Phraseology and Culture in English

corpus frequency 
brephem (BE ephemera) 
3.0 per million 
brspok (BE spoken discourse) 
1.5 per million 
brmags (BE magazines) 
1.4 per million 
British English 
brbooks (BE books) 
1.3 per million 
varieties 
sunnow (The Sun, News of the World) 1.2 per million 
usephem (AE ephemera) 
1.1 per million 
American English 
usbooks (AE books) 
0.9 per million 
varieties 
indy (The Independent) 
0.7 per million 
British English 
times (The Times) 
0.5 per million 
varieties 
Thus, it appears as if the higher frequency of enjoy yourself/yourselves as a 
directive in the British ephemera subcorpus simply reflects a general differ-
ence between American and British English (cf. Mittmann 2004 for a gen-
eral comparison of prefabs in American and British spoken English). 
Finally, enjoy + our and enjoy + your occur more often in the US sub-
corpus than in the UK subcorpus (3.9% vs. 1.7%), possibly pointing to a 
more personalised style of American advertising, though this also must 
remain a hypothesis.
12
3.7. Summary 
If we bring together the aforementioned findings and compare the two sub-
corpora both in terms of colligational patterns and in terms of the evalua-
tion that is expressed, the picture looks as follows: 

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Enjoy!: The (phraseological) culture of having fun
121
Table 4. Colligational patterns and evaluation
Explicitly evaluative 
Mention of phenomenon 
UK US UK US
enjoy + the + NP 
41 
45 
31 
36 
enjoy + NP 
19 
64 
16 
44 
enjoy + a/an + NP 
16 
20 
20 
23 
enjoy + (unpremod) NP 1 
6 
14 
36 
Other
1 
9 
13 
23 
All
78 = 45.3% 144 = 47.1% 94 = 54.7% 162 = 52.9% 
As becomes evident from this table, the proportions in both corpora are 
roughly similar: there are more instances of enjoy which are not accompa-
nied by explicit evaluation in the immediate context. This finding supports 
Gieszinger’s conclusion that “[a]dvertisers now tend to illustrate the char-
acteristics of products and services in detail instead of prescribing their 
evaluation” (2001: 155). However, because this analysis was limited to 
analysing concordance lines, there may still be evaluation present in the 
wider context, as in the following examples from the US corpus (evaluation 
underlined):
ity’s illuminated skyline. Enjoy dinner in a restaurant in Chinatown and 
stroll through its bustling picturesque streets 
select fresh vegetables. Enjoy dinner as the train rolls through Cape Cod’s 
picturesque countryside 
Wonderful home w/superb curb appeal. Lg fenced backyard. Enjoy hard-
wood floors w/carpeting plus 
In any case, the above numbers suggest that, as far as enjoy and evalua-
tion in general are concerned, UK and US persuasive texts can be
said to be very similar indeed, although there is a slightly but notice-
ably higher tendency for explicit evaluation in the US corpus. Judg- 
ing from the distribution of the colligational environment of enjoy,
to speak of a very similar or even common Anglo-American culture of 
persuasion does not seem to be too far-fetched, even though the ac- 
tual instantiation of evaluation through colligational patterns varies to 
some degree, as we have seen above. To sum up the major differences 
again:

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122
Monika Bednarek and Wolfram Bublitz 
ʊ
There are considerably more instances of enjoy! in the US corpus than 
in the UK corpus; 
ʊ
BE and AE prefer different patterns of evaluation: 
ʊ
BE: enjoy + the + NP > enjoy + a/an + NP > enjoy + NP > enjoy + 
unpremodified NP 
ʊ
AE: enjoy + NP > enjoy + the + NP > enjoy + a/an + NP > enjoy + 
unpremodified NP; 
ʊ
within these patterns there are occasional differences concerning the 
sub-patterns preferred (the pattern the + evaluative noun + of seems 
more popular in BE whereas AE seems to prefer enjoy + all);
ʊ
BE also has a much higher frequency of the patterns and enjoy and 
enjoy yourself/yourselves whereas the patterns enjoy + numeral and en-
joy + our/your are more frequent in AE.