Doing Corpus Linguistics by Csomay, Eniko; Crawford, William J.;

Short description:

Doing Corpus Linguistics offers a practical step-by-step introduction to corpus linguistics, making use of widely available corpora and a register analysis-based theoretical framework to provide applied linguistics and TESOL students with the understanding and skills to analyze corpora and carry out successful corpus-based research.

Long description:

Doing Corpus Linguistics offers a practical step-by-step introduction to corpus linguistics, making use of widely available corpora and of a register analysis-based theoretical framework to provide students in applied linguistics and TESOL with the understanding and skills necessary to meaningfully analyze corpora and carry out successful corpus-based research.

This second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated with fresh exercises, examples, and references, as well as an extensive list of English corpora around the world. It also provides more clarity around the approach used in the book, contains new sections on how to identify patterns in texts, and now covers Cohen’s statistical method.

This practical and applied text emphasizes hands-on experience with performing language analysis research and interpreting findings in a meaningful and engaging way. Readers are given multiple opportunities to analyze language data by completing smaller tasks and corpus projects using publicly available corpora. The book also takes readers through the process of building a specialized corpus designed to answer a specific research question and offers detailed information on completing a final research project that includes both a written paper and an oral presentation of the reader’s specific research projects.

Doing Corpus Linguistics provides students in applied linguistics and TESOL with the opportunity to gain proficiency in the technical and interpretive aspects of corpus research and to encourage them to participate in the growing field of corpus linguistics.

Table of Contents:

List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments

PART I
Introduction to Doing Corpus Linguistics and Register Analysis

1 Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, and Language Variation
1.1 Language and Rules/Systems
1.2 What Is Corpus Linguistics?
1.3 Register, Genre, and Style – Is There a Difference?
1.4 Outline of the Book

2 Register (Functional) Approach to Language Analysis
2.1 Why Register?
2.2 What Is a Register (Functional) Analysis?
2.3 Describing Situational Characteristics and Identifying Variables
2.4 Providing a Functional Interpretation
2.5 Units of Analysis and Register Studies
2.6 End of Chapter Exercises

PART II
Searches in Available Corpora

3 Searching a Corpus
3.1 Words

3.2 Collocates
3.3 N-Grams
3.4 POS Tags

4 Projects Using Publicly Available Corpora
4.1 Word- and Phrase-Based Projects
4.2 Grammar-Based Projects

PART III
Building Your Own Corpus, Analyzing Your Quantitative Results, and Making Sense of Data

5 Building Your Own Corpus
5.1 Do-It-Yourself Corpora
5.2 Deciding on a Corpus Project
5.3 Building a Corpus
5.4 Software Programs and Your Corpus

6 Basic Statistics
6.1 Why Do Statistical Analyses?
6.2 Basic Terms, Concepts, and Assumptions
6.3 How to Go About Getting the Statistical Results
6.4 End of Chapter Exercises

7 Statistical Tests (ANOVAs, Chi-square, Pearson Correlation)
7.1 Difference Tests
7.2 Relationship Tests
7.3 How to Go About Getting the Statistical Results
7.4 Effect Size
7.5 End of Chapter Exercises

8 Doing Corpus Linguistics
8.1 Doing a Register Analysis of Your Project
8.2 Situational Analysis
8.3 Linguistic Analysis
8.4 Functional Interpretation
8.5 Reporting on Your Project

9 A Way Forward

Available Corpora

Index