Verb-particle constructions in the language of business and finance

• Main Author: lvalue lvalue
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universitat Jaume I. Department of English Studies 2019-01-01
• Series: Language Value
• Subjects: verb-particle constructions; phrasal verbs; cognitive metaphor; financial English; business English
• Online Access: http://www.e-revistes.uji.es/index.php/languagevalue/article/view/4758

Author/s Ruth Breeze Universidad de Navarra, Spain   ABSTRACT Although verb-particle combinations are generally relatively uncommon in formal English, they occur with a certain frequency in texts related to the economy, and specifically in journalism and academic analysis focusing on the financial markets. The first part of this paper consists of a corpus study of the verb-particle combinations found in two 200,000 word corpora of business English, one consisting of market reports from the Financial Times, the other of academic research papers on economics from a series of peer-reviewed journals. The particles UP, DOWN, OFF, OUT, BACK and AHEAD are found to be particularly frequent, in combination with a wide range of verbs, mainly verbs of motion. The last section of the paper provides some models for creating exercises for teaching purposes, which start from an analysis of the metaphors associated with each particle and progress to comprehension of real examples from market reports published in the Financial Times.