Cover not available

In:Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes
Edited by Alexandra U. Esimaje, Ulrike Gut and Bassey E. Antia
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 88] 2019
► pp. 7–36

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 1.1
What is corpus linguistics?

 | Benson Idahosa University
 | University of Birmingham
Published online: 13 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.88.02esi
Abstract
Corpus Linguistics has made great strides in language research and teaching but it is only fairly known, and thus its potentials lost, to many African academics and linguistic communities. The aim of this chapter is to introduce corpus linguistics to those African researchers and others who are not yet familiar with, or have limited knowledge of, the field and who are interested in using this method for linguistic analysis. The chapter introduces the concept of corpus linguistics (Section 1), explains some of the key terms and concepts used in it (Section 2), and considers the types of corpora, as well as the scope and applications of corpus linguistics (Section 3).
Article outline
  • 1.The concept of corpus linguistics
    • Corpus: A definition
    • Corpus linguistics: History and significance
      • Languages
      • Size
      • Specialisation
      • Individuals and software
      • Statistics
    • Corpus linguistics: Historical debates
  • 2.Key concepts in corpus linguistics
    • Corpus design
    • Content
    • Size
    • Balance
    • Representativeness
    • Corpus output
    • Corpus annotation
    • Tagging
    • Parsing
    • Error tagging
    • Semantic tagging
  • 3.Types and applications of corpora
    • Types of corpora
      • General corpus
      • Specialised corpus
      • Comparable and parallel corpora
      • Learner corpus
      • Diachronic corpus
    • Available corpora and software
    • The scope and applications of corpus linguistics
    • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (70)
References
Adolphs, Svenja & Carter, Ronald. 2013. Spoken Corpus Linguistics: From Monomodal to Multimodal. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aijmer, Karin & Altenberg, Bengt (eds). 1991. English Corpus Linguistics. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aston, Guy, Bernardini, Silvia & Stewart, Dominic. 2004. Introduction: Ten years of TALC. In Corpora and Language Learners [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 17], Guy Aston, Silvia Bernadini & Dominic Stewart (eds), 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Atkins, Sarah, Roberts, Celia, Hawthorne, Kamila & Greenhaigh, Trisha. 2016. Simulated consultations: A sociolinguistic perspective. BMC Medical Education 16(16): 1–9. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Paul. 2004. Querying keywords: Questions of difference, frequency and sense in keywords analysis. Journal of English Linguistics 32(4): 346–359. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1993. Representativeness in corpus design. Literary and Linguistic Computing 8(4): 243–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. University Language: A Corpus-based Study of Spoken and Written Registers [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 23]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Broughton, Geoffrey, Brumfit, Christopher, Flavell, Roger, Hill, Peter & Pincas, Anita. 2003. Teaching English as a Foreign Language, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carter, Elisabeth. 2009. Policing talk: An investigation into the interaction of the officer and the suspect in the police interview. International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 16(1): 165–168. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charles, Maggie. 2017. Do-it-yourself corpora in the EAP classroom: Views of students and teachers. In Faces of English Education: Students, Teachers, and Pedagogy, Lillian Wong & Kenneth Hyland (eds), 107–123. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2004. Student use of large, annotated corpora to analyze syntactic variation. In Corpora and Language Learners [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 17], Guy Aston, Silvia Bernadini & Dominic Stewart (eds), 259–269. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durrant, Philip. 2014. Discipline and level specificity in university students’ written vocabulary. Applied Linguistics 35(3): 328–356. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Esimaje, Alexandra. 2012. A Lexical Study of the Sermons of Pastor Chris Oyakhilome. PhD dissertation, University of Maiduguri.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016. The Corpus of Nigeria and Cameroon English Learner Language (Conacell).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Francis, W. Nelson. 1982. Problems of assembling and computerizing large corpora. In Computer Corpora in English Language Research, Stig Johansson (ed.). Bergen: Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Francis, W. Nelson & Kučera, Henry. 1964. The Brown Corpus. Providence RD: Brown University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gabrielatos, Costas & Baker, Paul. 2008. Fleeing, sneaking, flooding: A corpus analysis of discursive constructions of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press, 1996- 2005. Journal of English Linguistics 36(5): 5–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garside, Roger & Smith, Nicholas. 1997. A hybrid grammatical tagger: CLAWS4. In Corpus Annotation: Linguistic Information from Computer Text Corpora, Roger Garside, Geoffrey Leech & Anthony McEnery (eds), 102–121. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garside, Roger, Leech, Geoffrey & McEnery, Anthony (eds). 1997. Corpus Annotation: Linguistic Information from Computer Text Corpora. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Granger, Sylviane (ed.). 1998. Learner English on Computer. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Granger, Sylviane & Tribble, Christopher. 1998. Learner corpus data in the classroom: Form-focused instruction and data-driven learning. In Learner English on Computer, Sylviane Granger (ed.), 199–209. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. 2006. Exploring variability within and between corpora: Some methodological considerations. Corpora 1(2): 109–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. Useful statistics for corpus linguistics. In A Mosaic of Corpus Linguistics: Selected Approaches, Aquilino Sanchez & Moises Almela (eds), 269–291. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael. 1985/1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, 1st/2nd edn. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hardie, Andrew. 2017. Exploratory analysis of word frequencies across corpus texts: Towards a critical contrast of approaches. Paper given at Corpus Linguistics 17 conference, University of Birmingham, July 2017.
Hoey, Michael. 2005. Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 2002. Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan & Francis, Gill. 1999. Pattern Grammar: A Corpus-driven Approach to the Lexical Grammar of English [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 4]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, Kenneth. 2012. Disciplinary Identities: Individuality and Community in Academic Discourse. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnston, Trevor & Schembri, Adam. 2006. Issues in the creation of a digital archive of a signed language. In Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork, Linda Barwick & Nicholas Thieberger (eds), 7–16. Sydney: University of Sydney Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kennedy, Graeme. 1998. An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koteyko, Nelya. 2007. A diachronic approach to meaning: English loanwords in Russian opposition discourse. Corpora 2(1): 65–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kruger, Alet, Wallmach, Kim & Munday, Jeremy (eds). 2011. Corpus-based Translation Studies: Research and Applications. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1997. Introducing corpus annotation. In Corpus Annotation: Linguistic Information from Computer Text Corpora, Roger Garside, Geoffrey Leech & Anthony McEnery (eds), 1–19. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leivada, Evelina, Papadopoulou, Elena & Pavlou, Natalia. 2017. Functionally equivalent variants in a non-standard variety and their implications for Universal Grammar: A spontaneous speech corpus. Frontiers of Psychology 8: 1260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leńko-Szymańska, Agnieszka. 2004. Demonstratives as anaphora markers in advanced learners English. In Corpora and Language Learners [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 17], Guy Aston, Silvia Bernardini & Dominic Stewart (eds), 89–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela. 2005. English General Nouns: A Corpus Theoretical Approach [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 20]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Corpus Stylistics and Dickens’s Fiction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela, Smith, Catherine & Preston, Simon. 2013. Phrases in literary contexts: Patterns and distributions of suspensions in Dickens’s novels. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18(1): 35–56. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mahlberg, Michaela, Stockwell, Peter, de Joode, Johan, Smith, Catherine & O’Donnell, Matthew. 2016. CLiC Dickens: Novel uses of concordances for the integration of corpus stylistics and cognitive poetics. Corpora 11(3): 433–463. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mauranen, Anna. 2012. Exploring ELF: Academic English Shaped by Non-native Speakers. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony & Hardie, Andrew. 2012. Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony, Xiao, Richard & Tono, Yukio. 2006. Corpus-based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McEnery, Tony & Wilson, Andrew. 1996. Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meyer, Charles. 2002. English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Murison-Bowie, Simon. 1996. Linguistic corpora and language teaching. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 16: 182–199. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nelson, Michael. 2000. A Corpus Based Study of Business English and Business English Teaching Materials. PhD dissertation, University of Manchester.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partington, Alan, Duguid, Alison & Taylor, Charlotte. 2013. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 55]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rayson, Paul. 2008. From key words to key semantic domains. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 13(4): 519–549. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Michael. 1996. Wordsmith Tools. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Scott, Michael & Tribble, Christopher. 2006. Textual Patterns: Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 22]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2004. Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John et al. 1987. Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. London: HarperCollins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sripicharn, Passapong. 2004. Examining native speakers’ and learners’ investigation of the same concordance data and its implications for classroom concordancing with EFL learners. In Corpora and Language Learners [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 17], Guy Aston, Silvia Bernadini & Dominic Stewart (eds), 233–245. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Starcke, Bettina. 2006. The phraseology of Jane Austen’s Persuasion: Phraseological units as carriers of meaning. ICAME Journal 30: 87–102.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Su, Hang. 2015. Judgement and Adjective Complementation Patterns in Biographical Discourse: A Corpus Study. PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, Charlotte. 2008. What is Corpus Linguistics? What the data says. ICAME Journal 32: 179–200.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Teubert, Wolfgang. 2005. My version of corpus linguistics. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10(1): 1–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoffrey & Hunston, Susan (eds). 2006. System and Corpus: Exploring Connections. London: Equinox.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Paul, Hunston, Susan, Murakami, Akira & Vajn, Dominik. 2017. Multi-dimensional analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22(2): 153–186. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena. 2001. Corpus Linguistics at Work [Studies in Corpus Linguistics 6]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Truscott, John. 1996. The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning 46(2): 327–369. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Westin, Ingrid & Geisler, Christer. 2002. A multidimensional study of diachronic variation in British newspaper editorials. ICAME Journal 26: 133–152.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Botha, Werner, Bertus van Rooy & Susan Coetzee‐van Rooy
2021. South African Englishes: A contemporary bibliography. World Englishes 40:1 ► pp. 136 ff. DOI logo
Hundt, Marianne
2021. On models and modelling. World Englishes 40:3 ► pp. 298 ff. DOI logo
Lima-Lopes, Rodrigo Esteves, Karen Tank Mercuri & Maristella Gabardo
2021. Avaliatividade em comentários sobre postagens dedicadas à verificação de notícias falsas nas eleições presidenciais de 2018. Cadernos de Linguística 1:4 ► pp. 01 ff. DOI logo
Esimaje, Alexandra U.
2019. The purpose, design and use of the Corpus of Nigerian and Cameroonian English Learner Language (Conacell). In Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 88], ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue