Thematic Corpus Research Articles

Developing Language for Specific Purposes Materials with Thematic Corpora

The aim of this article is to describe the process of autonomous creation of pedagogical materials for teaching languages for special purposes based on thematic corpora. It presents methods of creating one’s own thematic corpora from previously collected texts or by automatically extracting content from the Internet. Popular and easily accessible tools for compiling and analysing do-it-yourself corpora are also indicated. Finally, examples of typical language tasks prepared on the basis of corpus data are discussed, as well as tasks requiring analysis of corpus data by the learner (data-driven learning). In order to illustrate the described practices, thematic corpora and corpus-based teaching materials created within the framework of the European Erasmus+ project called Teaching English as a Content Subject at the Tertiary Level (TE-Con3) are presented.

Media Representation of Tutoring as a Phenomenon of Pedagogical Discourse

The aim of this study is to explore the media representation of tutoring as a phenomenon within pedagogical discourse. An analysis of a thematic corpus of texts reveals that the imported concept of TUTORING acquires new conceptual features that reflect the linguistic and cultural specificity of its interpretation in the Russian-speaking media landscape. Distinctive characteristics of the media representation of the conceptual education of TUTOR are established in comparison with traditional pedagogical professions and its definition in professional standards. It is demonstrated that in the Russian-speaking media discourse, tutoring is perceived by the professional discursive community as a profession of the future, tasked with shaping individuals capable of addressing the global challenges of modernity. Evaluative characteristics of the phenomenon of TUTORING are identified, reflecting its perception by both the professional discursive community and a broader readership. In the former case, positive evaluations prevail, characterized by notions of ‘assistance’ and ‘support’; in the latter, negative evaluative traits emerge, associated with skepticism towards tutoring. Figurative-perceptual characteristics of tutoring are presented, expressed through metaphorical strategies based on source domains such as “Sport,” “Journey,” and “Nature.” The study of the phenomenon of tutoring underscores the significance of the discursive factor in understanding the concept.

Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX

This paper presents a new symbolic corpus of musical themes from the complete Star Wars trilogies (Episodes I-IX) by John Williams. The corpus files are made available in multiple formats (.krn, .sib., and .musicxml) and include melodic, harmonic, and formal information. The Star Wars Thematic Corpus (SWTC) contains a total of 64 distinctive, recurring, and symbolically meaningful themes and motifs, commonly referred to as leitmotifs. Through this corpus we also introduce a new humdrum standard for non-functional harmony encodings, **harte (Harte et al., 2005; Harte, 2010). This report details the motivation, describes the transcription and encoding processes, and provides some brief summary statistics. While relatively small in scale, the SWTC represents a unified collection from one of the most prolific and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and the under-studied subset of film and multimedia musical material in general. We hope the SWTC will provide insights into John Williams’ compositional style, as well as prove useful in comparisons against other thematic corpora from film and beyond.

Corpus compilation for digital humanities in lower– resourced languages: A practical look at compiling thematic digital media corpora in Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian

The digital era has unlocked unprecedented possibilities of compiling corpora of social discourse, which has brought corpus linguistic methods into closer interaction with other methods of discourse analysis and the humanities. Even when not using any specific techniques of corpus linguistics, drawing on some sort of corpus is increasingly resorted to for empirically–grounded social–scientific analysis (sometimes dubbed ‘corpus–assisted discourse analysis’ or ‘corpus–based critical discourse analysis’, cf. Hardt–Mautner 1995; Baker 2016). In the post–Yugoslav space, recent corpus developments have brought table–turning advantages in many areas of discourse research, along with an ongoing proliferation of corpora and tools. Still, for linguists and discourse analysts who embark on collecting specialized corpora for their own research purposes, many questions persist – partly due to the fast–changing background of these issues, but also due to the fact that there is still a gap in the corpus method, and in guidelines for corpus compilation, when applied beyond the anglophone contexts. In this paper we aim to discuss some possible solutions to these difficulties, by presenting one step–by–step account of a corpus building procedure specifically for Croatian, Serbian and Slovenian, through an example of compiling a thematic corpus from digital media sources (news articles and reader comments). Following an overview of corpus types, uses and advantages in social sciences and digital humanities, we present the corpus compilation possibilities in the South Slavic language contexts, including data scraping options, permissions and ethical issues, the factors that facilitate or complicate automated collection, and corpus annotation and processing possibilities. The study shows expanding possibilities for work with the given languages, but also some persistently grey areas where researchers need to make decisions based on research expectations. Overall, the paper aims to recapitulate our own corpus compilation experience in the wider context of South–Slavic corpus linguistics and corpus linguistic approaches in the humanities more generally

"I don't think education is the answer": A corpus-assisted ecolinguistic analysis of plastics discourses in the UK.

Ecosystems around the world are becoming engulfed in single-use plastics, the majority of which come from plastic packaging. Reusable plastic packaging systems have been proposed in response to this plastic waste crisis, but uptake of such systems in the UK is still very low. This article draws on a thematic corpus of 5.6 million words of UK English around plastics, packaging, reuse, and recycling to examine consumer attitudes towards plastic (re)use. Utilizing methods and insights from ecolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and cognitive linguistics, this article assesses to what degree consumer language differs from that of public-facing bodies such as supermarkets and government entities. A predefined ecosophy, prioritizing protection, rights, systems thinking, and fairness, is used to not only critically evaluate narratives in plastics discourse but also to recommend strategies for more effective and ecologically beneficial communications around plastics and reuse. This article recommends the adoption of ecosophy in multidisciplinary project teams, and argues that ecosophies are conducive to transparent and reproducible discourse analysis. The analysis also suggests that in order to make meaningful change in packaging reuse behaviors, it is highly likely that deeply ingrained cultural stories around power, rights, and responsibilities will need to be directly challenged.

Internet search and lexical-semantic processing of analogs when making decisions in various subject areas

A mathematical model of Internet search and lexical-semantic processing of analogs of the decisions made in various subject areas is proposed. The search is carried out on queries synthesized from descriptions of problem situations. The synthesis process is carried out in two stages. At the first stage, sentences from the text containing a description of the problem situation are classified taking into account the informativeness of the verbal association between them. At the second stage, the information content of each class is calculated. The most informative of the generated classes, after their indexing, are used as queries. In lexical-semantic processing, the found analogs of solutions are examined for sentiment. When assessing sentiment, linguistic dictionaries of tone-colored vocabulary are used, which are formed on the basis of special tone-colored thematic corpora of texts. In the extreme case, two types of dictionaries are created. The first type is intended for the analysis of the positive sentiment in the descriptions of the decisions made, and the second is intended for the analysis of the negative sentiment, that is, in the process of lexical-semantic analysis, mainly positive and negative aspects of the decisions made are considered. The results of the analysis are presented to the user (decision-maker).

Crisis Situations and Information Science. Selected Issues in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose/Thesis: This paper attempts to organize and systematize scholarly literature on the issues relating to the current global health crisis published by information science scholars and professionals, as well as on the information science-related initiatives undertaken to provide access to reliable and valid information in crisis situations.
 Approach/Methods: A critical review of selected literature, as well as observation and a descriptive analysis of websites and web platforms were conducted to establish the thematic corpus.
 Results and conclusions: Even though the topic is recent, several subfields of information science have already been the subject of studies conducted in different parts of the world. It may imply that information science scholars and professionals react quickly to change and they are aware of the fact that their discipline may play an important role during crisis situations. This role may involve facilitating better management in future crises if they do happen.
 Research limitations: Since the topic is new and the situation is dynamic, new research results, or online projects are being issued almost on a daily basis. Hence, it can be assumed that shortly after its publication, this paper will not present the current state of the art anymore. 
 Originality/Value: First scholarly publications on the issues relating to the current global health crisis appeared in early Spring 2020. According to the author’s knowledge, no summary has been published that would systematize and classify the publications and other initiatives from the information science field.

First catch your corpus: methodological challenges in constructing a thematic corpus

This paper describes the process by which we have constructed a corpus of heterogeneous texts about non-human animals. It aims to contribute both methodologically – with respect to the challenges of compiling a thematic corpus – and substantively – in relation to the identification of some features of discourse about animals. Having introduced the research project and its guiding questions, the paper describes the principles of data selection and the procedures used in the analysis. We highlight the methods we devised both to avoid the potential circularity associated with pre-determined search terms, and to overcome the limitations of a relatively small corpus containing a wide range of relevant vocabulary. We go on to report some initial findings on the most frequent animal naming terms and adjectives describing them, including a small case study of the adjectives live and dead. The paper concludes by indicating the ways in which the iterative methods we have employed are open to further extension, and points to some methodological and substantive implications of this enterprise.

Analysis of Textbooks for Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language in terms of the Cultural Curriculum

The subject of this paper is embedded in the context of the issues of cultural and religious studies on the grounds of the contemporary glottodidactics, since it contains the characteristics of the selected textbooks for learning Arabic as a foreign language in the aspect of the content of the cultural thematic corpus. Three various textbooks, representing three various publishing markets (Poland, France, United States of America) have been analyzed to assess the extent of the presence of the cultural and regional knowledge elements. This analysis allowed answering the question regarding the method of reflecting the aspects forming the socio-cultural competence of a student and the extent of such reflection.

Epigraphic Bulletin for Greek Religion 2008 (EBGR 2008)

The 21st issue of the Epigraphic Bulletin for Greek Religion presents a selection of the epigraphic publications of 2008 and many additions to earlier issues. Following the practice of the most recent issues, emphasis was placed on the presentation of new corpora and editions of new texts, rather than on summarizing books or articles that use epigraphic material. Several geographical and thematic corpora take the lion’s share in this issue; they assemble epitaphs from Attica (13) and Kos (19)...

L'art schématique linéaire dans le sud-est de la France

Schematic Linear Art in South-East of France. An engraved schematic art, operated by thin incisions on the decorated field appears at the end of the Iron Age and covers the whole historical era. Thematic corpus is limited in spite of numerous graphic variants. It seems obvious that engraved pannels are organised contain central figures (human persons, animals…), signs associated to them (sunlike signs, zigzag…) and signs that are peripheral to the general composition (pentacle, grid, unorganised strokes…). The sites indexed in south-east of France are caves, rock-shelters and two architectural buildings. Orientation to the south and red-coloured rock faces are two criteria for choosing natural sites. Some shelters with linear engravings have already been decorated during the Neolithic period. There is evidence that artists prefer sites placed on the limits of agropastoral territories.