International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Current Issue

Abstract

This paper chronicles a falsified hypothesis and reflects on the ways we ask questions in corpus-assisted discourse studies. It tests the expectation that representations of life before Covid, appearing in the news during the pandemic, would be fraught with nostalgic discourse. The analysis looks at discourses surrounding linguistic markers signalling time preceding the pandemic, in order to reveal which topics and moods dominated the discussion in the British press, using a large corpus of 2021 newspapers. In doing so, the paper raises questions about representativeness and cherry picking (i.e. selecting examples that suit an argument), and it explores issues of operationalisation. I demonstrate the value of falsification in corpus-assisted research through a reflection on the failure to get the expected results. The topic of nostalgia serves as a vehicle to explore ways in which pragmatic function could be studied using corpora, with pandemic-related news as the context for our experiment.

Abstract

This study examines 10 new combining forms (CFs) in American English from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, based on data from the Corpus of Historical American English, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, and the News on the Web, as well as seven dictionaries. Through the lens of corpus and dictionary data alongside the construction­alisation approach, it is found that all the CFs are partially schematised and partly inherit their meanings from their source words. The constructional changes and constructionalisation of the CFs are accompanied by varying degrees of schematic extensions. The distinctions between their schemas are reflected in the semantic categories of the preceding elements, the differences in the appearance dates of these categories, and the word classes to which the preceding elements belong. This study further confirms that the formation of contemporary CFs may involve analogy and other word-formation schemas in addition to compounding and blending.

Abstract

Subgenres of the novel have traditionally been defined first and foremost in terms of their content. Yet, in addition to revisiting themes, settings, plot patterns and character constellations, popular fiction — i.e. genres such as fantasy, science fiction and romance novels — in particular also tends to feature recurring linguistic patterns. These can be revealed by a corpus-driven approach that identifies statistically significant recurring lexico-syntactic constructions, which give rise to phraseological motifs. This article exemplifies what corpus-driven approaches can contribute to genre theory by drawing upon corpora of English and French romance fiction. A corpus-driven approach makes it possible to identify characteristics of a genre-specific ‘language of intimacy’ as well as stylistic differences between English and French romance novels.

Abstract

Sign language corpora are generally under-represented in the field of corpus linguistics. Fortunately, in the last twenty years there has been a steady rise in their creation, following technological advancements in video capture, transcription, and coding. This article presents one of the first systematic reviews of the current state of sign language corpora around the world, with a special focus on monolingual corpora whose main aim is to conduct sociolinguistic investigations. Furthermore, it discusses the challenges faced by sign language linguists in creating visual corpora that are representative and authentic, machine-readable and searchable, and openly available. Forty-nine sign language corpora are described, serving as a fundamental starting point for assessing the field and its continual development.

This article reviews Investigating a corpus of historical oral testimonies: The linguistic construction of certainty

This article reviews Corpus applications in language teaching and research: The case of data-driven learning of German