Show Up and Turn Up in American English and British English: A Multi-Method Analysis Using COCA and BNC

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between the terms show up and turn up in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). In the COCA, the terms exhibit a 25% similarity in ranking, while in the BNC, this similarity is 14.28%. In terms of genre-specific usage, show up and turn up are most distant in the fiction genre in the COCA, while in the BNC, they are furthest apart in the spoken genre. The closest similarity occurs in the TV/movie genre for the COCA and in the magazine genre for the BNC. Frequency analysis reveals significant national variation. In American English, show up shows greater fluctuation from the mean, while turn up displays more consistent frequency. In contrast, British English usage demonstrates a more stable frequency for show up, while turn up exhibits more erratic variation. The standard deviations for show up in the COCA (1,134) and the BNC (18) further highlight this disparity, as turn up frequencies in both corpora show opposite trends. Statistically, the COCA reveals a strong positive correlation (r = 0.7375) between the two terms, suggesting a significant relationship in American English. However, the BNC’s correlation coefficient (r = 0.0669) indicates no meaningful connection between the terms in British English. This comparison underscores notable national variations in the usage and relationship between show up and turn up across the two varieties of English.