Corpus linguistics: issues, methods and tools

elective courses

Remote learning

The course provides an overview of issues related to corpus linguistics. Its scope includes the presentation of the most important research directions in this field and a discussion of corpus research methods. Basic descriptive and inferential statistics used in this type of research will also be presented. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn about the possibilities of using many generally available corpus resources in Polish and English as well as tools for corpus data analysis, including in particular the SketchEngine platform.

Language corpora are increasingly used in research in linguistics, but also in other social sciences and literary studies. They provide access to vast resources of authentic and natural, written and oral linguistic production, and thus facilitate a more accurate and reliable analysis of language at its many levels: phonetic and phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical, phraseological, semantic, pragmatic and at the discourse level. Thanks to corpora, new methods of linguistic data analysis were created, emphasizing the concept of frequency and the phenomenon of language patterns. Corpus linguistics also proposes a new approach to language description based on probability rather than rules.

The course provides an overview of issues related to corpus linguistics. Its scope includes the presentation of the most important research directions in this field and a discussion of corpus research methods. Basic descriptive and inferential statistics used in this type of research will also be presented. Participants will also have the opportunity to learn about the possibilities of using many generally available corpus resources in Polish and English as well as tools for corpus data analysis, including in particular the SketchEngine platform.

The course will include presentations of the selected issues supplemented with workshop tasks. The main emphasis will be on the presentation and overview of the field rather than the technical skills of using the software. Classes will be conducted in Polish, but the examples of corpus data and analyses will come from various languages, mainly English

Textbooks in Polish:

Chlebda, W. (Ed.). (2013). Na tropach korpusów: W poszukiwaniu optymalnych zbiorów tekstów. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Opolskiego.

Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, B. (Ed.). (2005). Podstawy językoznawstwa korpusowego. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego.

Textbooks in English:

McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2011). Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Additional reading:

Selected papers in Polish and English which serve as examples of corpus-based studies in different areas of linguistics

Knowledge:

The student will know and understand

P8S_WG.1 scientific output, including theoretical foundations and general and selected specific issues - relevant to corpus linguistics

P8S_WG.2 main developmental trends in corpus linguistics

P8S_WG.3 the most popular corpus resources in Polish and English and the methodology of corpus research

Skills:

The student will be able to

P8S_UW.1 use knowledge of corpus linguistics to creatively identify, formulate and innovatively solve complex problems or research tasks, in particular

- define the purpose and object of research based on corpus resources,

- apply corpus methods, techniques and tools,

- draw conclusions on the basis of corpus-based research results

P8S_UK.1 communicate on specialized topics related to corpus linguistics to the extent allowing for active participation in the international scientific community

P8S_UK.4 participate in scientific discourse related to corpus-based research

Social competences:

The student will be ready to

P8S_KK.3 recognize the importance of knowledge in corpus linguistics in solving cognitive and practical problems and apply corpus research methods to own research purposes

1. class attendance (three absences permitted) with the camera on

2. participation in class discussions of selected academic papers

3. completing a short corpus-based project on a topic selected by the student and approved by the instructor