Mid Sweden University

The purpose of this study was to examine and investigate patterns of collocates of the word species as well as any semantic and discourse prosody which might be found among them. This investigation has made use of a variety of statistical measurements in order to verify and validate the collocates for the word species. As the results of each measurement displayed, both endangered and invasive show a pattern of affinity to species that was not matched by any other collocates. These were the only two collocates to perform strongly in the MI, t test and frequencies measurements. This supports the hypothesis that both these two words are at some stage of becoming fixed to species. The higher overall results shown by endangered suggests that it is at a more advanced stage of this process while invasive is at an earlier point of development. The data from the quantitative analysis indicates that a further study from a diachronic perspective could offer a more detailed look at such a process.

In order to probe the collocates displaying patterns of interest from the quantitative analysis for semantic preference and discourse prosody, the Top Twenty Collocate lexical profile was created. In this profile, endangered was listed as number one and invasive as number five. Collocates from the profile were investigated for any patterns of semantic preference that might be found. Five of the nine semantic preferences revealed could be linked to the idea of threat. While endangered and invasive played a substantial role in the results, eighteen of the twenty collocates showed a clear association to threat. The final section of the study examined these same collocates for any discourse prosody that could be related to the security threat framework in environmental discourse. Invasive was linked to the idea of the enemy and the unknown or Other. Such ideas are commonly associated to an aggressor in a war scenario. Endangered and threatened were found to be associated with the idea of the unfortunate that are in need of protection and defense from an aggressor in a war scenario. Bundled into this aspect of the discourse prosody is the concept of loss and vulnerability. In this way, these collocates are used with species to provide both sides of the concept of threat in environmental discourse. There are patterns in both the areas of semantic preference and discourse prosody that are undeniably associated to threat. The fact that endangered and invasive stand on opposite sides of this association, defensive and offensive respectively, suggests that this may be a driving force behind the strong affinity for and growing state of fixation of these two words to species. The results of this investigation show that endangered and invasive have a relationship to species that is unlike that of any other collocates and supports the hypothesis that these two collocates are becoming fixed to the word species.