Love is definitely in the air this month, as couples in the UK and beyond celebrate all things romantic on Valentine’s Day. With over half a million occurrences in the Corpus, it seems we’ve got a lot to say when it comes to the word love. In this blog post, language researcher Laura Grimes explores the language associated with love in the multi-billion-word Cambridge English Corpus.
Valentine’s Day inspiration from the Corpus
Predictably, the top three nouns associated with Valentine’s Day in the Cambridge English Corpus are card, gift and dinner. Treat, present, meal, dance, and celebration also appear on the list, as do party and wedding for the more serious romantic revellers. Roses and chocolate top the list of nouns which occur before the phrase “…for Valentine’s Day”, with present and flowers also featuring as popular offerings. But love doesn’t come for free; the Corpus also hints at the more commercial side of Valentine’s Day, with references to Valentine’s Day Specials, Valentine’s Day spending and menu for Valentine’s Day.
Romantic rhetoric
The phrase I love you occurs over 8000 times in the Corpus, and is over 30% more common in spoken rather than written English… though speakers of British English are far less likely to say it out loud than speakers of American English!
If you need some help crafting the perfect Valentine’s Day message for your loved one, common collocations found in the Corpus might provide some inspiration. Adverbs which commonly modify I love you include:
• I love you so much
• I love you too
• I love you very much
• I love you dearly
• I love you back
Reassuringly, adverbial collocations also suggest that love triumphs over adversity and stands the test of time, with phrases like I love you anyway and I still love you both featuring highly on the list. Alongside the verb love, we also see strong collocations with modifiers such as:
• dearly
• absolutely
• truly
• really
• always
• especially
• genuinely
• deeply
• unconditionally
In terms of who we love, the object pronoun her occurs as the object of the verb love 6,328 times, but him has a much higher frequency at 10,144!
Beyond romance
But love isn’t just about affection and romance; in the Corpus, we find evidence that there are a huge number of things we like to express our love for nowadays. This widening application of love sometimes draws criticism from those who fear such semantic change will result in a loss of meaning or intensity. Nevertheless, the top collocates of the verb to love, in object position, include:
• music
• idea (I love the idea of…)
• food
• sport
• football
• show
• country
• movie
• book
• game
• animals
• job
We also commonly see the phrases love the fact that… and love every minute.
Loving every minute of it
As well as undergoing semantic extension, love is being used in a widening range of grammatical structures too. The Corpus suggests that the present continuous form“to be loving” is frequently used, often followed by it, e.g. I’m loving it. We also see lots of examples of I’m loving every minute of it. This structure is more likely to be found in spoken rather than written English.
Classroom activity ideas for Valentine’s Day
If you’d like to try some Valentine’s Day-themed activities with your class this February, how about these ideas for inspiration:
• Roses are red: get your students to devise alternative endings to the popular love poem:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you!
• Lonely hearts: create some fictional dating profiles and have your students work in pairs to match up potential couples.
• Discussion: ask your students what they think about Valentine’s Day; is it a nice idea to nominate a day to celebrate romantic love, or is it just an excuse for another commercial campaign?
If you want to find out more about corpora, you might like our article entitled Corpora and the advanced level.