LING306: Corpus-based English Language Studies

This course is available to visiting students (ERASMUS, JYA etc) as follows:

  • Full Year (October to June) - 8 semester credits or 16 ECTS credits
  • Michaelmas Only (October to December) - 4 semester credits or 8 ECTS credits

Please note that visiting students who are at Lancaster for the full academic year must register for the full course. The Michaelmas Only option is only available to Michaelmas Only visiting students.

Terms taught:

1 and 2

Aims and objectives:

In this module, you will gain an in-depth understanding of corpus linguistics, as applied to a range of contemporary issues in English Language Studies; this is outlined in detail below. In addition, you will learn to:

  • use current state-of-the-art tools for corpus annotation and corpus based analysis;
  • use corpus data to track changes in English temporally, geographically and socially;
  • apply, and understand the limitations of, a range of models of textual variation;
  • understand the social contexts of textual variation; 
  • design, implement and report on large-scale research tasks;
  • develop analyses incorporating large sets of diverse, abstract data. 

Course description:

This course focuses on the contemporary field of English Language Studies. In particular, we will be looking at how the methodology of Corpus Linguistics (a research specialism at Lancaster University for many years) has been used to shed light on a number of topics that  you may already be familiar with, including text-type, genre, and register variation; attitudes towards language use; and World Englishes.  The module will explore how corpus-based research is done, and survey the broad range of areas in EL Studies that corpus linguistics can be applied to. You will also get hands-on experience of investigating the English language with corpora.

The content of the course will vary over the year. At the start of the module, there will be lectures that introduce aspects of corpus linguistics. Later, we will move on to look at the idea of a "text-type", looking at how research has been done in this field, and what has been learned about the ways that English is used in different genres and for different purposes as a result. The third part of the course addresses issues of how social change over the last few decades may be related to change (or lack of change!) in the linguistic features of English: for example, how has the increasing informality of Western society affected English grammar? What social attitudes have been involved in attempts to regulate English and force our usage to change (or to not change)? Finally, the fourth part of the course will look at how English has changed as it has become a world language - the establishment of new national varieties, and the effect of globalisation and the rise of English as a Second Language in many countries.

While the issues we look at are very varied, we will use the methods of corpus linguistics as a way in to all these topics: every lecture will be followed by a hands-on seminar where you will investigate the issues yourself, using state-of-the-art research tools and a plethora of different sets of textual data.

In summary, the course will look at:

  • The basic theory and practice of the corpus linguistics method for research
  • Lexical, semantic and grammatical variation across text-types, and social / functional explanations for this variation
  • The effect of English's status as a world language on its speakers and the way in which it is spoken
  • The major processes of current linguistic change in English (genre shift over time, colloquialisation, Americanisation, etc).

TOPICS WILL INCLUDE:

Term 1

BLOCK ONE - CORPUS LINGUISTICS METHODOLOGY  

  • Intro to corpus analysis techniques
  • An overview of English corpora:  issues in corpus construction
  • Corpus annotation - what is it good for?
  • The linguistics of the lexicon - collocation and semantic prosody   

BLOCK TWO - TEXT-TYPES AND VARIATION IN ENGLISH  

  • Text-type variation:  the Biber approach
  • Text-types in focus (1):  the language of comics
  • Text-types in focus (2):  the language of fictional style
  • Text-types in focus (3): hybrid text-types of the internet
  • Beyond parts-of-speech:  parsing and the grammar of speech and writing
  • Restricted language:  text-type and social function

Term 2  

BLOCK THREE - CHANGE AND STASIS IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH   

  • Informalisation:  the changing shape of English speech
  • Recent change in written English
  • Language regulation
  • Swearing
  • Studying new discourses:  the role of corpus evidence    

BLOCK FOUR - WORLD ENGLISHES  

  • Globalisation
  • American English
  • Australian English
  • L2 Englishes

Recommended reading:

Aijmer, K. and Altenburg, B (1991) English Corpus Linguistics. London: Longman.

Baker, P. (2006) Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Continuum.

Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D. Conrad, S. & Reppen, R. (1998) Corpus Linguistics: Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press.

Biber, D, Johansson, S. Leech, G. Conrad, S & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.

Hunston, S (2002) Corpora in applied linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kachru, B., Kachru, Y. & Nelson, C. (eds.) (2006). The Handbook of World Englishes. Oxford: Blackwell.

Kennedy, G. (1998) An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics. London: Longman.

McEnery, T. & Wilson, A. (1996) Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.

Meyer, C. (2002) English Corpus Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.

Sampson, G and McCarthy, D (eds.) (2004) Corpus linguistics: readings in a widening discipline. London and New York: Continuum International.

Tottie, G. (2002). An Introduction to American English. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.

Restrictions:

Final-year students only

Compulsory for:

English Language (single and combined), English Language and Sociolinguistics and English Language in the Media majors must take this course in their final year (except English Language & Literature and English Language with Creative Writing majors, for whom this course is optional)

English Language and Linguistics combined majors must take EITHER this course OR LING305 in their final year

Prerequisites:

At least one of the following at Part I: Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, English Language

Assessment:

Two assignments (20% Term 1, 20% Term 2) plus exam (60%)

 

For further information contact Andrew Hardie.