Corpus-based analysis of the partial synonyms "oppress, repress, suppress" with regard to their contextual usage

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, printed single-sided, grade: 1,7, http://www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Seminar Collocations and meaning, 12 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The object of this analysis is the triplet of (ostensible) synonyms oppress, repress, and suppress, all of which express an action of subjection and therefore share at least a part of their meaning. Also, all three of them are (in most contexts) commonly translated into German as 'unterdrücken'. The question is to what extent they may be called synonymous.In order to answer this question, the British National Corpus was taken as an empirical basis.Compiled corpora offer the advantage of an approach which is time-saving and potentially free of oversights or slips, as decisions are open to be checked at any time again. Data and methods thus allow for an empirical and replicable analysis of meaning.