Article published In: Corpus Linguistics in Language and Sexuality Studies: Developments and Prospects
Edited by Heiko Motschenbacher
[Journal of Language and Sexuality 7:2] 2018
► pp. 263–279
Language, sexuality and corpus linguistics
Concerns and future directions
Published online: 27 August 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17018.bak
https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.17018.bak
Abstract
In this paper I discuss the potential that corpus linguistics approaches have to make in terms of enabling research on language and
sexuality. After giving some background relating to my involvement in the development of this approach and discussion of some of
the benefits of using corpus linguistics, I then outline some potential areas for concern, including: misconceptions of the field
as only quantitative, the danger of reading only concordance lines, over-reliance on the idea of removing bias, the tendency of
corpus approaches to focus on difference or easily searchable features and issues with copyright and ethics. I then discuss
potential future directions that the approach could take, focussing on work in non-western and non-English contexts, the
development of new tools such as Lancsbox, and the integration of multimodal analyses, using examples from my own work and
others.
Keywords: sexuality, corpus linguistics, methods, language
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Benefits
- 3.Misconceptions
- 4.Concerns
- 5.Future directions
- 6.Conclusion
References
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