Online Corpus Research Articles

A Corpus-based Approach to Taizhou’s Image in English News Media

The study of national and regional image is a significant topic in language, culture, and communication research. However, there has been limited research on the image of Taizhou City as portrayed in foreign media. This study employs a corpus-based approach to examine Taizhou's image in English media. Using the online corpus, News on the Web, the researchers created a virtual corpus (Taizhou Corpus) containing 98 relevant reports from English news media. The study analyzed the media coverage of Taizhou, the multidimensional image of Taizhou, and the sentiment of news reporting in Taizhou Corpus. The keywords for this study are Taizhou’s image, foreign media, corpus-based analysis, media coverage, and sentiment analysis.

Koronavirustaudin kehysmalli kriisiviestinnässä

During the surge of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, the need to disseminate accurate information and bridge the communicative gap between professionals and laypeople was urgent. During a pandemic, the role of mass media as well as translators and interpreters is essential in the distribution of information to all citizens. To facilitate the work of translators and interpreters, the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament has published the COVID-19 event frame (Termcoord 2020), which is based on Frame-based Terminology (see e.g. Faber 2015). In this paper, I report the results of the study on the creation of a parallel COVID-19 event frame based on a Finnish online corpus of news (Yle) and a Finnish ad hoc corpus of newspaper articles (HS). The study employed the methods of Frame-based Terminology. It is our aim that the frame could be useful in crisis communication for different stakeholders, including translators and interpreters.

Computerized corpus as a tool for educational technology and learning in the analysis of four-word recurrent expressions

The study aimed to investigate the disciplinary variations and the structural/functional features of recurrent expressions in the introduction and literature sections of the Master of Arts (MA) theses in two corpora. It is significant since the bundles fulfil specific functions in the form of formulaic language. The sampling of the study was Turkish and British academic writers. Their essays mainly based on academic argumentative topics were selected as analysis data. Data collection included compilation and categorization of the computerized corpora for possible differences and similarities. Sketch Engine, an online text analysis tool, was used for the analysis. Exploring the usage patterns of recurrent expressions among the native and non-native corpora, we also analysed the four-word recurrent expressions and featured the existing variations of functional and structural aspects. Cross-linguistic analysis revealed that Turkish writers distinguish some features of recurrent expressions more than others Structural expressions encompassed the verb-based, noun and propositional structures. The research, text, and participant oriented recurrent expressions built up the functional groups. The most frequently used functional categories were location and description in research-oriented recurrent expressions. The findings also indicated a positive role of recurrent expressions in the learning of the disciplinary features. Structural similarities were also found, indicating strong functional features for constructing discourse in research writing. The implication is that creating appropriate academic discursive practices with a focus on the properties of the recurrent expressions can be better analysed by employing several online corpus tools.

Is there justice in this world? A cross-cultural pragmatic analysis of the conceptualisation of ‘justice’

ABSTRACT The present article compares the conceptualisation of the Spanish term justicia and the Russian spravedlivost’ with the English justice to determine the contextual uses and specific cultural features of the concept. The data used in the study is taken from three online corpora – British National Corpus, Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual (CREA), and Russian National Corpus. The investigation proposes the explications of the concept within the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) framework as it offers an effective tool to decompose and specify the linguistic features reflected in the selected languages. The results of the study reveal the main differences and similarities between the three languages and, in sum, prove the relevance of culture-specific semantic analysis of abstract concepts and the use of NSM as a useful tool in cross-cultural studies.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction

Learning about Schools in the British Isles Through a Video Corpus: Reflections on an Online Project for Digital Literacy and Multimodal Corpus Construction

Through first-hand experiences undertaken with students using the OpenMWS platform (Taibi 2020), the paper reports on the progress made by second-year language degree students in English linguistics at the University of Messina as regards their use of online corpus construction, annotation and search tools when exploring video genres. The paper describes the ways in which participation in the Messina OVP (Online Video Project) on schools in the British Isles during and after the Covid crisis has proved beneficial for the students in question, both in terms of acquiring textual competences and as regards creating new interactive communities (Vasta and Baldry 2020; Baldry et al 2022).

From Symptomes of Martirdome to Symptoms of Inclination

The signifier term symptom is strongly associated with the medical register, and its history in English medical writing has been studied quite extensively. This study contributes to our knowledge of the non-medical uses of symptom during the Early Modern period. Drawing on the 1.4-billion-word Early English Books Online corpus, the study examines all extant occurrences of symptom and categorises their usage. The diachronic study shows that non-medical uses of symptom emerged almost immediately after the word came into common use, and that despite its semantic association with medical prognostication and ailments of various kinds, symptom has always been used to some extent as a signifier term referring to positive events and states of being.

Functions of discourse micro-markers in spoken academic discourse in university setting

The present article aims to study the nature of spoken academic discourse in English in university setting and looks particularly at the role of discourse micro-markers in the organization of discourse of a lecturer. English is used as a medium of instruction by non-native academic personnel delivering soft science lectures to international students. The theory provides an overview of contemporary linguistics on discourse markers, outlining the definitions and their functional characteristics. The empirical part of the study is based on the analysis of a case study and the quantitative discourse analysis of a corpus of academic lectures available online. Discourse markers, that are most frequently used in spoken discourse of a lecturer, are studied and the use and the role of ‘so’, ‘now’, ‘OK’, ‘well’, ‘however’, ‘therefore’ and ‘all right’ is investigated. The results of the study describe the functions of discourse markers in spoken academic discourse and show how discourse micro-markers help in understanding the structure and the thematic development of the discourse. / Keywords: spoken academic discourse, university setting, English as a medium of instruction, discourse micro-markers

Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes

Abstract This study explores five Swahili discourse-pragmatic features – ati/eti, yaani, pole, sasa and sawa – which are borrowed from Swahili into Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes, with a view to investigating their meanings, frequencies, positioning, collocational patterns, syntactic distribution and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are extracted from the International Corpus of English-East Africa and the Kenyan and Tanzanian components of the corpus of Global Web-based English, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a variational and postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The study reveals that the Swahili discourse-pragmatic features occur more frequently in the Kenyan corpora than in the Tanzanian corpora, except in the case of sasa, which occurred with the same frequency in the online corpus. The paper identifies ati/eti as an attention marker, a quotative marker, a hearsay marker, an inferential marker, and an emotive interjection, yaani as an emphasis and elaborative marker, while pole is an attitudinal marker that expresses sympathy and sarcasm. While sasa is only an attention marker, sawa is an agreement and attention marker. The paper shows that these borrowed discourse-pragmatic features contribute to the distinctive nature of East African Englishes.

Developing morphological knowledge with online corpora in an ESL vocabulary classroom.

Morphology is the study of word forms and the ways in which words are varied and related to other words in a language. It has been regarded as an essential discipline that is indispensable in language acquisition. It helps learners to figure out the word structure and meaning, particularly the meaning changing of morphemes, which is pivotal for defining words. The present study focuses on developing morphological knowledge with online corpora which are the useful tools for teaching and learning the changes happened in English. Given this light, this research reports an ESL vocabulary classroom in which the instructor designs vocabulary classroom activities with COCA, BNC, TIME MAGAZINE corpus to enrich students' English vocabulary knowledge, help them master word usage, and foster their corpus literacy. This study is oriented by the framework of Classroom Action Research (CAR). Students' classroom performances were recorded and their self-reflections of learning experiences were collected for thematic analysis. The results indicate that, firstly, students' morphological knowledge has been developed as well as their vocabulary knowledge; secondly, their vocabulary self-regulated learning motivation has been incentivised that they are able to answer their own queries about words; thirdly, students' corpus literacy has been fostered, which facilitates their ongoing vocabulary learning; last but not least, a community of inquiry has been established in which students collaborate to construct vocabulary knowledge. The study has wider implications for constructing the student-centered vocabulary classroom and implementing corpus-based instruction in other second language vocabulary classrooms.

The Making of ADHD: A Comparative Content Analysis of Teachers’ and Doctors’ Worldviews

Abstract Little is known about how teachers and doctors make sense of ADHD. Drawing on a corpus of online accounts, we reconstructed their worldviews with a qualitative analysis. While both professional groups referred to a male troublemaker and to the German literary figure of the Fidgety Phil, they also expressed rival expert claims. Doctors represented the scientific authority in labeling and diagnosing ADHD, whereas teachers attached objective meaning to the medical judgement by pathologizing deviant behavior and justifying measures of control.

A Framing Analysis of Chinese Political Discourse: Exemplified by the English Version of The 2021 Report on the Work of the Government

This study, underpinned by critical framing theory, analyses the English version of The 2021 Report on the Work of the Government, instantiating the Chinese political discourse. First of all, this study extracts key semantic domains and keywords based on an online corpus processing program, Wmatrix. Second, metaphorical surface frames are identified in line with MIPVU, and then conceptual metaphors are summarized. It is found that the metaphorical frames WAR, ARCHITECTURE, and JOURNEY are activated in The 2021 Report on the Work of the Government by the use of such metaphorical words and expressions as a battle, lift out of, build, consolidate, speed up and step. This way of discourse framing is intended to construct the image of the Chinese government as a “leader” who encourages the Chinese people to join as “participants” in the state building. The traditional Chinese moral notion of Gongtianxia, 'the world being equally shared by all,' is the root of the discourse framing.

How concepts are understood – online collaborative work and corpus data

The present study examines the engagement of Polish university students of English and American university non-language majors in a virtual exchange within the TAPP project within a semester of their studies in the year 2019 aimed at achieving the clarification of the senses of colloquial language as well as terminological yeanings the American students use in their written works. The paper discusses the concepts of broad meaning and linguistic naturalness and introduces a cognitive linguistic interpretation of interlanguage commensurability in translation. The materials researched in the present paper include samples of the students’ online queries, peer correction, supplemented by a presentation of those lexical forms which needed further lexicographic and corpus data consultation.

Speech act of apologising in Japanese online communication

Gomen, the object of analysis in this study, is an informal expression commonly signalled as an apology in Japanese. Drawing from a corpus of online Q&A forums in Japanese compiled by the author, the study demonstrates that the real communicative intent of gomen can be something different from an expression of apology, or indeed can be apologising plus other intentions. First, the article describes the pragmatic functions of gomen in real-life situations. Second, it shows different patterns of speech act realisation with respect to gomen when used as an apologetic device. This argument is developed by analysing multiple linguistic and contextual variables that frequently co-occur with gomen and play a role in the realisation of its pragmatic functions.

Pattern-Based Syntactic Simplification of Compound and Complex Sentences

With the advent of new technologies, simplifying the text automatically has been very popular and of high importance among natural language researchers during the last decade. The predominant research done in the area of Automatic Sentence Simplification(ASS) is inclined to either lexical or syntactical simplification of sentences. From the literature survey, it is observed that existing research in lexical simplification makes use of word substitution technique. This causes word sense ambiguity in cases where the word synonyms are not appropriate for a sentence in the given context. In contrast syntactical simplification though is accurate and applicable to Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks requires tremendous efforts to construct rules for a given domain. The research proposes a framework called, Pattern-based Automatic Syntactic Simplification(PASS) which identifies sentences and applies rules based on grammatical patterns to simplify the sentences thereby making it more generic for NLP tasks. PASS is evaluated by human experts to rate the usefulness of the framework based on fluency, adequacy and simplicity of the sentences. Furthermore, the framework is automatically evaluated with the available online corpus using automatic metrics of SARI, BLEU, and FKGL. The proposed approach generates promising results in the field of ASS and could be used as a preliminary module for NLP tasks as well as other natural language-related applications like summarization, anaphora resolution, question-answering, and many more.

МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЯЗЫК ПАНДЕМИИ В ОНЛАЙН КОРПУСАХ

The paper examines a number of previous Covid-19 studies related to the language of pandemic, the most popular words and expressions are being reviewed. Online corpora are analyzed as a potential source material for future comparative research of Russian and English web texts.

Лингвокогнитивные аспекты исследования метафоры глагола 煎 (жарить) в китайском языке / Linguo-cognitive aspects of studying the metaphor of the verb 煎 (fry) in chinese language

The article presents the metaphorical mappings of the verb 煎 (fry) in Chinese language, and attempts to analyze the mechanismsof emergenceof the corresponding metaphors. Applying the formula of interaction between the cognitive structure of the source domain and the cognitive structure of the target domain (A is B), developed by J. Lakoff and M. Johnson in the framework of the theory of cognitive metaphor, and using materials from authoritative Chinese dictionaries and texts from the online corpus of modern Chinese language, the author reveals the main metaphors associated with the studied verb in Chinese.

A Study of English Vocabulary Translation Based on Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis of Internet Database

In the process of English vocabulary translation, translators make full use of the advantages of electronic means such as CNKI translation assistant, online corpus of COCA, etc., a systematic, automatic and manual quantitative and qualitative analysis of the target English vocabulary is carried out to obtain accurate and accurate translation results. Therefore, the method of quantitative and qualitative analysis based on internet database and corpus can help translators solve the problem of English vocabulary translation and improve the quality of English vocabulary translation. Based on the characteristics of English vocabulary translation and the TECHNIQOF quantitative and qualitative analysis in internet database, the strategies of English vocabulary translation are put forward.

A Project Work as a Way of Bringing Corpora to Secondary School

Abstract Corpus linguistics is one of the most dynamic and rapidly developing areas of modern linguistics. It affects all areas of linguistics, including methodology of teaching foreign languages, translation and other linguistic disciplines. Corpus linguistics has had a direct impact on teaching foreign languages. However, in general, it remains a marginal method in teaching. Analysis of publications on the subject allows us to conclude that very few studies are long-term and aimed at working with schoolchildren. This article proposes a model for the development of sustainable interest among high school students in online corpora as sources of linguistic information, including the initiation stage in the form of project work in mini-groups to study well-known sayings with the consequent stage aiming at completing tasks supplementing the main textbook on a regular basis. The organization of project work addressing the corps of 11th grade students of the Natural Science Lyceum at Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is described. The paper outlines further research.

Negative Stripping in English: A Corpus-based Approach

Stripping, also called bare argument ellipsis, is taken to be an elliptical construction that unexpresses everything from a clause except one constituent (e.g., Susan works at night, and Bill too.). It can also accompany the negator not, which we call Not-Stripping (e.g., Alan likes to play volleyball, but not Sandy.). This paper reviews key grammatical properties of Not-Stripping in English and investigates its authentic uses with the online corpus COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English). The paper then performs some quantitative and qualitative research of the extracted data and discusses theoretical implications. The result from corpus investigation shows that Not-Stripping preferably used as PP remnant. Its register distribution also shows that Not-Stripping is most frequently used in fiction register followed by spoken, and magazine registers which may indicate that Not-Stripping is mainly used in colloquial context. In terms of category match/mismatch types, the construction is overtly used as mismatching relation between the remnant and the correlate. In addition, in case of merger/sprouting types, Not-Stripping seems to favor merger type, but sprouting type can be regarded as frequently used type. The grammatical function of both remnant and correlate are preferably used as modifier. The data for Not-Stripping are dealt with move-and-delete operations to postulate putative clausal source. Observing such attested data challenging the derivation of negative stripping from syntactic movement operations, the paper challenges a direct licensing construction-based analysis of the construction.