Abstract:
The current study is a corpus-driven description of how the word mind patterns in Modem American English, as found in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer blog corpus (Reppen, de, & Suderman, 2005). Nine hundred eighteen tokens of the word mind were analyzed according to lexical category, collocations, and semantics. The analysis shows that mind functions as a verb and a noun, as well as in verbal and nominal compounds. Previous researchers have claimed that in older English the conceptualization of mind included emotional, spiritual, and moral elements as well as intellectual, but the Modem English mind has shed the emotion, spirituality, and morality and is now mostly intellectual (Wierzbicka, 1989, 1992North, 1991; Phillips, 1991). The findings of the current study indicate that the emotional content has not been lost, but it has been restricted to the mind's verbal uses. Previous researchers have also likened mind to a type of processor or object that thinks (Van Peursen, 1966; D' Andrade,1987; Mey & Talbot, 198 8; Gee, 1992). However, the findings here indicate that mind is more often the place where processing occurs or where the results of thinking/processing are displayed. It is less often that which thinks or processes.