Corpus Linguistics: Working with large-scale text data

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• quantitative and statistical measures in large-scale text analysis
• the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of corpus linguistics
• methods for designing, developing, and analysing large-scale text corpora

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• work independently towards specific research aims
• critically evaluate methodological choices in existing research
• communicate the development, design and findings of research in multiple modes and formats (e.g. oral; written; multimodal)

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• critically evaluate the uses, advantages, and disadvantages of using corpus linguistic methods
• justify methodological choices in data collection, curation and analysis
• apply corpus linguistic methods and techniques to primary data analysis

Subject Specific Practical Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• use general and specialist software for large-scale textual analysis
• apply basic approaches to visualising research findings from linguistic data
• design, develop, and pre-process a large-scale text corpus for analysis

Indicative content for the module will include:

• Text corpora, their forms, and functions
• Linguistic intuition vs evidence
• Statistical measures in corpus linguistics
• Using existing corpora online
• Building and curating corpora
• Annotating and pre-processing text data
• Using specialist and generic software for corpus analysis

Teaching and learning methods

Teaching and learning activities will take the form of active workshops, where students work in groups to develop experiential understanding of all aspects of corpus linguistics research. This will variably include – inter alia – working through research problems in active discussion (e.g. what data do we need to answer research question X?), analysing data and presenting findings (e.g. how has the use of X changed over time in the British National Corpus?), and/or critiquing existing research using corpus methods (e.g. in light of the aims of this study, what would you do differently and why?).

This module places explicit emphasis on the development of practical skills for working with data, using specialist software, and justifying choices made in the research process. A collaborative ethos is also embedded in the teaching and learning experience, which is also supported in asynchronous activities via the virtual learning environment.

Resources & Reading list

Textbooks

McEnery, T. & Hardie, A. (2012).  Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice. Cambridge University Press.

O’Keeffe, A. & McCarthy, M. (2010). The (2010).  The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge.

Barth, D. & Schnell, S. (2021). Understanding Corpus Linguistics. Routledge.

Stefanowitsch, A. (2020). Corpus Linguistics: A Guide to the Methodology. Language Science Press.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External