Corpus Linguistics Research Articles

State-of-the-Art Review of the Corpus Linguistics Field From the Beginning Until the Development of ChatGPT

The present paper highlights the recent state of and development in the corpus linguistics (CL) field. Although several reviews have been conducted on CL, these reviews have focused on specific areas, such as education, or did not provide an overall clear overview of the future implications of the field (Baker et al., 2008; Biber & Reppen, 2020; Biber et al., 1998; G. N. Leech, 1991; Mcenery et al., 2019; McEnery & Hardie, 2012). The author begins this paper with providing an overview that can guide new researchers in this field as well as postgraduates who require a general historical and thematic map of CL. The general overview discusses the publications of scholars who have participated in this field as well as the central tools that have been applied in CL. For specific details regarding the development of the field, the author analysed 217 articles from the 3 highest-impact factor journals according to the Web of Science over the last four years (2019–2022). The findings reveal a rapid development of the field in terms of practical and methodological perspectives, specifically regarding the investigations of language uses in different contexts. Thus, this paper indicates a significantly strong correlation between CL and technological development, such as natural language processing (NLP), and how this approach could fill the research gap of utilising CL in other areas of linguistics.

New opportunities for discourse studies

Abstract This paper proposes a methodological framework that integrates poststructuralist Discourse Theory (DT), Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) and Corpus Linguistics (CL). While previous research has discussed potential compatibility between combinations of these approaches, there have been few attempts to bring them all together into a cohesive research programme. Fostering dialogue between diverse methodological perspectives can facilitate multi-level analysis to capture the complex dynamics of sociopolitical issues. In this vein, the article presents the methodological tree, an analogy used to illustrate how these traditions may come together to complement one another. This foundation lays the groundwork for practical application in discursive analysis, with a flexible analytical structure proposed and examples provided to illustrate its implementation. It is hoped that the article can stimulate further discussion around how DT, CDS and CL can be brought together to harness their strengths.

Perceptions of the Agency and Responsibility of the NHS COVID-19 App on Twitter: Critical Discourse Analysis.

Since September 2020, the National Health Service (NHS) COVID-19 contact-tracing app has been used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom. Since its launch, this app has been a part of the discussion regarding the perceived social agency of decision-making algorithms. On the social media website Twitter, a plethora of views about the app have been found but only analyzed for sentiment and topic trajectories thus far, leaving the perceived social agency of the app underexplored. We aimed to examine the discussion of social agency in social media public discourse regarding algorithm-operated decisions, particularly when the artificial intelligence agency responsible for specific information systems is not openly disclosed in an example such as the COVID-19 contact-tracing app. To do this, we analyzed the presentation of the NHS COVID-19 App on Twitter, focusing on the portrayal of social agency and the impact of its deployment on society. We also aimed to discover what the presentation of social agents communicates about the perceived responsibility of the app. Using corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, underpinned by social actor representation, we used the link between grammatical and social agency and analyzed a corpus of 118,316 tweets from September 2020 to July 2021 to see whether the app was portrayed as a social actor. We found that active presentations of the app-seen mainly through personalization and agency metaphor-dominated the discourse. The app was presented as a social actor in 96% of the cases considered and grew in proportion to passive presentations over time. These active presentations showed the app to be a social actor in 5 main ways: informing, instructing, providing permission, disrupting, and functioning. We found a small number of occasions on which the app was presented passively through backgrounding and exclusion. Twitter users presented the NHS COVID-19 App as an active social actor with a clear sense of social agency. The study also revealed that Twitter users perceived the app as responsible for their welfare, particularly when it provided instructions or permission, and this perception remained consistent throughout the discourse, particularly during significant events. Overall, this study contributes to understanding how social agency is discussed in social media discourse related to algorithmic-operated decisions This research offers valuable insights into public perceptions of decision-making digital contact-tracing health care technologies and their perceptions on the web, which, even in a postpandemic world, may shed light on how the public might respond to forthcoming interventions.

GENDER REPRESENTATION OF PERCY JACKSON & THE LIGHTNING THIEF IN ENGLISH AND INDONESIAN

Abstract: Children’s literature plays an essential role in shaping readers’ characters through the influence of the ideology implied in it. Children will learn and implement these ideologies as the target readers for their future lives. This study aims to find out the gender representation in one of the children’s literatures, Percy Jackson the Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan. By applying corpus linguistics, the number of characters and their representations are examined and compared between the English version as the source text and its Indonesian translation. The results show that although male characters dominate the novel in terms of number, a deeper analysis of the collocation of body parts with verbs reveals that there was a shift in gender representation between the two versions of the novel that have different cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, it was found that the author depicted some characters with less fixation on their sex; male characters are less masculine, and female characters are more masculine than the prevailing gender stereotypes in society. In the translated version, the translator rectified the stereotypes by depicting the characters’ gender according to sex. These findings reflect broader cultural ideologies about gender for the millions of readers who enjoy this book. In addition, these findings imply the significance of parents' and educators' awareness and critical thinking regarding the selection of reading materials for children.Keywords: children literature; corpus linguistic; critical discourse analysis; gender representation; translation

Destination image/branding of Sicily and the Mafia phenomenon: a corpus-based analysis of keywords in English guidebooks

ABSTRACT Through an analysis of tourism discourse – more specifically, of the English language as a specialised and promotional discourse in the tourism field – this study examines critically the manner in which three English language guidebooks to the island of Sicily address the Mafia phenomenon. Whether viewed positively (Sicily as a ‘film tourism’ destination) or as a potential risk factor, the Mafia is arguably an aspect taken into account by tourists when visiting the island. Hence, the study seeks to investigate how and to what extent the tourism discourse, when applied in guidebooks to describe the Mafia, may modify, positively or otherwise, the potential tourists’ destination image of Sicily. A combined methodological approach, both qualitative and quantitative, is adopted. Specifically, the Corpus Linguistics approach is privileged to extract quantitative data; a qualitative analysis is derived from the percentage data interpreted from a linguistic perspective. The results of the research suggest that, whilst the guidebooks may influence potential tourists’ destination image, that influence is largely positive. In addition, the research contributes to a further reflection on tourism discourse used for promotional communication to increase the tourist impact and potentially influence destination image formation and consumer purchase behaviour.

Studi Diakronis Pronomina Persona Pertama aku dan kami dalam Bahasa Jawa

In Old Javanese, the personal pronouns aku and kami can appear simultaneously in a speech and refer to the same person. However, in Modern Javanese first-person pronouns of kami are no longer used in daily conversation; while aku was also limited in the ngoko register. This research focuses on changing the grammatical aspects of the personal pronouns aku and kami diachronically using a grammaticalization and corpus linguistics approach (Mair, 2004; 2012). The data sources used in this research come from literary texts in the form of prose and poetry from the 10th century to the 21st century. In this research, Antconc is used as a data processing tool by utilizing the concordance and frequency row features. Based on frequency, the use of the personal pronouns aku and kami competed with each other from the 10th century to the 18th century. The personal pronouns aku and kami also undergo grammatical development. Bound forms of personal pronouns aku and kami can be attached to nouns, verbs, and prepositions. However, in their development, the bound form can only be attached to nouns. The ability of the bound forms of the pronouns aku and kami to attach to verbs and prepositions is discontinued.

Information Potential of a Corpus of Scientific Texts

The article considers publicly available corpus of texts presented in the internet, characterises and considers the potential of corpus linguistics for analysing the development of scientific trends, discourse and changes in the field of terminology. A dataset based on a corpus of texts of scientific articles in a petroleum transport trade journal and the Google Books Corpus is presented. The dataset allows us to examine changes in term usage frequencies from 1940 to 2019.The results of analyses of term usage frequencies are presented, and a comparison is made between changes in the technology industry and the development of key vocabulary. The results show that studies made using data from corpuses of scientific and technical texts have good potential for understanding trends in technological development and the dynamics of change in industry and terminology.

“ChatGPT says no”: agency, trust, and blame in Twitter discourses after the launch of ChatGPT

AbstractChatGPT, a chatbot using the GPT-n series large language model, has surged in popularity by providing conversation, assistance, and entertainment. This has raised questions about its agency and resulting implications on trust and blame, particularly when concerning its portrayal on social media platforms like Twitter. Understanding trust and blame is crucial for gauging public perception, reliance on, and adoption of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT. To explore ChatGPT’s perceived status as an algorithmic social actor and uncover implications for trust and blame through agency and transitivity, we examined 88,058 tweets about ChatGPT, published in a ‘hype period’ between November 2022 and March 2023, using Corpus Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis, underpinned by Social Actor Representation. Notably, ChatGPT was presented in tweets as a social actor on 87% of occasions, using personalisation and agency metaphor to emphasise its role in content creation, information dissemination, and influence. However, a dynamic presentation, oscillating between a creative social actor and an information source, reflected users’ uncertainty regarding its capabilities and, thus, blame attribution occurred. On 13% of occasions, ChatGPT was presented passively through backgrounding and exclusion. Here, the emphasis on ChatGPT’s role in informing and influencing underscores interactors’ reliance on it for information, bearing implications for information dissemination and trust in AI-generated content. Therefore, this study contributes to understanding the perceived social agency of decision-making algorithms and their implications on trust and blame, valuable to AI developers and policymakers and relevant in comprehending and dealing with power dynamics in today’s age of AI.

The development of Japanese-English and English-Japanese parallel corpus, including search system and its utilisation

Parallel corpora play a central role in translation studies, contrastive linguistics, bilingual lexicography and language teaching/learning, facilitating the comparison of linguistic features across languages. But it is challenging to construct a parallel corpus and there are few of them. Also, they can quickly become outdated and unusable. Professor Yasunori Nishina, Faculty of Global Communication, Kobe Gakuin University, Japan, is an expert in applied translation, corpus linguistics and applied linguistics working to develop a website for searching Japanese-English and English-Japanese parallel corpora. He is revitalising an existing unusable, unsearchable corpus with assistance from Lago NLP. He has a keen focus on design as he wants to ensure diversity of genres and translation directions and, in a world first, is incorporating the ability to analyse parallel corpora. The tool that Nishina and Lago NLP are developing with support from the JSPS KAKENHI grant number 20K00692 (and 23K00599 from 2023) is called Parallel Link. Nishina will also collaborate with a researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, where experts who developed the Japanese corpus online search tool are based. The University has established a collaborative relationship with the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (NINJAL), which is the centre for Japanese language research, and has carried out joint projects of the Oxford NINJAL Corpus of Old Japanese (ONCOJ). Nishina has completed the development of version 1.20 of Parallel Link and intends to develop it to version 2.0 in the coming years.

Алгоритмы поиска фразеологизмов в лингвистическом корпусе с морфологической разметкой (индоевропейские языки)

The aim of the applied research is to build algorithms for searching phraseological units that are compatible with our previously developed model of a linguistic corpus with morphological markup according to spaCy rules. The scientific novelty is due to the fact that for the first time, within the framework of the corpus approach, a set of universal ways to search for phraseological units is proposed with a minimum amount of manual labor and using elements of end-to-end digital technologies. During the study, the technical parameters of phraseological units to be searched were described; the capabilities of the author’s corpus manager within the framework of manual and special manual queries were examined; two algorithms for a two-stage search for individual phraseological units and their groups were developed and tested on the basis of a representative corpus of texts from German-language media; detailed examples of search results were provided. As a result, the consistency of the developed algorithms has been proved and it has been experimentally established that the search error lies in the acceptable range of 0-14.8%.

Перспективы работы с лингвистическим корпусом в аспекте исследования фразеологического фонда национального языка

The research is aimed at obtaining evidence of the effectiveness of using the resources of a national linguistic corpus to clarify the semantic development of phraseological units. The work attempts to consider the prospects for involving a national linguistic corpus while studying phraseological units as exemplified by the Russian nominative phraseological unit ‘зеленая улица’ (green light). The authors describe the methodology of dealing with a linguistic corpus to obtain the necessary information on the basis of which diachronic and synchronic changes in the phraseological meaning are examined. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the semantics of the phraseological unit ‘зеленая улица’ is reviewed using the resources of the Russian National Corpus. As a result of the empirical research, the efficiency of its use has been proved: using the corpus of a national language as a source of linguistic, cultural information and extralinguistic factors makes it possible to trace the semantic development of a phraseological unit by expanding its sphere of application, highlighting additional shades of its phraseological meaning and, in some cases, independent meanings.

"A Rare Vocabulary Dictionary based on school curriculum literature": theoretical issues of creation and methodological prospects for use

The article describes the principles of compiling the Rare Vocabulary Dictionary based on school curriculum literature (hereinafter referred to as the Dictionary) and its methodological potential for being used as an electronic educational resource in teaching schoolchildren. Moreover, the study examines the specific features of the Dictionary in comparison with similar existing lexicographic publications. The Dictionary creation is relevant as there is a need to make Russian classical literature texts more understandable for the modern reader. As a result, the resource can promote the culture of reading literary texts and the formation of students’ linguistic personality, as well as enhance learning efficiency. The Dictionary materials were comprised of Russian authors’ works included in the school literature curriculum for years 5 to 11. The paper pays particular attention to the innovative solutions concerning the principles of glossary compilation and dictionary entry creation. The research relied on corpus linguistics methodology and its tools for working with text, which enabled us to select vocabulary based on objective criteria (low frequency in modern Russian) and describe the meaning of a particular word relying on the entire set of contexts of its use in the literature under study. The focus of lexicographic interpretation was an extensive layer of rare vocabulary of various semantic groups (including proper names and occasionalisms) and different parts of speech. Semantic description demonstrates the history of word meanings in the language in conjunction with contextual interpretation of a lexical unit. The entries contain encyclopedic information and a detailed cultural and/or philological commentary. Maximal attention is given to authorial neologisms. Some entries are accompanied by images of the item being described. The Dictionary is implemented as a module of the new Russian Classics cross platform mobile application. The article also describes the operating principles and capabilities of the application.

Most Frequent Multi-Word Expressions in English for Banking: A Corpus-Based Diachronic Study

The aim of the paper is to perform diachronic research in one segment of Business English – English for Banking to check the diachronic stability of its vocabulary. Therefore, an analysis of multi-word expressions (MWEs) in 15 syntactic categories in annual reports of four biggest US banks for fiscal years 2006 and 2021 was made. More precisely, the diachronic changes comprising the span of time of 15 years were analysed in both the frequency of the occurrence of MWEs across the 15 analysed syntactic categories and in their percentage relationship to the scope of the corpora. The corpus analysis made it possible to extract real language in use, enabling the author to determine diachronic changes in vocabulary across categories, thus bridging the gap between the existing knowledge of vocabulary in English for Banking and the current situation. The research showed that there is a high statistical significance of changes in both the frequency of the occurrence of MWEs across the 15 analysed categories and in their percentage relationship to the scope of the corpus in the period over 15 years. The research findings might be useful for both Business English lecturers and their students, due to the various possible pedagogical implications of the results. The research might function as an impetus for linguists doing research in corpus linguistics to undertake further research in other areas of Business English to determine and describe possible changes in the language used. These areas could include: international trade, logistics, wholesale, retailing, industry, business media, leadership, management, marketing or investing.

METAPHORS AND METONYMIES IN LATVIAN AND ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS WITH THE KEYWORD HEAD

Phraseology, often considered a supplementary discipline in the past, now occupies a central place in many fields as an object of interdisciplinary research for cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies in general and cognitive linguistics, pedagogy, translation, corpus and computational linguistics, lexicography, and psychology. Two databases in Latvian and English are used to extract phraseological units (PUs) with the keyword “head”. The article aims to identify, compare and contrast metaphorical and metonymic Latvian and English phraseological units, discussing the similarities and differences in meanings of the base form of a phraseological unit (PU) and its use in every analysed case. Since metaphor and metonymy are central thought patterns in cognitive linguistics, testing their function in PUs is crucial. Metaphorical and metonymic Latvian PUs and their English counterparts are examined in the cognitive linguistic framework, analysing conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies. Corresponding pairs of PUs are studied as one set to establish if they will function similarly. It can be concluded that pairs of PUs in both languages have the same structure, convey equivalent meanings and even have the same type of conceptual metonymy: a part stands for the whole, for instance, divas galvas (ir[1]) gudrākas nekā viena (two heads (are) smarter than one) and its English counterpart: “two heads are better than one”.

Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis of Chinese Kung Fu in the Media Along the Southern Line of the “Belt and Road”

This study presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of Chinese Kung Fu, utilizing a corpus-based approach to examine media portrayals along the southern line of the “Belt and Road” initiative. The research underscores the role of the “Belt and Road” Initiative in promoting Chinese martial arts culture and fostering cultural exchanges. By constructing a specialized corpus from mainstream media reports on Chinese Kung Fu, sourced from the LexisNexis database, this study employs corpus linguistics tools such as AntConc to analyze word frequency, collocation, keyword, and index line. The findings reveal a predominantly positive portrayal of Chinese Kung Fu in the media of countries along the southern route of the “Belt and Road.” This positive representation is instrumental in enhancing the understanding of these countries’ attitudes towards Chinese culture and paves the way for more effective foreign discourse construction for China. The study’s insights into media discourse provide valuable perspectives for cultural diplomacy, reflecting the positive impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on spreading Chinese culture.

UTILISING CORPUS STYLISTICS TO FACILITATE LITERARY ANALYSIS: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SEMANTIC DOMAINS IN IDENTIFYING MAJOR LITERARY THEMES IN A SELECTION OF CHARLES DICKENS’ NOVELS

Though still in an early stage of development, corpus-assisted literary analysis is becoming increasingly popular as having the full potential of corpus linguistics methodology for literary stylistics. This paper argues that corpus linguistic procedures can be considered an addition to the analytical inventory of traditional stylistics. It aims to explore how corpus linguistic procedures, particularly semantic domains, can be effective in detecting major literary themes in fiction. In order to do so, five corpora were compiled: a corpus for each of the four novels of Charles Dickens’ selected (i.e., Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend) and a compiled corpus combining all four novels. Wmatrix 5, with the BNC Sampler-Written as a reference corpus, was used to extract the key semantic domains in each corpus respectively. The literature on the selected novels was consulted to identify the major themes. Then, it was verified whether these themes were reflected in the corpus analysis, and, finally, the extent to which the procedure was effective in reflecting the major literary themes was also explored. The findings confirmed the effectiveness of the procedure of analysing semantic domains in studying literary texts, particularly in relation to their themes.

Grammar Instruction in the Digital Age: The Impact of Corpus Linguistics

The potential of corpus linguistics to transform grammar training in the digital era is examined in this study. An in-depth review of the literature looked at the benefits and challenges of corpus-based approaches. Teachers may customize education to meet the unique needs of each student by using corpus linguistics, which provides insightful information about how language is used in everyday situations. Through the integration of real-world language samples and theoretical grammar principles, corpora can foster critical thinking and increase student engagement. Nevertheless, integrating corpus linguistics necessitates resolving technological issues, creating useful teaching resources, and educating educators. The study provides suggestions for using corpora in grammar training as well as future research topics. Using online corpus tools for student exploration, utilizing corpus analysis to uncover typical student mistakes, and creating activities that motivate students to study corpus data in context are some of these proposals. By using corpus linguistics, teachers may close the gap between grammar instruction theory and practice and enable students to become independent language learners.

Recent trends in corpus design and reporting: A methodological synthesis

Methodological design is a central issue for researchers in corpus linguistics. To understand trends in the reporting of important aspects of corpus design and the type of corpora being used in corpus linguistics research articles better, this study analyzes 709 descriptions of corpora from research published in corpus journals between 2010–2019. Each article was manually coded by two trained coders for aspects of corpus design, such as the population definition, sampling method, and sample size. Additionally, the study identifies missing information in corpus reporting. Our results show trends in corpus design, such as an increased use of spoken corpora. We also observe the existence of some robust sampling methodology and slight improvements in reporting practices over time. Overall, there is great diversity in the types of corpora that are observed in the corpus data, such as size. However, our results also show widespread underreporting of generally important corpus design choices and features, such as sampling methods or the number of texts in in even newly constructed corpora. Resultantly, suggestions for ways to improve reporting practices for empirical corpus linguistics studies are provided for authors, reviewers, and editors.

A Computational Approach to Identifying Cultural Keywords Across Languages.

Distinctive aspects of a culture are often reflected in the meaning and usage of words in the language spoken by bearers of that culture. Keywords such as душа (soul) in Russian, hati (heart) in Indonesian and Malay, and gezellig (convivial/cosy/fun) in Dutch are held to be especially culturally revealing, and scholars have identified a number of such keywords using careful linguistic analyses (Peeters, 2020b; Wierzbicka, 1990). Because keywords are expected to have different statistical properties than related words in other languages, we argue that a quantitative comparison of word usage across languages can help to identify cultural keywords. To support this claim, we describe a computational method that compares word frequencies across languages, and apply it to both linguistic corpora and word association data. The method identifies culturally specific words that range from "obvious" examples, such as Amsterdam in Dutch, to non-obvious yet independently proposed examples, such as hati (heart) in Indonesian. We show in addition that linguistic corpora and word association data provide converging evidence about culturally specific words. Our results therefore show how computational analyses and behavioral experiments can supplement the methods previously used by linguists to identify culturally salient words acrosslanguages.

A corpus-assisted approach to discursive news values analysis

The main aim of this paper is the elaboration of an analytical tool for comparative studies. For this purpose, I used a combination of Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) and Corpus Linguistics (CL) to analyse a corpus of British Broadsheets’ news coverage of the Brexit campaign. The four major British broadsheets which were analysed were The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. A specific procedure was designed following previous studies on the topic and considering the challenges and opportunities that such a mixed-method approach (DNVA and CL) can face in exploring journalistic discursive practices and mapping the cultural and ideological discourses around certain topics. Some initial results of the case study are presented to show how the suggested procedure works in practice. From the present study’s findings, the procedure seems to work in a reliable manner, although some challenges should be considered and addressed in future studies.