“All Work and No Play”: The Collocational Resonance of ‘Work’

Abstract Translating ‘work’ as ‘travail’ (noun) or ‘travailler’ (verb) may seem straightforward, but in reality the underlying collocational resonances are very different. This text looks at the concept of collocational resonance, a theory first mooted in 2005, as the sub-conscious meaning potentials of words within different collocational environments over time. The text takes a diachronic analysis of the two words through a series of legacy dictionaries before looking at Hank’s analysis in his work on the Oxford Dictionary of English and his Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs for English and comparing with contemporary dictionaries in French. A corpus study is then carried out using Sketch Engine for general language and a specialised corpus of Corporate Social Responsibility reports to analyse usage in international business relations. The analysis shows that the resonance has a strong effect on business reporting showing very different perceptions of the nature of ‘work’ between English and French.