Paradoxically, doing corpus linguistics is both easier and harder than it has ever been before. On the one hand, it is easier because we have access to more existing corpora, more corpus analysis software tools, and more statistical methods than ever before. On the other hand, reliance on these existing corpora and corpus linguistic methods can potentially create layers of distance between the researcher and the language in a corpus, making it a challenge to do linguistics with a corpus. The goal of this Element is to explore ways for us to improve how we approach linguistic research questions with quantitative corpus data. We introduce and illustrate the major steps in the research process, including how to: select and evaluate corpora, establish linguistically-motivated research questions, observational units and variables, select linguistically interpretable variables, understand and evaluate existing corpus software tools, adopt minimally sufficient statistical methods, and qualitatively interpret quantitative findings.

Corpora are used widely in linguistics, but not always wisely. This book attempts to frame corpus linguistics systematically as a variant of the observational method. The first part introduces the reader to the general methodological discussions surrounding corpus data as well as the practice of doing corpus linguistics, including issues such as the scientific research cycle, research design, extraction of corpus data and statistical evaluation. The second part consists of a number of case studies from the main areas of corpus linguistics (lexical associations, morphology, grammar, text and metaphor), surveying the range of issues studied in corpus linguistics while at the same time showing how they fit into the methodology outlined in the first part.

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. Divided into three parts – Introduction to Doing Corpus Linguistics and Register Analysis; Searches in Available Corpora; and Building Your Own Corpus, Analyzing Your Quantitative Results, and Making Sense of Data – the book emphasizes hands-on experience with performing language analysis research and in interpreting findings in a meaningful and engaging way. Readers are given multiple opportunities to analyze and apply 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 provides detailed information on completing a final research project that includes both a written paper and an oral presentation of their 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.

An investigation into the way people use language in speech and writing, this volume introduces the corpus-based approach, which is based on analysis of large databases of real language examples stored on computer.

This volume provides an overview of four currently booming areas in the discipline of corpus linguistics. The first section is concerned with studies of the history and development of morphological and syntactic phenomena in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. The second section contains case studies investigating the functions and contexts of use of different morphological and syntactic forms in English, Spanish, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese. The third section contains studies in the field of genre and register from settings as diverse as health, call center, academic, and legal discourse. The final section features papers refining existing, and exploring new, corpus-linguistic methods: dispersions, text mining, corpus similarity, as well as the development of extraction patterns and the evaluation of tagging methods.

Perspectives on Corpus Linguistics is a collection of interviews with fourteen well-known researchers in the field of linguistics. Each interview consists of a set of ten questions: the first seven are common to all contributors while the last three are connected to the research experience of each guest. In the general questions, the invited scholars explore (sometimes controversial) topics such as the concept of representativeness, the role of intuition and the status of Corpus Linguistics. In the specific questions, they provide a thorough discussion of materials and methods in corpus research as well as theoretical and applied perspectives on the use of corpora in language studies. Whether experts or novices, the volume should be of interest to all those who want to learn about corpus linguistics and carry out research in this fascinating and growing area.

This textbook examines empirical linguistics from a theoretical linguist’s perspective. It provides both a theoretical discussion of what quantitative corpus linguistics entails and detailed, hands-on, step-by-step instructions to implement the techniques in the field. The statistical methodology and R-based coding from this book teach readers the basic and then more advanced skills to work with large data sets in their linguistics research and studies. Massive data sets are now more than ever the basis for work that ranges from usage-based linguistics to the far reaches of applied linguistics. This book presents much of the methodology in a corpus-based approach. However, the corpus-based methods in this book are also essential components of recent developments in sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, computational linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Material from the book will also be appealing to researchers in digital humanities and the many non-linguistic fields that use textual data analysis and text-based sensorimetrics. Chapters cover topics including corpus processing, frequencing data, and clustering methods. Case studies illustrate each chapter with accompanying data sets, R code, and exercises for use by readers. This book may be used in advanced undergraduate courses, graduate courses, and self-study.