Quantitative Corpus Linguistics Research Articles

COMPARISON OF THE SPEECH TEXTS OF INDONESIAN PRESIDENT JOKO WIDODO AND PRESIDENT SUSILO BAMBANG YUDHOYONO: STUDY USING A CORPUS LINGUISTIC APPROACH

Purpose: This research has several objectives. First, determine lexical density and compare the lexical density. Second, to determine the key lexical density and compare the key lexical density. Third, to test the independence of the relationship between lexical variations and the text of President Joko Widodo's and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speeches. Theoretical Reference: The theoretical basis used in this research is the lexical analysis approach in linguistics. The application of lexical perspective analysis is expected to be able to review the communication used by each individual. The theoretical lexical discussion will also use a statistical independence analysis approach. The application of a statistical independence analysis approach is used to review a person's individual language abilities. Method: This research uses a qualitative and quantitative corpus linguistics approach. The corpus linguistic application used in this research is the KORTARA application (Korpus Nusantara). The research data is a corpus of 9 texts of President Joko Widodo's speeches and a corpus of 9 texts of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono which are official speeches every 16 August before the DPR of the Republic of Indonesia. Results and Conclusion: The results of this research reveal that the text corpus of President Joko Widodo's speech is richer and more varied than the text corpus of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speech in lexical use. This research also revealed that there is a relationship between lexical variation and the type of text of the President of the Republic of Indonesia's speech with a confidence level of 95%. The difference in lexical variation and frequency between the text corpus of President Joko Widodo's speech and the text corpus of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speech is statistically significant at p < 0.05. Implication of Research: The implication of this research is the realization of the KORTARA corpus linguistic approach (Korpus Nusantara) which can facilitate research for small and large scale data. This research also reveals that the application of a statistical approach provides maximum results in the analysis of large-scale linguistic phenomena. Originality/value: The current study makes a valuable empirical contribution by combining statistical analysis using corpus and qualititative analysis to give comprehensive conclusion. This study is the answer toward the question about the reliability and validity of linguistic studies.

UNDERSTANDING DEVELOPMENT AND PROFICIENCY IN WRITING – BOOK REVIEW

The original and thought-provoking book “Understanding Development and Proficiency in Writing” was written by Philip Durrant, Mark Brenchley, and Lee McCallum and published in 2021 by Cambridge University Press. It comprises seven major chapters, four of which focus on key areas of language proficiency: syntax, vocabulary, formulaic language, and cohesion. The book focuses on the continual debate of evaluating and interpreting development in L1 and L2 writing and offers evidence-based and objective perspectives to explore development. It reviews almost 250 quantitative corpus linguistics (QCL) based studies spanning over 70 years, thanks to its empirical approach. The historical and theoretical overview of QCL research on written language suggests a powerful guide map to understand what is already known (and not known) about written language development. It inspires us about what to do next to evaluate and assess first and second-language writing from a more robust perspective.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0028/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Do top-down and bottom-up agents agree on internationalisation? A mixed methods study of Spanish universities

This paper explores the implementation of internationalisation in the Spanish university system and its effects from a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative corpus linguistics techniques and qualitative interview protocols. Results from the quantitative and qualitative analysis showed that Spanish universities’ written policies align with the national framework and rely on a complementary use of ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’ strategies for research and education mostly through mobility, collaboration, and English-medium instruction. A positive representation of internationalisation is also identified, with both top-down and bottom-up actors stressing its benefits for society and individuals. Yet, some critical voices pointed at mismatches between institutional views and stakeholders’ experiences, questioning the sufficient allocation of resources and lack of recognition and incentives. The paper argues that effective comprehensive internationalisation should include written internationalisation plans, communication strategies, and a clearly defined internationalisation model adapted to the universities’ particularities.

Metaphodioms: connecting metaphor and idioms

This paper aims to formulate the notion of metaphodiom and establish operational criteria for its definition by combining key insights emanating from quantitative corpus linguistics, the cognitive theory of metaphor, and a cognitive linguistic approach to idioms. To this end, the author selects boxing idioms for analysis, extracts their occurrences in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), and determines their structural, semantic, distributional, and discourse-functional properties. The paper makes a significant contribution to a growing body of literature on metaphorical idioms by systematically integrating all definitory parameters for their identification, description, and extraction from a large corpus of naturally-occurring data.

'It reminds me that I should stop for the little moments': Exploring emotions in experiences of UK Covid-19 lockdown.

In this study, we explore how participants articulate experiences of emotions during Covid-19 lockdown in the UK. We posit that emotions fulfil experiential and interpersonal functions, which are construed and conveyed through language choices. An online narrative survey was carried out. About 88 responses were analysed. Participants were from England and Wales. The mean age was 48.9 years old (SD = 62). A mixed-method approach was used. This combined quantitative Corpus Linguistics analysis and qualitative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with linguistic analysis. The findings show similarities to the public health and medical literature that highlight negative emotions, such as fear, distrust and anger in participants. However, we also found positive emotions not considered elsewhere, including happiness, relaxation, safety, optimism for the future and connectedness arising from the thematic IPA analysis. Emotions were construed using language explicitly labelling emotions and language implicitly signalling emotions. Our study highlights implications for managing risk behaviours associated with transmission in public health practices such as social distancing, as indicated by negative emotions. We also bring to light implications with perceived benefits of engaging in protective behaviours and social support central to public health measures, as suggested by the communication of positive emotions.

Lexical Hedging in English Abstracts of Russian Research Articles on Economics: A Corpus-Based Study

An important area of academic English competence, the use of hedges in various regional varieties of English, has been the subject of numerous cross-cultural studies worldwide. However, hedging in the Russian variety of English as an academic lingua franca remains largely under-researched. This paper reports the results of a corpus-based study of lexical hedges in English abstracts of 200 Russian research articles published over the past few years in the leading national Journals of Economics. The data obtained in this research are compared to the findings of an earlier similarly designed study of British and American abstracts, shedding light on the peculiarities of lexical hedging use by Russian authors. Quantitative corpus linguistics methods are used, notably statistical analysis of corpus frequency data based on Dunning's log-likelihood test. Our analysis shows that although Russian economics research writers employ quite a wide range of lexical hedging devices – largely over 70% – coinciding with those used by native English writers, they use most categories of lexical hedges (modal verbs, adverbials, quantifiers and full verbs) less frequently while employing hedging nouns more frequently than their British and American counterparts. The findings can be useful for further research into hedging in the abstracts of scientific articles on other disciplines as well as for teaching English research abstract writing to Russian speakers.

Contribuições da linguística de corpus em diferentes domínios

Resenha-se, neste texto a conferência A versatilidade da linguística de corpus quantitativa: exemplos de ortografia, fonologia e linguística forense proferida pelo Professor Stefan Th. Gries, no evento Abralin Ao Vivo – Linguists Online no dia 08 de junho de 2020, e mediada pela Doutora Fernanda Canever. O objetivo principal da conferência foi o de demonstrar como a linguística de corpus quantitativa pode ser utilizada em diferentes domínios do conhecimento. Para tanto, empregando diversos recursos estatísticos e de visualização gráfica, o conferencista faz uma explanação de cinco estudos de caso: os dois primeiros relacionados ao corpus Ortografia da Internet Espanhola (OIE), o terceiro sobre como os falantes sinalizam o final de turnos para os ouvintes e, os dois últimos, na área de linguística forense, como fundação de sua argumentação.

Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction (Second edition). Stefan Th. Gries.

Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R: A Practical Introduction (Second edition). Stefan Th. Gries.

New Methods of Bringing Image Data into Historical Linguistics: A Case Study with Medical Writing 1500–1700

ABSTRACTIn recent years, advances in text annotation, the computational analysis of images and quantitative corpus linguistics have introduced new and exciting approaches to the study of text and paratext that combine the perspectives of historical linguistics and book history. However, so far most corpus-based research in this field has been hampered by the manual nature of the visual analyses (see, e.g., Tyrkkö, Marttila & Suhr 2013 and Tyrkkö 2013). The manual measuring and evaluation of visual features in a consistent manner is both slow and prone to human error, particularly with volumes of texts sufficient for statistical interrogation. As a result, while the linguistic analysis of historical texts can be rigorously systematic and corpus-based, the visual data, when taken into account at all, have typically been rather scarce and anecdotal in nature. In this paper, I will discuss new computational methods of analysing diachronic changes in visual features of title-pages and body text, and of combining that information with linguistic data. Using two linguistic corpora, Early Modern English Medical Texts and Late Modern English Medical Texts, and ImagePlot 1.1, a tool designed for the analysis of visual data, I will first map the paratextual features of the medical books and turn them into a matrix of statistically usable data points (Manovich 2012, 2013) for further processing.

Review of The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Novice writers and writing instructors in academic and professional settings often pine for guides that will deliver definitive rules which offer certitude. Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century does so – to a large extent. That The Sense of Style cannot find rules in reason for everything is perhaps its most important – though unintended – message. For as it demonstrates, style remains haunted by the residues of taste and authority. With considerable social and symbolic capital at his command, Pinker can draw on many sources that give him the standing to act as arbiter of style. As an Ivy League professor, he has been involved in writing instruction at MIT and Harvard for several decades. He also chairs the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD); is a recognised scholar in cognitive psychology with a focus on language; has edited considerable amounts of science writing; and is a prolific author whose books have a readership beyond the academy. For those who view style primarily as a matter of taste, such authority suffices. In an age, however, where blunt authority is challenged and calls for an evidence base are expanding across the disciplines, others require that style guides also disclose the principles that inform their advice. This Pinker does. In a companion piece on Edge.org he couches his fundamental commitments carefully though, in the interrogative: ‘The question I'm currently asking myself is how our scientific understanding of language can be put into practice to improve the way that we communicate anything, including science? In particular, can you use linguistics, cognitive science, and psycholinguistics to come up with a better style manual’ (Pinker 2014). The tentative form of the question is presumably overridden by the 359-page book, which is a yes of sorts. It is, however, a commitment to quite a different type of science of language than the descriptive quantitative corpus linguistics that has become increasingly influential in the training of academic writing over the last three decades. Alas, as writing instructors and novice writers either fear or hope, science has its limits, also when it comes to style. Which is why Pinker calls upon additional principles to reasoning rooted in theoretical and empirical cognitive linguistics. These include ‘the backing of data from the AHD Usage Panel’; ‘historical analyses from several dictionaries’; and those elusive characters that still haunt the pages of style guides – elegance and grace – and which operate behind the scenes of a suggestion that a specific formulation just ‘sounds better’ (224). With such an assortment of principles, clashes can be expected. At times a stylistic suggestion is justified with historical precedent from centuries ago, at other times the same fact makes it jaded, stuffy and outdated. When writers waver between the conflicting choices enshrined in style manuals, Pinker leads them out of the panic with ‘a pinch of my own judgment’ (263) or advice to respond to sticklers and mavens with quips such as, ‘tell them that Jane Austen and I think it’s fine’ (261).

Some Current Quantitative Problems in Corpus Linguistics and a Sketch of Some Solutions

This paper surveys a variety of methodological problems in current quantitative corpus linguistics. Some problems discussed are from corpus linguistics in general, such as the impact that dispersion, type frequencies/ entropies, and directionality (should) have on the computation of association measures as well as the impact that neglecting the sampling structure of a corpus can have on a statistical analysis. Others involve more specialized areas in which corpus-linguistic work is currently booming, such as historical linguistics and learner corpus research. For each of the problems, first ideas/pointers as to how these problems can be resolved are provided and exemplified in some detail.

Review: Gries (2009) Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R. London and New York: Routledge

There are many teachers and scholars who value corpus analysis, but do not yet do their own programming for teaching and research. Many have been considering making the leap from using only pre-packaged concordancing software to writing our own programs, and Gries’s Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R may be the resource that helps many of us to make the transition. It may be difficult, however, to see the advantages of doing one’s own programming until one has conducted corpus research using only concordancers and developed a sense of their limitations. First, I will allow that concordancers are very useful when the focus of the research is on very specific, pre-determined words or phrases, or other top-down sorts of research questions. Concordancers are a good way to introduce students to the concept of corpus-informed language learning and they demonstrate the way that near-synonymous lexical items vary in their functions. These uses have been garnering increasing attention in the wider fields of Applied Linguistics and even Theoretical Linguistics, and we can thank concordancing software for making corpora more accessible and opening up the tool of corpus analysis to an increasing number of students, teachers and researchers. However, when one starts to ask deeper questions about patterns of language use, and we desire a more bottom-up approach to linguistic analysis that is not dependent on pre-determined lexical or grammatical items, the limitations of concordancers quickly become apparent. To limit our linguistic inquiry only to questions that can be investigated through pre-packaged software is akin to limiting our study of syntax to items that can be identified by the green squiggly line of the grammar checker in our word processor. We are at the mercy of the software developers in terms of the analytical features included and the price to purchase or upgrade these tools.

Stefanie Wulff, Rethinking Idiomaticity. A Usag

The book is 240 pages long, including appendices (56 pages), a 9-page list of references and two indexes (author and subject), and is the product of a PhD thesis. As such, it is suitable mainly for researchers working in or familiar with the field of corpus linguistics, cognitive linguistics or both. Though the methods used are explained in sufficient detail, some knowledge of statistics and quantitative corpus linguistics is useful to fully grasp the implications and relevance of the finding...

Review of Gries (2009): Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R. A Practical Introduction

Review of Gries (2009): Quantitative Corpus Linguistics with R. A Practical Introduction