Testing the Theory through Spoken-Corpus Evidence

Abstract

This book’s aim is to show how far the theory of lexical priming is applicable to spoken (English) language. If there is evidence for lexical priming as described above, the spoken word, being spontaneous and fairly non-inhibited in continuous conversational speech, should provide enough material to show that there is a priming effect that subconsciously steers the lexical choices made by speakers and groups of speakers. In order to support this claim, instances of spoken UK English were investigated for characteristic traits. Furthermore, English spoken by a particular subsection of English speakers was directly compared with usage found in the general corpus of spoken UK English.