Doing Corpus Linguistics

Doing Corpus Linguistics offers a practical step-by-step introduction to corpus linguistics, making use of widely available corpora and of a register analysis-based theoretical framework to provide students in Applied Linguistics and TESOL with the understanding and skills necessary to meaningfully analyze corpora and carry out successful corpus-based research. Divided into three parts – Introduction to Doing Corpus Linguistics and Register Analysis; Searches in Available Corpora; and Building Your Own Corpus, Analyzing Your Quantitative Results, and Making Sense of Data – the book emphasizes hands-on experience with performing language analysis research and in interpreting findings in a meaningful and engaging way. Readers are given multiple opportunities to analyze and apply language data by completing smaller tasks and corpus projects using publicly available corpora. The book also takes readers through the process of building a specialized corpus designed to answer a specific research question and provides detailed information on completing a final research project that includes both a written paper and an oral presentation of their specific research projects. Doing Corpus Linguistics provides students in applied linguistics and TESOL with the opportunity to gain proficiency in the technical and interpretive aspects of corpus research and to encourage them to participate in the growing field of corpus linguistics.

Part I: Introduction to doing corpus linguistics and register analysis 1. Linguistics, corpus linguistics, and language variation 2. Register analysis Part II: Searches in available corpora 3. Searching a corpus 4. Projects using publically-available corpora Part III: Building your own corpus, analyzing your quantitative results, and making sense of data 5. Building your own corpus 6. Basic statistics 7. Statistical tests 8. Doing corpus linguistics 9. A way forward

William J. Crawford is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Northern Arizona University. Eniko Csomay is a Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Asian/Middle Eastern Languages and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Letters at San Diego State University.