: good (34), lawful (11)

Morality: good (60), lawful (18)

Morality: good (42)

Morality: good (67), unfaithful (15)

‘Husband’ has two negative collocates under ‘emotion/behaviour’ in both the corpora. These are angry and jealous. They are used negatively as well, “[s]he whirled and saw the angry face of her husband” (COHA) and “I have been bought off by a jealous husband before (Movies). However, the positive qualities have higher frequencies under both ‘husband’. ‘Wife’ in the COHA corpus has no

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instances of ‘emotion/behaviour’, but the Movie Corpus has collocations under this category. They are all positive attributes such as, “[h]appy husband, happy wife”

(Movies). There are no significant differences under ‘morality’ except ‘wife’ in the COHA corpus which has unfaithful. An example of how it is used is, “[h]e stood on the foredeck beside his unfaithful wife” (COHA). The frequency of good is much higher under ‘wife’ in both corpora than for ‘husband’.

Movie COHA

Emotion/behavio ur: jealous (4), happy (5), crazy (5),

Emotion/behavio ur: crazy (12), nice (10), happy (9)

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (9), jealous (5), loving (5),

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (10), loving (10), perfect (10) Mortality: good

(20), lawful (11)

Morality: good (58), lawful (10)

Only ‘wife’ in the category ‘emotion/behaviour’ in the COHA has no negative collocation. ‘Wife’ in the Movie Corpus has crazy which is used negatively as well,

“[n]ow, my wife, she’s crazy” (Movies). Crazy under ‘husband’ in the Movie Corpus is not always used a negative attribute, “[t]his is my husband, who is crazy with his guitar” (Movies). Here it explains that he is crazy with his guitar but not an actual behaviour exhibited as a personality trait. Otherwise, in the COHA corpus under both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, they both have positive collocates, and good has the highest frequencies, but under ‘wife’ it is even higher. That reflects the Movie Corpus, which has similar results. The frequencies overall do reflect each other when comparing the two corpora. The most significant difference is that the Movie Corpus has lawful under ‘morality’, but that can be connected to that it is used mostly in wedding vows and these are not written out in the COHA.

Movie COHA

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (18), nice (18), loving, (24)

Emotion/behavio ur: happy (49)

Emotion/behavio ur: jealous (9), loving (13),

Emotion/behavio ur: loving (14)

Mortality: good (114) lawful (24),

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The Movie Corpus has much higher frequencies overall in these collocates that are presented. In the COHA corpus under ‘emotion/behaviour’ wife’ has a positive collocate, whereas ‘husband’ has both a negative and a positive one. The negative one is jealous which is used, for example, in this way “a private eye hired by a jealous husband to kill his cheating wife” (COHA). ‘Wife’ under the Movie Corpus has fewer collocates than ‘husband’. They both have happy which is used in the same way, “a happy wife equals what? A happy husband” (Movies) and “[b]ut did you notice how happy your husband was” (Movies). Under ‘morality’ the most significant difference is that the COHA has devoted under both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’

and the Movie Corpus does not have this collocate. Devoted is used as something positive and indicates that both parties are invested in their marriages.

4.3 Appraisement

Table 20. Appraisement collocates 1940s

Movie COHA

Wonderful (18), great (15), dear (9), nice (9), real (9), better (7)

Dear (19), best (15), better (12), poor (12), beloved (11), right (10)

Best (8), great (8), wonderful (6)

Poor (16), lovely (11), dear (10), real (10), great (9)

’Husband’ under the COHA has the least collocates referring to appraisement. In both corpora ‘husband’ has no negative collocates, whereas ‘wife’ has them under both. They both have poor, which indicates that people feel much sorrier for wives than husbands. Both ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ has dear as a collocate in the Movie Corpus, and it is used relatively in the same way, “you must miss your dear wife”

(Movies) and, “[m]y dear husband now joins me in my daily work” (Movies).

‘Wife’ in the COHA has the collocate real which is used as, “[s]he was English, prodigiously shabby and kind, a real farmer’s wife” (COHA). ‘Husband’ does also have this collocate, and it is used in the same way. Overall, the corpora reflect each other except that ‘husband’ in the COHA has fewer collocates.

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Movie COHA

Poor (14), dear (13), wonderful (7), better (7), right (7)

Lovely (19), dear (14), poor (13), great (12), best (11), wonderful (10), right (8)

Poor (10), small (9), wonderful (7), dear (5)

Great (12), poor (12)

‘Wife’ under the COHA has fewer collocates than the rest. They all have poor as a collocate with roughly the same frequency spanning from 10-14. That is the only negative value which means in this regards the two corpora do match each other.

They all refer to feeling sorry for someone, “When I buried my poor husband”

(Movies). ‘Wife’ in the Movie Corpus has the most collocates which the majority describes positive attributes, “[y]es, it is. Mr. Raymond Swan and his lovely wife”

(Movies). ‘Wife’ in the Movie Corpus and the COHA does not match each other, and therefore, in this case, films do not reflect the marriage institution in

contemporary culture. ‘Husband’ does not match each other either in the two corpora, in the Movie Corpus, there are one negative and four positive attributes. In contrast to the COHA corpus, there are two negative and two positive attributes.

Small in the COHA under ‘husband’ refers to a small-minded husband.

Movie COHA

Poor (7), nice (7), dear (6), great (5), best (5), real (5)

Lovely (20), wonderful (13), great (12), real (12), fine (11), dear (11), goddam (10)

Little (6), bad (6), poor (10)

Great (13), dear (13), lovely (12), wonderful (10)

‘Wife’ in the Movie Corpus has the most attributes during this decade. It has the highest frequencies as well. An interesting collocate is goddam, which is a profanity, and it is used to exaggerate, “[w]ho are you, my goddamn wife?”

(Movies). In the COHA the collocates that exist also exist in the Movie Corpus.

‘Husband’ in the COHA only has negative collocates with bad and little are used in a demeaning way, and poor used es to express sorrow for the ‘husband’. For example, “[t]hat was also the year I first saw my husband as a little boy” (COHA).

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Compared to the Movie Corpus ‘husband’ there is a big difference because there are only one negative collocate and five positive ones.

Movie COHA

Husband Wife Husband Wife

Wonderful (23), great (37), best (24), better (22), bad (23), sorry (54), perfect (21), dear (20), poor (18), fucking (17)

Lovely (67), nice (57), best (40), great (32), loving (32), better (32), poor (29)

Best (19), wonderful (11), poor (7), great (9), real 9)

Lovely (21), great (14), beloved (13), best (11), wonderful (11)

‘Husband’ has the most appraisement collocates in this table, and the Movie Corpus overall has the most as well. ‘Husband’ has more negative attributes than ‘wife’

which contradicts Gesuato’s study, where she found that women tend to have more negative attributes than men (Gesuato 2003). Of course, this can be because people may value ‘wife’ and ‘women’ differently. Fucking is an interesting collocate because it is profanity, and it is used negatively, “[f]ucking little husband and wife team” (Movies). It has a relatively high frequency as well when comparing to the others. ‘Wife’ in both the corpora are much alike except that in the Movie Corpus

‘wife’ has one negative attribute. Overall ‘wife’ in the Movie Corpus has higher frequencies in their appraisement collocates indicating that these kinds of collocates are used more for ‘wife’ in films.

5 Discussion

Under this section, the aim and research questions will be answered. In the first section, 5.1 compilation of result the first question “do films reflect real-world values in marriage?” will be answered more precisely than in section 4. analysis.

Moreover, the research question “do the results reflect typical stereotypes in our culture that exists or existed?” will also be answered. In section 5.2 comparison thought decades the question “how much do movies reflect culture over time and how do the values change?” will be answered.

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5.1 Compilation of results

Firstly, the 1940s collocates will be compared at the proportions count will be discussed and connected to the background. Moreover, this will give a better understanding of the results and better proportions between the corpora. The other Figures 2⁠–5 will have the same presentation.

Figure 1. 1940s collocates

Figure 1. shows that in the COHA corpus ‘husband’ has many ‘classification’

collocates compared to ‘husband’ in the Movie corpus and ‘wife’ in both corpora.

Films and culture do not reflect each other in the classification category because none of the percentages are alike. Interestingly, the category ‘functionalisation’ was removed because of the lack of those collocates. However, according to history, many wives worked during the ‘40s. Women worked because their men went out to war (Coontz 2005:221). Physical collocates for ‘wife’ in both corpora have a higher percentage than ‘husband’ in both corpora. Gesuato found that women were often more connected to appearance and beauty than men, reflecting these results (2003:262). The focus on physical attributes in films for ‘wife’ is reflected in culture. Moreover, ‘husband’ also has similar results: ‘physical’ collocates in films are reflected in culture, and both have a lower percentage than ‘wife’. As seen in Table 12, ‘wife’ has more collocates for ‘appearance’ in the corpora which match Gesuato’s research.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Husband COHA Husband Movie Wife COHA Wife Movie

1940

Classification Relational Physical Personal Appraisement

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The relational category ‘husband’ in both corpora reflect each other, but ‘wife’ does not. According to Caldas-Coulthard and Moon, they found that relational collocates did not differ between ‘woman’ and ‘man’ (2010:113, 116). In this thesis for

‘husband’ and ‘wife’ the results match a bit apart from an underrepresentation for

‘wife’ in the Movie Corpus. Consequently, movies and culture do reflect each other except for ‘wife’ in the Movie corpus. It seems that appraising is used more for both

‘wife’ and ‘husbands’ in movies. There are no major differences between ‘husband’

and ‘wife’ within both corpora though. According to Caldas-Coulthard and Moon’s study, there are no prominent differences between appraisement values for ‘woman’

or ‘man’ (2010:114, 117–118). As seen in Table 20, the difference between them is not significant, and no one has more negative or positive attributes, similar to their study. Under ‘personal’ movies and culture reflect each other a bit because they are somewhat the same, but there seems to be more room for describing a person in a film. To sum up Figure 1, movies and culture reflect each other somewhat but not significantly during the ‘40s.

Figure 2. 1960s collocates

In Figure 2. The collocates proportional representation are presented for the 1960s.

For ‘wife’ there seems to be no category that matches films with culture. The closest one is the category ‘physical’ where they differ with 7%. Although they do not reflect each other, they reflect that they have a higher percentage in ‘physical’

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Husband COHA Husband Movie Wife COHA Wife Movie

1960

Classification Relational Physical Personal Appraisement

A Beautiful Wife Makes a Happy Husband Bachelor’s thesis