Wendy Anderson

Corpus Linguistics in the UK: Resources for Sociolinguistic Research

Sociolinguistics has always relied on authentic data, and is increasingly finding value in the methods and textual resources developed by corpus linguists. This article begins by surveying current activity in corpus linguistics in the UK in terms of publications, conferences and networks, and then outlines the range of research currently ongoing, with a particular focus on corpus resources that are readily available and likely to be of use to sociolinguists. This includes general corpora, specialized corpora, and corpora of regional or historical varieties, as well as tools and initiatives for standardization and data-sharing, which aim to allow users to exploit corpora as fully as possible. The focus is largely on corpora of English, but corpora of other languages are also considered. The discussion treats corpora from the point of view of their availability and the provision of accompanying metadata, both issues central to effective sociolinguistic enquiry.

‘Absolutely, totally, filled to the brim with the Famous Grouse’

The Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS for short) has been available online since November 2004. It currently contains over 2.3 million words of texts in varieties of Broad Scots and Scottish English. Regular additions are made to the textual content of the corpus and the integrated search and analysis software is continually undergoing improvement. Over the next year, the corpus will grow to around 4 million words, 20% of which will comprise spoken language in the form of conversations and interviews.

Engaging Users of Scottish Online Language Resources

This chapter presents an overview of some of the recent language and linguistics projects which have been developed at the University of Glasgow, and focuses in particular on the ways in which these projects have engaged with a wide community of users at different stages of resource creation and completion. The main projects discussed are: (1) the Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech; (2) its sister resource, the Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing; (3) Scots Words and Place-names; and (4) Mapping Metaphor with the Historical Thesaurus. We draw out a number of themes which emerged in the creation and exploitation of these resources and others like them. These include: establishing and maintaining contact with users, supporting users in resource exploitation (including through metadata provision) and sustaining resources.

Faith, friendship and learning: intercultural communication in the Republic of Letters

Abstract This article uses the renowned antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) as a case study to examine the intellectual and religious culture of the early seventeenth century. In particular, using his extensive correspondence, it investigates the manner in which the exchange of letters could be used to reinforce the identity of one confession (Catholicism), while at the same time facilitating dialogue between individuals of different confessions, faiths and cultures. It also examines the extent to which material gifts and hospitality, offered regardless of the recipients faith, served to reinforce such relationships in the emerging Republic of Letters.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Corpus Linguistics in the UK: Resources for Sociolinguistic Research

Linguistics has drawn on the large quantities of authentic data contained in language corpora for several decades now. While debates continue regarding the nature and interpretation of such data, it is generally accepted that corpus methodologies offer a valuable perspective on language, one that complements the introspective and elicited data used in different sub-fields of linguistics. Increasingly, language corpora can be searched or downloaded over the Internet, and are now therefore very readily accessible. Many also include demographic or textual metadata that make them invaluable as data for sociolinguistics. While existing corpora may have some drawbacks (e.g. where the corpus design is not ideally suited to the study in hand, or available corpora do not have appropriate mark-up), they offer great savings in time and effort compared to creating a new corpus. Moreover, especially given the increasing availability of spoken texts in corpora, they constitute excellent resources for students of different levels, for teachers looking for a quick way to demonstrate a feature of language, and for researchers testing linguistic hypotheses.

The Phraseology of Administrative French

The French administrative language of the European Union is an emerging discourse: it is only fifty years old, and has its origins in the French administrative register of the middle of the twentieth century, but it is also a unique contact situation in which translation has always played a pivotal role. Using the methodology of corpus linguistics, and a specially compiled corpus of texts, covering a range of genres, this book describes the current discourse of EU French from the perspective of phraseology and collocational patterning, and in particular in comparison with its French national counterpart. Corpus methodology and an inclusive notion of phraseology, embracing typical formulae, locutions , and patterning around keywords, reveal subtleties and patterns which otherwise remain hidden, and point to a discourse of EU French whose novel context of production has led it to be phraseologically conservative, compared with the administrative French of France.