Examining the Semantic Prosody of Lexical Items as Used in Korean Contexts

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the semantic prosody of English lexical items in English newspapers, English learning materials, and EFL students' writing, produced in Korean contexts, in comparison to that of native speakers. HAPPEN, CAUSE, and PROVIDE that have been expansively scrutinized in the literature are chosen for analysis. The paper focuses primarily on collocates within a span of four words to the left and right of selected items. Furthermore, an extensive review of each item in context is implemented to find the semantic relationship between the item and co-occurring words in the proximity. It was found that the overall use of semantic prosody of chosen English lexical items in Korean contexts was similar to that of native speakers. It, however, attested that individual items had more or less unique semantic prosodies in relation particularly with the source of each item. The findings suggest that there should be explicit expressions and instructions in the semantic prosody of lexical items in EFL materials and classrooms.