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Article published In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 30:4 (2025) ► pp.433–455

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Hypothesis-testing in corpus-assisted discourse studies

A methodological exploration

ORCiD logo with link | University of Bologna
Published online: 9 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.24049.mar
Abstract
This paper chronicles a falsified hypothesis and reflects on the ways we ask questions in corpus-assisted discourse studies. It tests the expectation that representations of life before Covid, appearing in the news during the pandemic, would be fraught with nostalgic discourse. The analysis looks at discourses surrounding linguistic markers signalling time preceding the pandemic, in order to reveal which topics and moods dominated the discussion in the British press, using a large corpus of 2021 newspapers. In doing so, the paper raises questions about representativeness and cherry picking (i.e. selecting examples that suit an argument), and it explores issues of operationalisation. I demonstrate the value of falsification in corpus-assisted research through a reflection on the failure to get the expected results. The topic of nostalgia serves as a vehicle to explore ways in which pragmatic function could be studied using corpora, with pandemic-related news as the context for our experiment.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corpus and method
  • 3.Markers of antecedence and Covid-19
    • 3.1Pre-Covid and pre-pandemic
    • 3.2Before the pandemic and before Covid
    • 3.3After the pandemic and after Covid
    • 3.4Since the pandemic and since Covid
    • 3.5Wrap-up on a falsified hypothesis
    • 3.6The old normal and the new normal
  • 4.Discussion
  • References
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