Does the language of Twitter differ from that of Facebook? How has the language of news or gossip changed over time? Does the word 'table' mean the same thing in all texts? This module seeks to answer questions like these by examining a variety of approaches to the study of language behaviour in texts.  We start by considering the important contribution of British traditions of text analysis to our understanding of, for example, word meaning and use; grammatical patterns; register description and variation.  In this module, language is explored as a means of discovering patterns and to test existing theoretical views about language. We will consider how corpus methods can be used to reveal culturally significant patterns of language use. The module also offers students the opportunity to develop skills in critical and digital literacies.

This module aims to develop students’ understanding of how corpus analysis can be used to test theories about language use and to reveal culturally significant patterns of language.  It also aims to give students the opportunity to learn to use software which is designed to assist the researcher in lexical, grammatical and textual analysis. Students will learn to apply basic text-based methodologies for language analysis and they will be able to discuss and compare the differences and similarities between corpus-based language analysis and other forms of analysis.

Knowledge and Understanding

• Understand what text analysis can reveal about language and society
• Explain how corpus analysis relates to other types of language analysis
• Explore the relationship between corpus results and linguistic theory
• Interpret some basic statistical results from corpus research
• Use relevant approaches and methodologies for the analysis of language using a corpus
• Describe language variation amongst text types

Skills

• Analyse text
• Think critically
• Extract data from a corpus
• Work independently on developing an appropriate area of research in corpus linguistics
• Write a report which summarises results of individual project work
• Use a variety of electronic tools and resources for language analysis
• Gain subject specific and general skills in Information Technology

Timetabled sessions include 2 lectures and 1 seminar per week. During seminars, you may be required to analyse data and learn new approaches to working with text analysis. Lectures are supplemented with visual support such as PowerPoint slides and handouts. These are made available to students via Learning Central. Handouts which outline the key lecture material will also be made available on Learning Central. Audio and video content may be used in this module where appropriate to illustrate important concepts. Transcripts are provided where the audio or visual texts are analysed in detail or are a core element of the lecture/seminar.

Discipline/module specific:

• Analyse text using corpus-based methods
• Extract data from a corpus
• Write a short report which summarises results of individual project work
• Use a variety of electronic tools and resources for language analysis
• Gain subject specific and general skills in Information Technology

• Work independently on developing an appropriate area of research in corpus linguistics
• Critically interpret linguistic data

Traditional intellectual skills:

• Think critically
• Compare and contrast theoretical explanations
• Summarise reading material
• Interpret results
• Refer to the larger body of research available in the literature

The module is assessed by 100% coursework (Critical Review 25%, Research Project 75%).

The module is assessed according to the Assessment Criteria set out in the English Language Undergraduate Student Handbook. Otherwise, there are no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

The module will include most of the following topics:

• Texts and Text Types
• British Traditions in Text Analysis
• Methods of text analysis
• Language change and variation
• Word meanings
• Semantic prosody
• Phraseology and constructions
• Comparative Analysis of texts and text types (variation)
• Analysing of word meanings within and across different texts
• Discovering lexical and grammatical patterns in corpora

The set textbook is:

McEnery, T. and Wilson, A. (2012). Corpus Linguistics: Methods, Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Indicative reading list:

Adolphs, S. (2006). Introducing Electronic Text Analysis. London: Routledge.

Baker, P. (2006). Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis. London: Bloomsbury.

Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Reppen, R. (1998) Corpus linguistics: Investigating language structure and use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Granger, S. & Meunier, F. (eds.) (2008) Phraseology: an interdisciplinary perspective. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Knight, D. (2011). Multimodality and Active Listenership: A Corpus Approach. London: Bloomsbury.

Stubbs, M. (1996). Text and corpus analysis. Computer assisted studies of language and culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Thompson, G. and Hunston, S. (eds) (2006) System and Corpus. Exploring Connections. London: Equinox.