Overcoming Challenges In Corpus Construction

This volume offers a critical examination of the construction of the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 (Spoken BNC2014) and points the way forward toward a more informed understanding of corpus linguistic methodology more broadly. The book begins by situating the creation of this second corpus, a compilation of new, publicly-accessible Spoken British English from the 2010s, within the context of the first, created in 1994, talking through the need to balance backward capability and optimal practice for today’s users. Chapters subsequently use the Spoken BNC2014 as a focal point around which to discuss the various considerations taken into account in corpus construction, including design, data collection, transcription, and annotation. The volume concludes by reflecting on the successes and limitations of the project, as well as the broader utility of the corpus in linguistic research, both in current examples and future possibilities. This exciting new contribution to the literature on linguistic methodology is a valuable resource for students and researchers in corpus linguistics, applied linguistics, and English language teaching.

This bilingual book provides a detailed overview of the project to construct a National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh (CorCenCC), addressing the conceptual and methodological challenges faced when developing language corpora for minoritised languages. A conceptual framework is presented for the user-driven design that underpinned the CorCenCC project, along with a detailed blueprint that can function as a scaffold for other researchers embarking on projects of this nature. This book will be of value to those working in language teaching, learning and assessment, language policy and planning, translation, corpus linguistics and language technology, and to anyone with an interest in Welsh and other minoritised languages. Mae'r llyfr dwyieithog hwn yn rhoi trosolwg manwl o'r prosiect i greu Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes (CorCenCC), ac yn mynd i'r afael â'r heriau cysyniadol a methodolegol a wynebir wrth ddatblygu corpora iaith ar gyfer ieithoedd lleiafrifoledig. Cyflwynir fframwaith cysyniadol ar gyfer y cynllun wedi'i yrru gan ddefnyddwyr sy'n greiddiol i brosiect CorCenCC, ynghyd â glasbrint manwl a all weithredu fel sgaffald i ymchwilwyr eraill sy'n dechrau ar brosiectau o'r fath. Bydd y llyfr hwn o werth i'r rhai sy'n gweithio ym meysydd addysgu, dysgu ac asesu ieithoedd, polisi iaith a chynllunio ieithyddol, cyfieithu, ieithyddiaeth gorpws a thechnoleg iaith, ac unrhyw un â diddordeb yn y Gymraeg ac ieithoedd lleiafrifoledig eraill.

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics 2e provides an updated overview of a dynamic and rapidly growing area with a widely applied methodology. Over a decade on from the first edition of the Handbook, this collection of 47 chapters from experts in key areas offers a comprehensive introduction to both the development and use of corpora as well as their ever-evolving applications to other areas, such as digital humanities, sociolinguistics, stylistics, translation studies, materials design, language teaching and teacher development, media discourse, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, second language acquisition and testing. The new edition updates all core chapters and includes new chapters on corpus linguistics and statistics, digital humanities, translation, phonetics and phonology, second language acquisition, social media and theoretical perspectives. Chapters provide annotated further reading lists and step-by-step guides as well as detailed overviews across a wide range of themes. The Handbook also includes a wealth of case studies that draw on some of the many new corpora and corpus tools that have emerged in the last decade. Organised across four themes, moving from the basic start-up topics such as corpus building and design to analysis, application and reflection, this second edition remains a crucial point of reference for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in applied linguistics.

This book aims to provide a micro-level, working model of a methodological approach and practical guidelines for building a corpus, informed by the work on the CorCenCC project (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). It focuses specifically on the development of detailed design frames for corpora across communicative modes (spoken, written and e-language), and the practical processes involved in the planning, collection, transcription, collation and (re)presentation of language data. The book is designed to be of significant value and relevance to those interested in critically engaging with corpus methodology. Although Welsh is the language under discussion, the processes and approaches discussed in the building of CorCenCC can be applied to a lesser or greater extent to other language contexts. This book provides a working model, and an account of how to build a corpus dataset from which step by step guidelines for creating other linguistic corpora in any language can be easily extrapolated. It will be of value to students and scholars of minority languages and corpus linguistics.

Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics: Building and Investigating an English as a Medium of Instruction Corpus offers a model for building a corpus of oral EMI seminars. It demonstrates how incorporating metaphor to the process of corpus building affords a more comprehensive description of the role of metaphor in discourse. EMI is the specific context outlined in this volume, and as such it will be of particular interest to researchers in this area, though the design and model can be easily generalised and applied to other corpora focusing on metaphor. Alejo-González argues for the need to build such a corpus given the scarcity of corpora being tagged for metaphor as well as the shortage of those dealing with the EMI phenomenon. This book will be of practical use and interest to those researchers of corpus linguistics or related areas looking to explore metaphor through their corpus studies.

Analysing Representation: A Corpus and Discourse Textbook guides readers through the process of researching how people and phenomena are represented in discourse and introduces them to key tools they can use from corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse analysis. This book takes a step-by-step approach to introducing each concept and includes exercises and further reading to help readers check their progress and prepare for independent research. It is unique in introducing readers to a range of experts representing the full range of work in this area. This book is aimed at final-year undergraduate, taught postgraduate and doctoral level students. It wil also be useful to scholars who are new to combining corpus and discourse methods in investigations of representation.

This volume presents a snapshot of the current state of the art of research in English corpus linguistics. It contains selected papers from the 40th ICAME conference in 2019 and features contributions from experts in synchronic, diachronic, and contrastive linguistics, as well as in sociolinguistics, phonetics, discourse analysis, and learner language. The volume showcases the particular strengths of research in the ICAME tradition. The papers in this volume offer new insights from the reanalysis of new data types, methodological refinements and advancements of quantitative analysis, and from taking new perspectives on ongoing debates in their respective fields.

The breadth and spread of corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) indicate its usefulness for exploring language use within a social context. However, its theoretical foundations, limitations, and its epistemological implications must be considered so that we can adjust our research designs accordingly. This Element focuses on important meta-level questions around epistemology, while also offering a compact guide to which corpus linguistic tools are available and how they can contribute to finding out more about discourse. This Element will appeal to researchers both new and experienced, both within the CADS community and beyond.