Developing corpus literacy: A perspective of Latgalian language and cultural studies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Corpus literacy has been described as the ability to use the technology of corpus linguistics to investigate language and enhance the language development of students. In recent decades, text and speech corpora for regional and lesser-used languages have increasingly been created, and they are considered an important resource of authentic texts for language and culture studies and learning. The Modern Latgalian Text Corpus (MuLa 2022) and the Modern Latgalian Speech Corpus (MuLaR) are, in this sense, available for researchers, learners and teachers of Latgalian. Researchers, teachers, and students as potential discoverers of language and culture often lack knowledge, skills and practice to work with language corpora. The purpose of this article is therefore to discuss the opportunities of using Latgalian language corpora in language and culture education. In this vein, we call for the development of corpus literacy of researchers and teachers as part of their professional development. In support of this call, we offer suggestions on how to facilitate students’ cultural awareness and foster their proficiency in the Latgalian language through language corpora. These recommendations aim to enrich both the research and teaching of language (socio-onomastics in a cultural context) and culture (folklore concept) with the help of corpus tools.