Corpus Linguistics

Language corpora - large collections of texts held on computer - are rapidly becoming an indispensable tool in the investigation of how languages work. The main aim of this course is to enable you to develop a knowledge of, and be able to discuss critically, the following issues: issues involved in the compilation of a corpus; the information to be gained from concordance lines and collocational information, and how this can be interpreted; the implications for theories of language of observations made from a corpus; contrasting approaches to corpora, and the theoretical assumptions behind each one; current applications of corpora, mainly language teaching and/or translation, but also stylistics, ideology and forensic linguistics; possible future directions in corpus linguistics. By the end of the course, students will have obtained considerable practice in accessing the Bank of English, or a similar corpus, and in interpreting information from a corpus