A Corpora-Based Analysis of the Collocations of May as Well and Might as Well

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to compare the collocations of May as well and Might as well and to provide an in-depth analysis of the frequency of each expression in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca), the British National Corpus (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), and the Corpus of Historical American English (3 July. 2021. Online. https://corpus.byu.edu/coha). With respect to the COCA (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/coca), it is interesting to note that May as well go is the most preferred by Americans, followed by May as well get, and May as well give, in descending order. It is also interesting to point out that Might as well get is the most preferred by Americans, followed by Might as well go, and Might as well make, in descending order. With respect to the BNC (3 July. 2021. Online https://corpus.byu.edu/bnc), it is noteworthy that the collocation May as well go is the most preferred by the British, followed by May as well tell (May as well get), May as well make, and May as well use, in descending order. It is also worth noting that Might as well go is the most preferable among the British, followed by Might as well get, Might as well make (Might as well take), and Might as well give, in descending order. Finally, this paper argues that Might as well is preferred over May as well by both Americans and the British and that the former is slightly different from May as well in its use.