Text Discourse And Corpora

Presenting theoretical positions in corpus linguistics, Text, Discourse, and Corpora provides an essential overview for advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and academic readers.

This edited collection brings together contemporary research that uses corpus linguistics to carry out discourse analysis. The book takes an inclusive view of the meaning of discourse, covering different text-types or modes of language, including discourse as both social practice and as ideology or representation.

This book brings together a number of empirical studies that use corpora to study discourse patterns in speech and writing. It explores new trends in the area of text and discourse characterized by the alliance between text linguistics and areas such as corpus linguistics, genre analysis, literary stylistics and cross-linguistic studies. The contributions to the volume show how established corpora can be used to ask a number of new questions about the interface between speech and writing, the relation between grammar and discourse, academic discourse, cohesive markers, stylistic devices such as metaphor, deixis and non-verbal communication. The corpora used for text-analysis can also be tailor-made for the study of particular genres such as journal article abstracts, lectures, e-mailing list messages, headlines and titles. A recent development is to bring in contrastive data from bilingual corpora to show what is language-specific in the organization of the text.

How can you carry out discourse analysis using corpus linguistics? What research questions should I ask? Which methods should you use and when? What is a collocational network or a key cluster? Introducing the major techniques, methods and tools for corpus-assisted analysis of discourse, this book answers these questions and more, showing readers how to best use corpora in their analyses of discourse. Using carefully tailored case studies, each chapter is devoted to a central technique, including frequency, concordancing and keywords, going step by step through the process of applying different analytical procedures. Introducing a wide range of different corpora, from holiday brochures to political debates, the book considers the key debates and latest advances in the field. Fully revised and updated, this new edition includes: - A new chapter on how to conduct research projects in corpus-based discourse analysis - Completely rewritten chapters on collocation and advanced techniques, using a corpus of jihadist propaganda texts and covering topics such as social media and visual analysis - Coverage of major tools, including CQPweb, AntConc, Sketch Engine and #LancsBox - Discussion of newer techniques including the derivation of lockwords and the comparison of multiple data sets for diachronic analysis With exercises, discussion questions and suggested further readings in each chapter, this book is an excellent guide to using corpus linguistics techniques to carry out discourse analysis.

This is corpus linguistics with a text linguistic focus. The volume concerns lexical inequality, the fact that some words and phrases share the quality of being key---and thereby reflect or promote important themes in some textual contexts, while others do not. The patterning of words which differ in their centrality to text meaning is of increasing interest to corpus linguistics. At the same time software resources are yielding increasingly more detailed ways of identifying and studying the linkages between key words and phrases in text databases. This volume brings together work from some of the leading researchers in this field. It presents thirteen studies organized in three sections, the first containing a series of studies exploring the nature of keyness itself, then a set of five studies looking at keyness in specific discourse contexts, and then three studies with an educational focus. "Edited by two central figures in the development of keyword analysis, and with contributions from leading specialists in the field, this unique collection brings together a wide range of insights into how keyword analysis can contribute both to linguistic and cultural analysis and to language education. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in these areas"---Christopher Tribble, King's College, London "This is a fascinating volume addressing both methodological and theoretical questions in the study of keywords. It pushes forward the exploration of the nature of keyness and the interpretation of keywords in their textual contexts. An inspiring contribution to a central area of corpus linguistics." ---Michaela Mahlberg, University of Nottingham

John Sinclair is one of the major figures in applied linguistics and his work is essential study for students. This accessible book collects in one volume Sinclair's key papers on written discourse structure, lexis patterns, phraseology, corpus analysis, lexicography and linguistic theory from the 1990s. All the papers have been edited and updated for this book. The clear and accessible introduction helps students to navigate his key themes and arguments, making the volume an ideal companion for those coming to Sinclair's more recent writings for the first time.

Corpus linguistics has now come of age and Corpus Approaches to Discourse equips students with the means to question, defend and refine the methodology. Looking at corpus linguistics in discourse research from a critical perspective, this volume is a call for greater reflexivity in the field. The chapters, each written by leading authorities, contain an overview of an emerging area and a case-study, presenting practical advice alongside theoretical reflection. Carefully structured with an introduction by the editors and a conclusion by leading researcher, Paul Baker, this is key reading for advanced students and researchers of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis.

Reveals the depth and complexity of the language used in SMS text communication, and how it exploits various linguistic resources to create identities.