7. “You didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor”: Using COCA to explore the difference between synonyms

Gabrieli Marques

Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Tess Coffey

Undergraduate student at Montclair State University

Julia Souza

Undergraduate student at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

INTRODUCTION

If we look at a dictionary of synonyms, such as the thesaurus.com “cheater” and “traitor” appear as synonyms of each other. Nevertheless, they have distinct meanings, as the 2021 Olivia Rodrigo song ‘Traitor’ shows. We use a line from this song as the title of our chapter, because it illustrates how these two words can have distinct meaning. Since the release of Rodrigo’s song, several students have asked us about the difference between ‘cheater’ and ‘traitor’, thus, in this chapter, we will examine the difference between these two words in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). An activity will be provided at the end of the article to assess students’ understanding of their differences and usages in English with reference to pop culture contexts.

STEP 1: CORPUS ANALYSIS

We encourage teachers to use the Word feature in COCA to examine the difference between both words with students.

Cheater

Similar to a dictionary, the Word feature in COCA retrieves a definition for any searched word. The definition provided for the word “cheater” says that this word refers to ‘someone who makes you believe something that is not true’. In addition the COCA Word feature shows the same results as the Chart feature does. The chart shows that the word “cheater” is used in various registers, but it appears more frequently in TV and Movies, and Blogs. In total, “cheater” appears in a total of 1,159 texts.

Figure 1 – Graph of the frequency of cheater as reported by COCA

Examples of the word “cheater” in various categories/sections of COCA can be found below:

Cheater: context in TV

1. Charlotte couldn’t sleep at all that night. Neither could I. All I could think about was that I was a cheater. I cheated and lied in fifth grade, and I was still doing it. (Sex and the City, 2000).
2. “You think Cally killed herself because of you, don’t you? She thought we were having an affair. But we weren’t. No, that’s right. I’m not a cheater, I’m a Cylon.” (Battlestar Galactica, 2008)
3. “I just couldn’t, you know, which is karma for this awful thing I did to my husband, who trusted me. My past is ugly. It’s messy and unflattering, and… So if you don’t think you can trust me anymore or you think I’m a horrible person because I’m a cheater…? I won’t cry? If you want to go, you should… go. But do it now because I won’t get any sleep, wondering if you’re gon na do it in the morning or in a week or… I’m, uh… I’m processing, so just give me a minute here. Um… First of all, thank you for telling me the truth. I know that was hard. Second, you are not a cheater. You are a person who once cheated, and there’s a difference. The third thing I want to say is that, uh… I’m sorry. You’re sorry?” (Private Practice, 2012)

Cheater: context on Blogs

1. “We’ve been married for almost 8 years. He is a serial cheater but his big affair was exposed just days before our 3rd wedding anniversary. I tried for years to ” get over ” his affair but the truth is, his affair changed me. And that’s when I knew I had to leave.” (Talk About Marriage, 2012)
2. “A cheater is a liar, a deceiver, often a thief stealing marital assets to fund deceitful behaviors and self-centered and selfish. So think about that and realize that there are better people out there.” (Talk About Marriage, 2012)
3. “You are a liar, a cheater, and an opportunist. You are NOT a good man, because YOU DID NOTHING when you should have revealed the truth about the stolen election.” (The Ulsterman Report, 2012)

Using the Collocate feature in COCA, the words that appear close to cheater can be retrieved in a search and observed. These adjacent words can help students understand the context in which “cheater” is used. “Cheater” is very often used with the noun “liar” and with the noun “husband” (which, in this context, refers to a husband who cheats on his wife). In addition, the word can also refer to someone who does something illegal to win something. This is made evident by the words that appear following “cheater” like “sport”, “win”, “alleged”, and “suspected”.

Figure 2 – The first five nouns and adjectives that are most used near to cheater.

Figure 3 – The first five verbs and adverbs that are most used near to cheater.

Traitor

According to the Word feature in COCA, a “traitor” is a person who says one thing and does another. The Chart feature of COCA shows that “traitor” appears in a total of 3,843 texts, of which 1,371 of them are in the context of Television and Movies. That is, both words appear mainly in TV Series and Movies.

Figure 4 – Graph of the frequency of traitor as reported by COCA

Traitor: context in TV

1. “You knew Cersei was lying and let me believe otherwise, or you didn’t know at all. Which makes you either a traitor or a fool. I was a fool. Not for the first time. Cersei still sits on the throne. If you can’t help me take it back, I’ll find another Hand who can.” (Game of Thrones, 2019).
2. “Napoleon was a traitor to his country and my father was a traitor to his country too[…]” (Les Misérables, 2019).

Traitor: context in Movies

1. “Kennedy fired him in’ 61 because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Moved back to the Pentagon and called Kennedy a traitor.” (JFK, 1991)
2. “How dare you return to the palace? But I am your confidant. Confidant? Hah! You are a traitor. Get out! You think you can banish the great Rasputin? By the unholy powers vested in me, I banish you with a curse.[…]” (Anastasia, 1997)

Using the Collocate feature in COCA, we can also see what words often occur with “traitor”. Below are the results for this search:

Figure 5 – Chart of the first five nouns and five adjectives that are usually placed next to “traitor”.

Figure 6 – Chart of the first five verbs and the first five adverbs that are usually placed next to “traitor”.

After researching the two terms in COCA, the teacher can point out to students that “cheater” has a lower frequency compared to traitor in American English, but they are both very present in Television/Movie texts. Lastly, with the collocate feature, for “cheater”, the adverbs displayed were “always” and “once” due to the famous expression “once a cheater, always a cheater” said on the TV show Friends (1994). We can also see that the collocates of “traitor” are mostly related to politics. The noun occurs several times next to words like “country”, “communist” and “spy”. Our final consideration is that in our analysis, the only word in common between “cheater” and “traitor” was “liar”.

Our suggestion is that the teacher follows the same steps as we did in this description with the students, letting them compare the collocates of ‘cheater’ and ‘traitor’ before completing with them the following exercises.

STEP 2: PRACTICE ACTIVITIES

Activity 1 – This activity is a Quiz made on Wordwall containing eight sentences taken from the TV Corpus and The Movie Corpus. It will be given the context of those sentences, and the goal of the exercise is to analyze if the word missing is cheater or traitor. You can find the Wordwall link here: https://sites.google.com/view/cheater-vs-traitor-quizz/in%C3%ADcio as an alternative, the teacher can also print the concordance lines below in a handout.

1. In season 2 of Glee (2009), after Quinn kisses Finn while dating Sam, she says to Finn, “You realize this is making me a _____, the thing that hurt you so badly that it made you break up with me. And Rachel.”
2. In Full House (1987), Stephanie accuses her older sister of “stealing” her crush: “What about what you did to me, you backstabbing, boyfriend-stealing _____?”
3. In season 1 of Stranger Things (2016), Lucas suspects of Eleven and accuses her: “She’s been acting weirder than normal […] Because she’s trying to sabotage our mission. Because she’s a ____!”
4. In This Is Us (2016), Beth is given a speech about someone who passed away: “William was a lot of things. He was a father, an artist, a ____ at every card game. God, he was my friend.”
5. In the TV show Friends (1994), Rachel says to Ross, “once a ____, always a ____.”
6. Because Terry is on an extreme diet, he says to Gina, “You can’t tempt me, ____, not when I got this big, juicy cantaloupe wedge to keep my company.” – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2014)
7. In Freaky Friday (2003), Julie says, “Miss Brown, she’s copying my test!”, calling Anna a ____.
8. In Toy Story 2 (1999), there is a dialogue between two Buzz Lightyears: “No back talk! I have a laser, and I will use it.” “You mean the laser that’s a lightbulb?” “Has your mind been melded? You could’ve killed me, space ranger. Or should I say ‘____’?”

Activity 2 – Fill the blank spaces in the following sentences lines (taken from the COCA concordance lines) with one of the three answers below:

( A ) Traitor(s);

( B ) Betrayer(s);

( C ) Cheater(s);

1. You’re just like him, Ms. Wardwell. Keeping secrets from me, manipulating me […] We can add Ms. Wardwell to the list of liars, _______, and spies in my life.
2. I suggest the author of this article and the commenters who are so virulently convinced that American Liberal Jews are _______ to Israel actually go out and meet a few.
3. You don’t get to speak for my group, cyborg. You’re the biggest _______ of all! – Knightwolf cried, pointing a black-gloved finger. – You’re a chd of the Vanguard, the first true superhumans. You were born with the finest genetic advantages their science had engineered! And yet you chose to corrupt the perfection of your Vanguardian body by filling it with bionic crutches…
4. Is he a _______ and liar? […] I guess I just need to tell him I know and ask him what “we” are… are we exclusive or free to date?
5. It is incredibly easy to withhold sympathy from Villaraigosa. He is a terrible mayor, a serial _______ on his wife who was literally in bed with the media, has helped run the L.A. economy into the ground and is a reliable party hack
6. The Seahawks displayed unsportsmanlike behavior throughout the whole game. The guy that was fighting with Jennings should be fined and penalized. […] The other team should have had some dignity and not accepted that last touchdown. Thanks NFL for teaching my 10 year old son that _______ win!
7. […] Man, that’s got to really hurt getting your ideological ass stomped like that. Oh, and thanks for helping Obama win, _______ . The last thing the country needed was Obama. You feeling proud?
8. Music is a _______ of secrets; it is more treacherous even than dreams, which at least have the virtue of being private.

Activity 3 –  ​​The words in bold are words that usually collocate with ‘cheater’ or ‘traitor’ in COCA. Using the collocates, can you fill in the blank with either “traitor” or “cheater?

1. On the way, a _____ turns on him and Jon is shot in the head, and has a serious prognosis
2. Much like Bush, most of these Generals are _____ to this country and to the men and women in uniform.
3. I was convinced that Vera didn’t know I was a serial _____ because she had never given me a reason to think otherwise.
4. Once a cheater, always a _____, right?
5.  The verdict, coming at a time of widened public fears about Communism, fed a growing hysteria about spies and _____.
6. My daddy told me that _____ never prosper, but I regularly see evidence that those with sufficient dedication do OK for themselves.
7. But, they won’t even ban a _____ who’s stolen hundreds of dollars?
8. All the members of the Ottoman dynasty were declared _____ of the nation and exiled in a rush.

Coffey, T., Marques, G., & Souza, J. (2023). “You didn’t cheat, but you’re still a traitor”: Using COCA to explore the difference between synonyms. In L. Goulart & I. Veloso (Eds). Corpora in English Language Teaching: Classroom Activities for Teachers New to Corpus Linguistics. Open Educational Resource. Montclair State University.