Synonymy in Context: Analyzing the Usage of Coming and Upcoming in American English
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Abstract
This corpus-based study investigates the differences in the usage between the near-synonymous adjectives coming and upcoming, both meaning “happening soon.” Drawing on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the research compares their frequency, genre distribution, and typical noun collocations to reveal distinctions in formality, collocational patterns, and semantic prosody. The findings indicate that coming is more prevalent in informal contexts such as spoken English and fiction, whereas upcoming tends to occur in more formal, written genres like newspapers and weblogs. Although both adjectives share collocates related to time periods and events, coming frequently co-occurs with nouns denoting natural disasters and negative events, suggesting a negative connotation, while upcoming is more strongly associated with organized events and entertainment. These distinctions highlight the limited substitutability of near-synonyms and emphasize the importance of collocation and context in vocabulary instruction. Pedagogical implications involve incorporating corpus-based tools into language instruction to foster learners’ awareness of subtle usage differences, with particular attention to the characteristic collocations and connotative meanings linked to each synonym.
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References
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