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This study examines the semantic variation in fruit and vegetable classifier usage in Amman, Jordan, employing a cognitive sociolinguistic approach. The semantic variation revolves around using idiomatic classifiers, such as raːs basˤal ("head of onion"), in contrast to neutral classifiers, i.e., ħabbet basˤal ("a piece of onion") or numerals, such as basˤalteːn ("two onions"). This study focuses on classifiers used with fruits and vegetables, which are particularly relevant due to their physical shapes often prompting metaphorical classifiers and their tendency to take Arabic collective forms that are grammatically singular but semantically plural, complicating the issue of counting and potentially leading to the innovation of novel classifiers. The sample comprised 50 individuals from Amman, stratified based on their gender, age, and education. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal a statistically significant inclination among older, male, and less formally educated speakers towards favoring idiomatic classifiers over the neutral options. This preference suggests that the choice between idiomatic and neutral classifiers may be influenced by social factors. We categorized the metaphors underlying the idiomatic classifiers as entrenched, conventionalized, and transparent, based on Müller (2009). The context of conventional metaphors demonstrates that the source domains of these metaphors could be active for a speaker at a specific moment but may not be active for another speaker at another moment, proposing that metaphoricity is not only a property of a linguistic item but also the cognitive achievement of a certain speaker. The preference for idiomatic classifiers, we argue, may be associated with notions of lower refinement, traditionalism, or reduced prestige. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the semantic variation in fruit and vegetable classifier usage in Amman, Jordan, employing a cognitive sociolinguistic approach. The semantic variation revolves around using idiomatic classifiers, such as raːs basˤal (“head of onion”), in contrast to neutral classifiers, i.e., ħabbet basˤal (“a piece of onion”) or numerals, such as basˤalteːn (“two onions”). This study focuses on classifiers used with fruits and vegetables, which are particularly relevant due to their physical shapes often prompting metaphorical classifiers and their tendency to take Arabic collective forms that are grammatically singular but semantically plural, complicating the issue of counting and potentially leading to the innovation of novel classifiers. The sample comprised 50 individuals from Amman, stratified based on their gender, age, and education. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal a statistically significant inclination among older, male, and less formally educated speakers towards favoring idiomatic classifiers over the neutral options. This preference suggests that the choice between idiomatic and neutral classifiers may be influenced by social factors. We categorized the metaphors underlying the idiomatic classifiers as entrenched, conventionalized, and transparent, based on Müller (2009). The context of conventional metaphors demonstrates that the source domains of these metaphors could be active for a speaker at a specific moment but may not be active for another speaker at another moment, proposing that metaphoricity is not only a property of a linguistic item but also the cognitive achievement of a certain speaker. The preference for idiomatic classifiers, we argue, may be associated with notions of lower refinement, traditionalism, or reduced prestige.

This paper was first presented at a language in education conference and workshop held at Murdoch University, Western Australia in December 1989, convened by Michael O'Toole. The conference was one in a series held annually in universities around Australia during the previous decade. It was designed to promote dialogue between leading scholars and other participants, adopting as its theme "Discipline – Dialogue – Difference". Halliday's paper was the opening plenary, and it was responded to by Gunther Kress, whose paper follows in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the traditional image schema theory, which is J. Lakoff and M. Johnson's conceptual. Although it was introduced several decades ago, certain clarifications and refinements must be made to its framework and key terms in response to the latest advance in cognitive science. In particular, questions have been raised about certain properties of an image schema, such as bringing together different types of perception, relying primarily on human motor experience, abstractness, and being able to morph into other image schemas. For a better understanding of these properties, the concept “circle” in the Russian linguistic worldview was analyzed, and the following properties of the image schema were singled out by the methods of analysis (component, definitional, contextual, logical-linguistic, and etymological), modeling, and cognitive interpretation: spatiality (the presence of a spatial image), visualization, generalization of the experience to a logical scheme, high ability to form meaning due to the cognitive and semantic types of variation, and combinatorial activity (the ability to combine with various image schemas as parts of a larger image or to become the center of association for other image schemas in a different situation). Of special interest are the means of representation characteristic of an image schema: unlike in concepts of other types, its verbalization is performed with the help of not only lexical and phraseological means but also word-building morphemes with spatial semantics (prefixes). A macro-image schema can consist of many micro-image schemas bounded together under the principle of “family resemblance”, wherein any image schema can be central, i.e., play the role of a unifying one. The results obtained here on the refinement of the traditional image schema theory should promote further development of linguocognitive research.

Semantic variation in the cutting and breaking domain has been shown to be constrained across languages in a previous typological study, but it was unclear whether Japanese was an outlier in this domain. Here we revisit cutting and breaking in the Japonic language area by collecting new naming data for 40 videoclips depicting cutting and breaking events in Standard Japanese, the highly divergent Tohoku dialects, as well as four related Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama). We find that the Japonic languages recapitulate the same semantic dimensions attested in the previous typological study, confirming that semantic variation in the domain of cutting and breaking is indeed cross-linguistically constrained. We then compare our new Japonic data to previously collected Germanic data and find that, in general, related languages resemble each other more than unrelated languages, and that the Japonic languages resemble each other more than the Germanic languages do. Nevertheless, English resembles all of the Japonic languages more than it resembles Swedish. Together, these findings show that the rate and extent of semantic change can differ between language families, indicating the existence of lineage-specific developments on top of universal cross-linguistic constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Mass Observation corpus of 12th of May Diaries, we investigate concepts that are characteristic of the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. More specifically, we extract and analyse concepts which are distinctive of the discourses produced in May 2020 in relation to concepts used in the 10 previous years, 2010–2019. In the current paper we focus on the concept of regulation, which we identify through a novel approach to querying semantic content in large datasets. Typically, linguists look at keywords to understand differences between two datasets. We demonstrate that taking the perspective of a keyconcept rather than the keyword in linguistic analysis is a beneficial way of identifying trends in broader patterns of thoughts and behaviours which reflect lived-experiences that are particularly prominent of a given dataset, which, in this current paper, is the COVID-19 era dataset. In order to contextualise the keyconcept analysis, we investigate the discourses surrounding the concept of regulation. We find that diarists communicate collective experience of limited individual agency, surrounded by feelings of fear and gratitude. Diarists' reporting on events is often fragmented, focused on new information, and firmly placed in a temporal frame.

The paper argues for a semiotic – in fact, a grammatical – origin to a profound dimension of the human psyche: William James (1890, 1920[1892]) observed how there were far reaching effects from what he characterised as the "duplex self". This ME/I relation requires cohesion, or co-ordination, much as first suggested by Hughlings Jackson and Théodule Ribot in the mid nineteenth century. The analysis of grammatical equations (identifying clauses) by the functional linguist M. A. K. Halliday can be called upon to show how many important relationships are enfolded in the apparently simple syntax of BE, and of some other cognate verbs. Through detailed exemplification, the paper shows how a double narrative of the "self" is an inevitable consequence of the first person taking on different combinations of grammatical address. This semiotic aspect of the psyche is also discussed in relation to bilaterian or "doubles" in a number of human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a notable typological contrast between psych verbs in Japanese and Spanish. Japanese derives Experiencer-Object verbs (e.g. yorokob-ase-ru 'to please') from specific Experiencer-Subject verbs (e.g. yorokobu 'to become pleased') via a morphological causativization. Spanish, on the other hand, presents so-called reflexive psych verbs (e.g. alegrarse 'to feel happy'), most of which can be analyzed as outputs of an anticausativization from certain Experiencer-Accusative verbs (e.g. alegrar 'to make happy'). Simply put, these languages derive psych verbs with procedures that reversely mirror each other. This paper will elucidate the characteristics of the causativization used to produce Japanese Experiencer-Object causatives and the anticausativization associated with Spanish Reflexive Psych Verbs and demonstrate that the typological contrast between Japanese and Spanish psych verbs results in semantic variation, e.g. differences in the entailment relation, absence/presence of ambiguity in negation, aspectual diversity. Semantic differences between psych verbs in these languages are ascribed to specific features of the (anti)causative operations employed to generate the predicates. • There is a typological contrast between Japanese and Spanish psych verbs. • Japanese uses causativization, while Spanish employs anticausativization. • Japanese causativization is a syntactic valence-increasing operation. • Spanish anticausativization does not delete the CAUSE meaning from the denotation. • The derivational status (i.e. lexical or derived) relates to semantic variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper highlights proof-theoretic semantics as providing natural resources for capturing semantic variation in natural language. The semantic variations include: Distinction between extensional predication and attribution to intensional transitive verbs a non-specific object. Omission of a verbal argument in a transitive verb. Obtaining sameness of meaning of sentences with transitive verbs with omitted object and existentially quantified object. Blocking unwarranted entailments in adjective–noun combinations. Capturing quantifier scope ambiguity. Obtaining context dependent quantifier domain restriction. The proof-theoretic resources employed to capture the above semantic variations include: The use of different kinds of formal parameters and different ways of binding them to predicates. Omission of a premise from a proof-rule. Basing meanings (and sameness thereof) on (canonical) derivations in meaning-conferring proof-systems. Appealing to substructurality of I/E-rules. Controlling the order of rule applications in derivations. Controlling the open formulas participating in a context within a sequent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper operates with the archive of digitized texts (about 150 novels published between 1845 and 1900) offered by the project ASTRA Data Mining: The Digital Museum of the 19th Century Romanian Novel. By identifying the occurrences for the term “străin” (“foreign/er”; “strange/r”) and its entire lexical family, the study intends to prove that there is a strong correlation between linguistic signs and literary concepts. More precisely, my survey finds its starting point in the methodology developed by Ryan Heuser and Long Le-Khac. The two researchers use the pair of notions “signal/concept,” where “signal” means “any number of things that are readily tracked computationally” and “concept” represents “the phenomenon that we take a signal to stand for, or the phenomenon we take the signal to reveal,” in order to explain their working method. This precisely is the main reason why I have chosen to classify the occurrences of my key-word based on their semantic valence and to discuss semantic variation as an important indicator in trying to delineate different types of literary discourse and the novelistic subgenres. Lastly, my paper intends to provide a complete ad litteram image of “foreignness” as it occurs in the nineteenth-century Romanian novel. This image will be formed based on the meanings (“implicit” and “explicit” meaning, according to Teun A. van Dijk’s delineation) of the terms that comprise the lexical family for my key-word and on the context (the “micro-” and “macro-context”) in which these words occur as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic categories in the world's languages often reflect a historical process of chaining: A name for one referent is extended to a conceptually related referent, and from there on to other referents, producing a chain of exemplars that all bear the same name. The beginning and end points of such a chain might in principle be rather dissimilar. There is also evidence supporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to support efficient, informative communication, often through semantic categories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explore this tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of household containers. We find (a) formal evidence for historical semantic chaining, and (b) evidence that systems of categories in this domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient communication. Our results demonstrate that semantic chaining is compatible with efficient communication, and they suggest that chaining may be constrained by the functional need for efficient communication.

Focal colors, or best examples of color terms, have traditionally been viewed as either the underlying source of cross-language color-naming universals or derived from category boundaries that vary widely across languages. Existing data partially support and partially challenge each of these views. Here, we advance a position that synthesizes aspects of these two traditionally opposed positions and accounts for existing data. We do so by linking this debate to more general principles. We show that best examples of named color categories across 112 languages are well-predicted from category extensions by a statistical model of how representative a sample is of a distribution, independently shown to account for patterns of human inference. This model accounts for both universal tendencies and variation in focal colors across languages. We conclude that categorization in the contested semantic domain of color may be governed by principles that apply more broadly in cognition and that these principles clarify the interplay of universal and language-specific forces in color naming.

Cross-linguistic research has shown that boundaries forlexical categories differ from language to language. The aimof this study is to explore these differences between languagesin relation to the categorization differences within a language.Monolingual Dutch- (N=400) and French-speaking (N=300)Belgian adults provided lexical category judgments for threelexical categories that are roughly equivalent in Dutch andFrench. Each category was represented by good, borderline,and bad examples. A mixture modeling approach enabled usto identify latent groups of categorizers within a language andto evaluate cross-linguistic variation in relation to within-language variation. We found complex patterns of lexicalvariation within as well as between language groups. Evenwithin a seemingly homogeneous group of speakers sharingthe same mother tongue, latent groups of categorizers displaya variability that resembles patterns of lexical variation foundat a cross-linguistic level of comparison.

Semantic categories in the world’s languages often reflect ahistorical process of chaining: A name for one idea is extendedto a conceptually related idea, and from there on to other ideas,producing a chain of concepts that all bear the same name.The beginning and end points of such a chain might in prin-ciple be conceptually rather dissimilar. There is also evidencesupporting a contrasting picture: Languages tend to supportefficient, informative communication, often through semanticcategories in which all exemplars are similar. Here, we explorethis tension through computational analyses of existing cross-language naming and sorting data from the domain of house-hold containers. We find: (1) formal evidence for historical se-mantic chaining, and (2) evidence that systems of categories inthis domain nonetheless support near-optimally efficient com-munication. Our results suggest that semantic chaining maybe constrained by the functional need for efficient, informativecommunication.

The human body is central to myriad metaphors, so studying the conceptualisation of the body itself is critical if we are to understand its broader use. One essential but understudied issue is whether languages differ in which body parts they single out for naming. This paper takes a multi-method approach to investigate body part nomenclature within a single language family. Using both a naming task (Study 1) and colouring-in task (Study 2) to collect data from six Japonic languages, we found that lexical similarity for body part terminology was notably differentiated within Japonic, and similar variation was evident in semantics too. Novel application of cluster analysis on naming data revealed a relatively flat hierarchical structure for parts of the face, whereas parts of the body were organised with deeper hierarchical structure. The colouring data revealed that bounded parts show more stability across languages than unbounded parts. Overall, the data reveal there is not a single universal conceptualisation of the body as is often assumed, and that in-depth, multi-method explorations of under-studied languages are urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resumo: Este trabalho investiga as ocorrências de valoração (MARTIN, WHITE, 2005) em um texto literário escrito em língua inglesa e a reinstanciação da valoração em traduções para o português brasileiro. Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar as ocorrências de valoração por estágios narrativos em excertos do conto Eveline, de James Joyce, e suas variações semânticas em duas traduções distintas para o português brasileiro. O trabalho se calca no arcabouço do sistema de valoração e adota o conceito literário de estágio (ROTHERY, STENGLIN, 1997) para o estudo das ocorrências. A metodologia utilizada foi semiautomática e envolveu três passos principais: seleção dos excertos de cada estágio narrativo e seus correspondentes nos textos-traduzidos; inserção e anotação dos excertos em planilhas eletrônicas; e comparação entre ocorrências de valoração entre os textos a fim de possibilitar a identificação de variações semânticas nas reinstanciações. Os resultados alcançados indicam a ocorrência de valorações com configurações similares, alinhadas a orientações de valor. Variações semânticas foram devidas majoritariamente a variações em acoplamento e calibragem nos subsistemas de atitude, carga e gradação. O subsistema de gradação foi especialmente produtivo no estudo de variações, devido ao não-acoplamento ou calibragem em menor grau nas ocorrências valorativas nas reinstanciações. A análise valorativa revelou-se produtiva para a identificação de valorações com configurações similares e de variações semânticas em textos traduzidos. Palavras-chave: valoração; reinstanciação; variações semânticas; Eveline. Abstract: This study investigates occurrences of appraisal (MARTIN, WHITE, 2005) in a literary text written in English and the re-instantiation of appraisal in translations to Brazilian Portuguese. This study aims to analyze appraisal occurrences in excerpts of the short story Eveline by James Joyce, and semantic variation in two distinct translations to Brazilian Portuguese. Analysis is based on the appraisal system’s framework and adopts the literary concept of stage (ROTHERY, STENGLIN, 1997). The adopted methodology was semi-automatic and involved three main steps: selection of excerpts from each narrative stage and their correspondent excerpts in the translated texts; insertion of texts in electronic sheets and annotation; and comparison of appraisal occurrences between texts in order to enable the identification of semantic variations in the re-instantiations. Results indicate the occurrence of evaluations with similar configurations, which were aligned to value orientations. Semantic variation was due mainly to different coupling and commitment of the attitude, loading and graduation subsystems. graduation was especially productive due to non-coupling or commitment in lesser degree in appraisal occurrences in the re-instantiations. appraisal analysis was shown to be productive for the identification of occurrences with similar configurations and semantic variation in translated texts. Keywords: appraisal; re-instantiation; semantic variation; Eveline.

Dialectometry studies patterns of linguistic variation through correlations between geographic and aggregate measures of linguistic distance. However, aggregating smooths out the role of semantic characteristics, which have been shown to affect the distribution of lexical variants across dialects. Furthermore, although dialectologists have always been well-aware of other variables like population size, isolation and socio-demographic features, these characteristics are generally only included in dialectometric analyses afterwards for further interpretation of the results rather than as explanatory variables. This study showcases linear mixed-effects modelling as a method that is able to incorporate both language-external and language-internal factors as explanatory variables of linguistic variation in the Limburgish dialect continuum in Belgium and the Netherlands. Covering four semantic domains that vary in their degree of basic vs. cultural vocabulary and their degree of standardization, the study models linguistic distances using a combination of external (e.g., geographic distance, separation by water, population size) and internal (semantic density, salience) sources of variation. The results show that both external and internal factors contribute to variation, but that the exact role of each individual factor differs across semantic domains. These findings highlight the need to incorporate language-internal factors in studies on variation, as well as a need for more comprehensive analysis tools to help better understand its patterns.

"As exemplified by a causative situation which realises the mode of an emotional state, the author makes an attempt to present semantic variations of the category of causation in its emotional mode. The paper aims at determining semantic variations of a causative situation of an emotional mode and systematising them. The object of the research is the peculiarities of functioning of Russian emotive verbs of interpersonal semantics. The subject of the analysis is their functional potential. The data of the research were Russian verbs taken from Russian collocation and defining dictionaries. The research methods comprised a hypothetical-deductive method and contextual analysis. As a result of the analysis, five semantic variations of a causational situation of an emotional mode were determined. They are realised by causative verbs of perception, psychophysical sensations, mental state, understanding of an attitute to others, intuitive understanding of a situation."

This article models the semantic structure and lectal variation of shi 'cause' and rang 'let' in the context of an analytic causative construction in Mandarin Chinese. The investigation is framed within a 3D model (the formal, conceptual and social dimensions) and integrates semasiological and onomasiological perspectives of semantic variation. Adopting a corpus-based method and regarding constructional exemplars of the verbs as a prototypical category, it explores semantic salience and variability of the verbs on the one hand and their semantic division of labour on the other. Important dimensions that are relevant for the semantic structure of shi and rang are illuminated, along with their lectal variation. Reasons for the semantic differences are explained from a diachronic perspective, as shi and rang are shown to be at different points along the same grammaticalization pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Present-Day English, the term Anglo-Saxon is used with three dominant meanings, which have been labeled "historical/pre-Conquest", "ethno-racial" and "politico-cultural" uses (cf. Wilton 2019). From at least the middle of the 19th century, the second sense has been politically appropriated to convey the racial notion of white supremacy. Recently, a fierce conceptual and socio-political controversy over the meaning and implications of the term Anglo-Saxon has spilled over into academia, ultimately causing the vote of the members of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS) to change its name to International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England (ISSEME). We discuss this development as a paradigm case of controversies over the conceptual territory associated with a contested term. Using the Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model (Schmid 2020) as a theoretical framework, we analyze a large collection of Twitter posts (n ~ 510,000) with a view on the conventionalization and entrenchment processes involved in the conceptual and political controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes as its focus the overlexicalization and semantic variation of reference terms for Native Americans in the period of the English exploration, settlement and colonization of Virginia (1584-1724). The corpus-assisted discourse analysis of pamphlets, first-hand accounts and letters taken from the Virtual Jamestown Digital Archive reveals that the lexical items used for naming the Natives undergo a process of amelioration and pejoration throughout the decades in relation to the changing historical and sociocultural context in which they are used. An investigation of the definition and quotations of the same lexical items in the online version of the OED shows that although the dictionary attests the overlexicalization occurring for the Native Americans and reflects the most frequent lexico-syntactic patterns in which the words are found in the corpus, the choice of the quotations fails to account for instances of semantic variation and for the resulting ambivalent connotations of the terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study investigates occurrences of appraisal (MARTIN, WHITE, 2005) in a literary text written in English and the re-instantiation of appraisal in translations to Brazilian Portuguese. This study aims to analyze appraisal occurrences in excerpts of the short story Eveline by James Joyce, and semantic variation in two distinct translations to Brazilian Portuguese. Analysis is based on the appraisal system's framework and adopts the literary concept of stage (ROTHERY, STENGLIN, 1997). The adopted methodology was semi-automatic and involved three main steps: selection of excerpts from each narrative stage and their correspondent excerpts in the translated texts; insertion of texts in electronic sheets and annotation; and comparison of appraisal occurrences between texts in order to enable the identification of semantic variations in the re-instantiations. Results indicate the occurrence of evaluations with similar configurations, which were aligned to value orientations. Semantic variation was due mainly to different coupling and commitment of the attitude, loading and graduation subsystems. graduation was especially productive due to non-coupling or commitment in lesser degree in appraisal occurrences in the re-instantiations. appraisal analysis was shown to be productive for the identification of occurrences with similar configurations and semantic variation in translated texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed an increase in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) visibility in the British media. Increased representation has not been equally distributed, however, as bisexuality remains an obscured sexual identity in discourses of sexuality. Through the use of diachronic corpus-based critical discourse analysis, this study seeks to uncover how bisexual people have been represented in the British press between 1957 and 2017. By specifically focusing on the discursive construction of bisexuality in The Times, the results reveal how bisexual people are represented as existing primarily in discourses of the past or in fiction. The Times corpus also reveals significant variation in the lexical meaning of bisexual throughout the 60 years in question. These findings contribute to contemporary theories of bisexual erasure which posit that bisexual people are denied the same ontological status as monosexual identities, that is, homosexuality and heterosexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with axiological aspects of ideologeme “order” in the political discourse of Russia and the USA. It is also supplied with some results of comparative research of ideologeme “order” in Russian and American political discourse.

The semantics of German 'touch' verbs include corresponding motor concepts. These seem to result from experiences and learning from subjective bodily actions and interactions with the environment during language acquisition (cf. Bailey 1997). When we learn a new action word, we often do so embedded in a particular motor context (cf. Bailey et al. 1997; Bergen et al. 2004). In this pilot study, we investigate how the motor concepts of German hand-related 'touch'-verb variants ([an]fassen, [an]greifen, [an]langen, cf. VWB: 38-39, 40, 42) - which are often considered to be true synonyms - are applied by speakers from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The empirical study draws on research into cognitive semantics (Pulvermüller 2005; Steels & Belpaeme 2005; Barsalou 2008; Evans 2009) and motor cognition (Bailey et al. 1997; Marocco et al. 2010) and aims at adding a variationist linguistic component to the existing research (cf. Fink in prep.). By use of a stimulus response experiment with 25 native speakers from the three countries, we will show a) that the three verb variants differ in terms of motor concepts and therefore are no true synonyms and b) that the motor concepts for each verb differ between speakers of German in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Mass Observation corpus of 12 th of May Diaries, we investigate concepts that are characteristic of the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. More specifically, we extract and analyse concepts which are distinctive of the discourses produced in May 2020 in relation to concepts used in the 10 previous years, 2010-2019. In the current paper we focus on the concept of regulation, which we identify through a novel approach to querying semantic content in large datasets. Typically, linguists look at keywords to understand differences between two datasets. We demonstrate that taking the perspective of a keyconcept rather than the keyword in linguistic analysis is a beneficial way of identifying trends in broader patterns of thoughts and behaviours which reflect lived-experiences that are particularly prominent of a given dataset, which, in this current paper, is the COVID-19 era dataset. In order to contextualise the keyconcept analysis, we investigate the discourses surrounding the concept of regulation. We find that diarists communicate collective experience of limited individual agency, surrounded by feelings of fear and gratitude. Diarists' reporting on events is often fragmented, focused on new information, and firmly placed in a temporal frame., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The handling editor RJ is currently organising a Research Topic with the authors JR and RP., (Copyright © 2023 Robinson, Sandow and Piazza.)