Universität Wien
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122223 SE Linguistics Seminar / BA Paper (2018W)

Corpus Linguistics: subject or methodology?

11.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 12 - Anglistik
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 18 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Thursday 11.10. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 18.10. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 25.10. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 08.11. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 15.11. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 22.11. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 29.11. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 06.12. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 13.12. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 10.01. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 17.01. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 24.01. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25
  • Thursday 31.01. 16:45 - 18:15 Class Room 3 ZID UniCampus Hof 7 Eingang 7.1 2H-O1-25

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

Although Corpus Linguistics has become the dominant approach or methodology among European anglicists undertaking linguistic research, its fundamental foundations are often taken for granted and not adequately understood. This first part of this seminar, based around Martin Weisser’s Practical Corpus Linguistics, takes nothing for granted and provides an explicit, detailed grounding of the approach which will come to underpin all adoptions of the approach in the future. At the centre of the approach is ‘the corpus’, but what really is a corpus? And how important is it? How can a large, electronically-stored corpus be exploited with a view to helping with the description of English? The great benefit of electronic text analysis is the production of frequency information. When linguistic data become numbers, what do the numbers tell us, and how might that insight be conferred back on the original data? (That said, we will not be turning this seminar into a statistics seminar!)
Our main goal will be to identify and review the main principles of a corpus linguistics approach.

The second part of the course will look at exemplary studies of a corpus linguistics approach being used in action, across different structural levels of English.

After Christmas, the third part will be over to you and your class presentations, intended to reveal your understanding of ‘the corpus’ and ‘a corpus linguistics approach’ as applied to data of your choice and a topic of your choice, each to be agreed in advance with the seminar tutor. And what will your answer to the seminar subtitle be: corpus linguistics as subject or methodology?

This course promises to be an intense, exciting, dynamic, precise, practical course – possibly one for serious and committed ‘scientists’ (any geeks or nerds around, too?), certainly not for idlers or daydreamers. It is undoubtedly a course for anyone interested in describing English in any of its periods, world territories, or genres/registers, and any of its structural features (especially lexical, morphological, syntactical, discoursal and pragmatic plus any combination thereof) as well as aspects of change or variation therein, and seeking a powerful methodology for doing so. If you love serendipity, this is certainly a course for you! Although not our primary goal, a spin-off will be the acquisition of an ability to undertake literary corpus stylistics. This seminar will be an ideal and much more thorough and advanced follow-on for students in my 122231-1 AR Linguistics Course (interactive) “Exploring English with online Corpora” last semester.

Assessment and permitted materials

This course will be taught in a computer lab, each student having their own PC, so that we can work as a group in unison on particular topics. It would certainly be an advantage if you had your own laptop as well, for downloading corpora and software.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Examination topics

Regular attendance, completion of regular exercises, and participation in class discussion (20%)
Class Presentation (20%)
Written Assignment (60%)

Reading list

The set book for the first part will be Martin Weisser, Practical Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction to Corpus-based Language Analysis (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016). A reader for the second part of the seminar will be prepared by the tutor. Further reading, topic by topic, is recommended by Weisser, and further suggestions will be made by the tutor. The completion and submission week by week of the many exercises by Weisser is an essential part of the seminar.

Association in the course directory

Studium: UF 344, BA 612
Code/Modul: UF 4.2.3-222, BA06.2
Lehrinhalt: 12-2222

Last modified: Mo 07.09.2020 15:33