Corpus Based Studies On Language Varieties

This book is a collection of papers dealing with the study of language varieties from a corpus linguistics perspective. They focus on the analysis of language in different communicative and professional settings, meeting current lines of research, such as teaching and learning, translation, domain-specific grammatical and textual phenomena, linguistic variation and gender.

Corpus Linguistics and the Analysis of Sociolinguistic Change demonstrates how particular styles and varieties of language are chosen and represented in the media, to reveal changing language ideologies and sociolinguistic change. Drawing on a corpus of ads broadcast on an Irish radio station between 1977 and 2017, this book shows how corpus linguistic tools can be creatively employed, in conjunction with frameworks and concepts such as audience and referee design and indexicality, and examines how accents and dialects (vernacular and prestige) are exploited in the ads across the decades. In addition, this book: illustrates the key principles of corpus design for sociolinguistics studies and offers a framework for future diachronic corpus studies of advertising on social media; provides a model for analysing corpus data at both inter-varietal and intra-varietal levels in terms of both accent and dialectal features and explores the efficacy of using particular corpus linguistic tools; identifies key factors which can be used by researchers as evidence for sociolinguistic change and links these factors to relevant theories and frameworks; demonstrates how corpus tools can be used to compare advertising discourse with naturally occurring discourse, with particular reference to markers of (pseudo) intimate discourse. Building on the growing body of research relating to variation and change in Irish English, this book is key reading for researchers and advanced students undertaking research within the areas of sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics.

Studies in Corpus-Based Sociolinguistics illustrates how sociolinguistic approaches and linguistic distributions from corpora can be effectively combined to produce meaningful studies of language use and language variation. Three major parts comprise the volume focusing on: (1) Corpora and the Study of Languages and Dialects, in particular, varieties of global Englishes; (2) Corpora and Social Demographics; and (3) Corpora and Register Characteristics. The 14 peer-reviewed, new, and original chapters explore language variation related to regional dialectology, gender, sexuality, age, race, ‘nation,’ workplace discourse, diachronic change, and social media and web registers. Invited contributors made use of systematically-designed general and specialized corpora, sound research questions, methodologies (e.g., keyword analysis, multi-dimensional analysis, clusters, and collocations), and logical/credible interpretive techniques. Studies in Corpus-Based Sociolinguistics is an important resource for researchers and graduate students in the fields of sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and applied linguistics.

Many large-scale investigations of linguistic variation are unfeasible using traditional approaches. This volume is a collection of papers that illustrate the ways in which linguistic variation can be explored through corpus-based investigation.

This volume provides a comprehensive overview of the research carried out over the past thirty years in the vast field of legal discourse. The focus is on how such research has been influenced and shaped by developments in corpus linguistics and register analysis, and by the emergence from the mid 1990s of historical pragmatics as a branch of pragmatics concerned with the scrutiny of historical texts in their context of writing. The five chapters in Part I (together with the introductory chapter) offer a wide spectrum of the latest approaches to the synchronic analysis of cross-genre and cross-linguistic variation in legal discourse. Part II addresses diachronic variation, illustrating how a diversity of methods, such as multi-dimensional analysis, move analysis, collocation analysis, and Darwinian models of language evolution can uncover new understandings of diachronic linguistic phenomena.

This new edition of TUFS Studies in Linguistics, we aim to showcase the various linguistics research conducted at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. In this first volume, we report on the international symposium hosted by the Global Center of Excellence Program "Corpus-based Linguistics and Language Education (CbLLE)" throughout 2008.

Variability is characteristic of any living language. This volume approaches the ‘life cycle’ of linguistic variability in English using data sources that range from electronic corpora to the internet. In the spirit of the 1968 Weinreich, Labov and Herzog classic, the fifteen contributions divide into three sections, each highlighting different stages in the dynamics of English across time and space. They show, first, how increase in variability can be initiated by processes that give rise to new patterns of discourse, which can ultimately crystallize into new grammatical elements. The next phase is the spread of linguistic features and patterns of discourse, both new and well established, through the social and regional varieties of English. The final phase in this ebb and flow of linguistic variability consists of processes promoting some variable features over others across registers and regional and social varieties, thus resulting in reduced variation and increased linguistic homogeneity.

Covering the major approaches to the use of corpus data, this work gathers together influential readings from leading names in the discipline, including Biber, Widdowson, Sinclair, Carter and McCarthy.