International Journal of Corpus Linguistics - Online First

The use of very large social media datasets in corpus linguistics has obvious benefits. Such data represent a novel source of evidence when compared with structured digital text corpora. However, there is a clear need to assess critically how the effective reuse of data can be handled, how findings can be reproduced, and how results can be generalized. A relevant question concerns the presentation of data to ensure reproducibility and replicability. This article surveys the state-of-the-art of descriptions of data collection and methodological transparency in 30 studies that used Twitter/X as their data. The empirical section investigates how easy it would be to reproduce a study based on these descriptions. While we concentrate on evidence from one social media application, the discussion continues to a presentation of concrete steps that might be used to improve data management related to the reuse, discovery, and evaluation of social media data in general.

Grammatical complexity has traditionally been associated with the structural elaboration of texts, and, more recently, with the functionally-motivated use of syntactic patterns exhibiting internal variability along the written-to-spoken register continuum (Biber et al., 2022). Adopting a register-functional approach, the present corpus-based study investigates grammatical complexity in Anglophone film dialogue, focusing on the occurrence of finite and non-finite dependent clauses. Grammatical complexity in film language is assessed in relation to situational characteristics of onscreen dialogue and compared to previous findings on grammatical complexity in spontaneous conversation, with the overarching aim of contributing to corpus-based descriptions of language input relevant for second language acquisition. Results point to a functionally-driven distribution of clausal patterns, balancing narration, realism, emotionality, and economy of expression in the portrayed dialogue. They also show that while film language closely approximates the complexity of spontaneous spoken language, it exhibits distinctive features linked to register-specific communicative functions and medium-related constraints.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors (compulsions) that are thought to help mitigate obsessions (APA, 2013). One issue that has gained attention in popular discourse is the use of OCD as an adjective (e.g. I’m so OCD), which is said to trivialize the disorder (NAMI, 2015). We collected a corpus of social media comments including the phrase degree adverb + OCD. The corpus was tagged with a semantic tagger (Rayson et al., 2004) to investigate the domains around the phrase. About a quarter of the 1,575 comments used the phrase to critique the popular usage of OCD as an adjective, suggesting that it is frequently negatively evaluated. The remaining genuine uses support the idea that the phrase is often used in non-medical contexts, including to express individual preferences for organization and cleanliness. We argue that this usage is negatively evaluated because it demedicalizes OCD and portrays it with a light-hearted tone.

This paper presents a quantitative corpus analysis of three syntactically mobile contrast markers in different registers of French: contrastive adverbs, emphatic pronouns, and emphatic pronouns introduced by quant à “as for”. We show that the preferred syntactic position of the three markers is influenced by their form and discourse function, but that the degree of this influence varies across registers. In informal written and spoken French, form and discourse function have a greater impact on syntactic position than in formal written French, where the standard word order subject + verb + other clause elements is favored, and non-neutral (inter)subjective peripheries are avoided. Hence, our analysis provides evidence for the idea that informal written and spoken French are (becoming) more discourse-configurational.