4. CORPUS LINGUISTIC APPROACHES FOR DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

2002 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Dimensional Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Computer Tools ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Complement Clauses ◽  
Linguistic Approaches

This chapter provides an overview of approaches within corpus linguistics that address discourse-level phenomena. The shared characteristics of all corpus-based research are first reviewed. Then four major approaches are covered: (1) investigating characteristics associated with the use of a language feature, for example, analyzing the factors that affect the omission or retention of that in complement clauses; (2) examining the realizations of a particular function of language, such as describing all the constructions used in English to express stance; (3) characterizing a variety of language, for example, conducting a multi-dimensional analysis to investigate relationships among the registers used in different settings at universities; and (4) mapping the occurrences of a feature through entire texts, for example, tracing how writers refer to themselves and their audience as they construct authority in memos. For each approach, a variety of studies are reviewed to illustrate the diverse perspectives that corpus linguistics can bring to our understanding of discourse. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of some other foci in corpus linguistics and suggests that two areas require particular attention for the advancement of discourse-oriented corpus studies: the need for more computer tools and computer programmers for corpus linguistics, and the need for further studies about how best to represent language varieties in a corpus.

Arab women in news headlines during the Arab Spring: Image and perception in Germany

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 515-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Mustafa-Awad ◽  
Monika Kirner-Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
University Courses ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
News Headlines

This article reports on the first stage of a research project on German university students’ conceptualization of Arab women and to what extent it is affected by the latters’ representation in the Western press during the Arab Spring. We combined discourse analysis and corpus-linguistic approaches to investigate the relationship between lexical items used by the students to express their attitudes toward Arab women and those featuring in news headlines about them published in British, American, and German news media. Results show that the portrayal of Arab women in Western news headlines has a clear impact on German students’ opinions of them. The findings also show that our participants tend to be aware of this effect, which could be partly due to their familiarity with discourse analysis as students of linguistics. These results have implications for incorporating media education systematically in general university courses.

Using corpus linguistic techniques in (critical) discourse studies reduces but does not remove bias: Evidence from an Arabic corpus about refugees

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Haider
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Large Data ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Discourse Studies

Abstract Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) investigates the relationship between language, power, and society. Corpus linguistics (CL) is the study of language based on examples of real life language use. Over the last two decades, various scholars have combined some approaches and notions of CDA with the analytical framework of CL to examine the representation of several phenomena in relatively large texts. This study follows a corpus-assisted (critical) discourse analysis approach to investigate a 2.5 million word corpus of Arabic news articles by Jordan’s News Agency (PETRA). It demonstrates how some researchers following this approach may make some decisions, at some stages of their analysis, which are likely to affect their findings. These potential decisions may include selecting what statistical measures to use, what threshold to consider, what terms from the frequency, cluster, and collocation results to further investigate, which concordance lines to include in their study, and some others. In this study, I argue that some of these decisions can be made to suit the researchers’ preconceived assumptions and pre-existing hypotheses. The study concludes that using corpus linguistic techniques to discursively analyze large data reduces but not completely removes researchers’ bias.

scholarly journals Fundamentalist and tolerant islamic discourse in john updike’s terrorist and jonathan wright’s translation the televangelist: a corpus-based critical discourse analysis of semantic prosody

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahlam Ahmed Mohamed Othman
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Data Selection ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Semantic Prosody

Corpus-based critical discourse analysis studies have gained momentum in the last decade. Corpus Linguistics allowed critical discourse analysts to avoid bias in data selection and enlarge their samples for more representative findings. Critical Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, gave depth to corpus linguistic analysis by contextualizing it. The present study combines the two approaches to analyze the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords common to John Updike's Terrorist published in 2006 and Jonathan Wright’s translation The Televangelist published in 2016. The results of the corpus-based analysis show that while the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords is negative in Updike’s novel, it is highly positive in the translated novel. The conclusion is that Van Dijk’s proposition of the polarized representation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ holds for Updike’s fundamentalist Islamic discourse which negatively represents Islam and Muslims. However, Van Dijk’s proposition holds only partially for Wright's tolerant Islamic discourse which positively represents Islam and Muslims without misrepresenting the other.

scholarly journals Corpus Linguistics : A Closer Look on Meaning in Discourse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anfinda Mutiara Kasih
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Genealogical Analysis ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
Interesting Area

This article, analyze and found that corpus linguistic is an interesting area in the learning of meaning in discourse study. Poststucturalism and structuralism is the basic thinking of theories and methodolgy in this paper, which have unlocked new path of the interpretation and analysis of meanings in linguistics and in a series of related disciplines. Using qualitative analysis of DA seen as an existing socio-historical formation of language in particular ways. This study also share a contributions in corpus linguistics study based on Foucault’s historically-oriented “genealogical” analysis. The applications of theory of the concept of social sciences and linguistics focusing on discourse, this study suggest to use record of data and principled collection in order to underlying both the diachronic and synchronic aspect of discourse analysis.

scholarly journals The history of Community Interpreting studies in Japan

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Makiko Mizuno
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Cultural Issues ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Approaches ◽  
Law Professors

The study of CI in Japan began in the late 1980s, and its first researchers were law professors and attorneys who advocated human rights. They discussed the plight of non-Japanese-speaking defendants in legal settings. Subsequently, interpreters and theorists of interpretation discussed ethics, cultural issues, training and so on. Recently, however , a new wave of studies has emerged, with a greaterfocus on linguistic approaches such as discourse analysis, corpus studies etc. This paper willfirst briefly review the earlier CI research in general and thenfocus on legal interpreting, which is the most advanced and noteworthy area of CIstudies in Japan.

scholarly journals A WELCOME BREAKTHROUGH OR A CONNECTOR OF THE (IN)COMPATIBLE: LANGUAGE CORPORA AS A SEGMENT IN ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY CLASSES

2020 ◽  
Vol X (32) ◽  
pp. 261-277
Author(s):  
Željka Babić
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Process Outcomes ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Practical Research ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The University ◽  
Valuable Result

The necessity of studying the use of language corpora in foreign language teaching at the university level as a possible connector with contemporary scientific and research trends is intensified by the very need to bring the universities in the Republic of Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina closer to the regional and European scientific and research networks as well as to profile them within the aforementioned academic space. Efforts to set the corpus linguistic theoretical and practical posits as the basis of contemporary interdisciplinary linguistic research in the educational practices are aimed at emphasising the need to redesign some of the courses in the foreign language departments where students and teachers have expressed a desire and an interest in learning about this approach to the applied linguistic practice. The paper presents the results of a project aimed at familiarising students with the corpus studies and fundamentals of corpus linguistics, as well as with working independently on the selected corpora with the goal to achieve learning outcomes that could not have been previously included in teaching in the first cycle of academic studies. The paper primarily focuses on the challenges and experience gained through the introduction of the corpus studies within the English lexicology classes. Challenges faced by the teacher during the presentation of the corpus linguistic analysis, students’ disinterestedness for the linguistic theoretical and practical research, the lack of literature and practical tools, as well as the limited time and content action framework, have been overcome nevertheless, which is evident from the students’ positive feedback. The most valuable result is the actual raising awareness of students as far as the importance of their role as active participants in the realisation of teaching process outcomes is concerned - the process which is expected to possess not only an educational function but also to create a practitioner who will be able to respond to the challenges of the contemporary job market.

Corpus Research Applications in Second Language Teaching: A Look into Corpus-informed Materials Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Norwati Roslim ◽  
Muhammad Hakimi Tew Abdullah ◽  
Anealka Aziz ◽  
Vahid Nimehchisalem ◽  
Azhani Almuddin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Teaching Materials ◽  
Materials Development ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Reference Grammar ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Reference Corpus ◽  
Clear Guideline

Numerous corpus studies have suggested that teaching materials design could greatly benefit from the empirical information about language use provided by corpus linguistics. In spite of the awareness that corpus-based research can offer valuable insights for materials development, still relatively small number of studies report on the practical applications of corpus data for teaching materials development. There is no clear guideline or framework on how corpora and corpus studies could assist in developing teaching materials. Hence, this study focusses on one grammatical item which poses problems to Malaysian learners, that is, prepositions. The objectives are (i) to identify prepositions in the British National Corpus as a reference corpus and the descriptions offered by linguists and grammarians as a reference grammar, and (ii) to provide a framework to use reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research, as a resource for developing materials in the teaching of prepositions. In order to meet the objectives, content analysis was used as the methodology throughout this study. The findings showed that reference corpus, reference grammar and corpus-based research could be used systematically as guidance to develop corpus-informed materials. It is hoped that this contribution of knowledge could have an impact on second language learning-teaching.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Jordanian Newspapers

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Amal Riyadh Kitishat ◽  
Murad Al Kayed ◽  
Mohammad Al-Ajalein
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Syrian Refugees ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Statistical Tools ◽  
Syrian Refugee ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Syrian Refugee Crisis

The present study employs corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis to investigate the attitudes of Jordanian news towards the Syrian refugee crisis. The corpus of the research, which consists of 10140 articles (Word types: 103170 and Word tokens: 1956589), were taken from the Petra news agency between 2016 and 2018. Antconc Tools Version 3.4.4w was used to analyze the data. The study used corpus statistical tools of collocates and concordance. Collocates tool used to create a list of 200 collocates associated with the words: /lad3iʔ/ ‘refugee’, /lad3iʔi:n/ ‘refugees’, /su:ri:/ ‘Syrian’, and /su:ryi:n/ ‘Syrians’. These collocates were organized into two thematic categories: ‘services and resources’ and ‘Jordanians and Syrians’. The study used a concordance tool to unveil the attitudes of newspapers towards the Syrian refugee crisis. The findings of the study showed that Jordanians see Syrians as “brothers” and “guests”. However, Jordanian newspapers overstated the negative effect of Syrian refugees on the Jordanian economy, education, healthcare, etc. Jordanians were frustrated because Syrians compete with them on their resources and governmental services.

scholarly journals “El criado pesado”: La caracterización en la serie Águila Roja

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (22) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Luisa Chierichetti
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Colloquial Language ◽  
Television Audience

This article, based on the most recent studies on telecinematic dialogue, proposes a contribution to linguistic research on television series, one of the most influential popular cultural products in contemporary society. The work is based on the complete scripts of the successful Spanish series Águila Roja, aired on Radio Televisión Española between 2009 and 2016. Combining techniques of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, this study examines the characterization of Satur, one of the main characters of this fiction, through the co-construction of the meaning, as processed by the television audience. The results suggest that Satur’s discourse is characterized by the use of contemporary colloquial language and by incongruity; such features create humor and familiarity with the audience.

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