Semantic Prosody and ESL/EFL Vocabulary Pedagogy (Perspectives‪)‬

Introduction The notion of semantic prosody arising from corpus linguistics and reflecting the realization that lexical items are habitually associated with particular connotations (Louw, 1993; Siepmann, 2005; Sinclair, 1991; Stubbs, 1995) has attracted considerable attention since its advent in the early 1990s. With the help of computerized corpora data, much research has examined this linguistic phenomenon from various perspectives. Along with this line of research, researchers also have recognized the importance and necessity of semantic prosody for ESL/EFL (English as a second/foreign language) vocabulary learning and teaching (Hoey, 2000; Partington, 1998; Zethsen, 2006). The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to introduce the notion of semantic prosody and provide an overview of corpus-based studies of semantic prosody; and (b) to help develop ESL/EFL educators' awareness that semantic prosody needs to be integrated into vocabulary pedagogy.