International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Volume 29, Issue 1, 2024

Abstract

This paper reports a corpus-based, cognitive semantic study on profiling the varied uses of the Chinese color term hēi 黑 “black” with regard to its metaphorical polysemy. We hypothesize that the semantic (dis)similarities among the eight metaphorical meanings of hēi “black” can be captured by clustering their contextual features, including collocational patterns, morphosyntactic and semantic properties, and discourse information. The Behavioral Profiles approach is adopted for the analyses with the annotations of 800 instances for 46 contextual features and a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis conducted on the annotated data. The results show that the eight metaphorical senses of hēi “black” fall into three clusters. This clustering can be explained by the conceptual bases pertaining to color perceptions and color changes, in line with Conceptual Metaphor Theory. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of the corpus-based Behavioral Profiles approach in exploring the underlying cognitive mechanisms of metaphorical extensions and meaning differentiations.

Abstract

Concordance analysis is widely recognised as one of the main techniques in a corpus linguist’s toolkit. However, despite a growing body of work critically exploring previously unquestioned mainstays of corpus methods (Mautner, 2015; Taylor & Marchi, 2018), this has not focused on concordance analysis specifically. In this paper, we aim to discuss issues that researchers may encounter when interpreting concordances. We begin in Step One with a cursory examination of 800 concordance lines in order to identify potential issues. In Step Two, we assess the distribution of those issues in a reduced sample of 200. As a result, we identify eight interpretability issues: noise in the corpus, non-standard syntax, unclear referring expressions, unclear quotation source attribution, technical terms/jargon, acronyms/initialisms, unspecific co-text, and lines unrelated to the research question. After reflecting on practical challenges, we discuss the epistemological implications of removing concordance lines uncritically and suggest ten recommendations for future work.

Abstract

In this study, we propose a new evaluation scheme to assess the strengths and limitations of collocation extraction measures and explore type-sensitive methods for extracting collocations. We introduced the pooling strategy widely used in Information Retrieval and automated the evaluation process using online dictionaries. Sixteen well-known metrics are evaluated based on their effectiveness and then distributional and linguistic compared. The results show that Group A methods (e.g. z-score, Dice, PMI) are more effective in extracting low-frequency collocations with relatively small extraction scales. In contrast, Group B methods (e.g. t-test, LMI, LLR) perform better at finding high-frequency collocations, most of which outperform Group A methods as the extraction scale increases. Moreover, Group A prefers NN collocations, while Group B identifies collocations with a wide range of syntactic structures. This study provides suggestions for studies to identify hybrid extraction methods as well as for language educators and dictionary compilers.

Abstract

This paper examines language used in five of the largest manosphere communities on Reddit (r/TheRedPill, r/braincels, r/MensRights, r/seduction, and r/MGTOW) to identify idiosyncratic language use within these communities. To do so, a novel methodology which combines key-key-word analysis with notions from set theory was used to identify and compare keywords between corpora and to find keywords that are used uniquely within – and thus are distinctive to – these five separate communities. The paper achieves the following: it (i) presents a novel method for identifying what we term ‘complement keywords’ (keywords that are not shared between multiple different corpora when compared against the same reference corpus), and (ii) explores idiosyncratic language use in five separate manosphere communities. The analysis first examines interdiscursive relationships between communities emerging from the complement keywords identified before discussing community-specific preoccupations emergent in the idiosyncratic language use found in these five communities.

This article reviews Teaching English with Corpora: A Resource Book

This article reviews Natural Language Processing for Corpus Linguistics