Corpusbased project

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Corpus-based project
Lingua Inglese II 2008-09 Prof. M.T. Prat

• M. Cristina Caimotto

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Outline

• Definition of corpus
• Introduction to CADS (Corpus Assisted Discourse
  Studies)
• Downloading and installing the programme
• Retrieving interesting data
• Analysing the articles

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What is a corpus?

• (plural corpora)
• A collection of texts, spoken and/or written,
  designed and compiled according to a set of
  clearly defined criteria.

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CADS (Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies)

• Discourse Studieshttp//www.discourses.org/(Webs
  ite of Teun A. van Dijk)
• http//www.mediazionionline.it/articoli/bayley.htm
  
• http//www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/265
• (Website of Ruth Wodak)

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Critical discourse analysis (CDA)

• The overriding objective is to give accounts
  of the ways in which and extent to which social
  changes are changes in discourse, and the
  relations between changes in discourse and
  changes in other, non-discoursal, elements or
  moments of social life (including therefore the
  question of the senses and ways in which
  discourse (re)constructs social life in
  processes of social change). The aim is also to
  identify through analysis the particular
  linguistic, semiotic and interdiscursive
  features of texts which are a part of
  processes of social change. (Norman Fairclough
  link to the article)

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CADS (Corpus Assisted Discourse Studies)

• Discourse analysis is based on subjective
  interpretation of texts and is often politically
  committed while corpus linguistics, on the other
  hand, makes claims for its objectivity and holds
  that its analyses are replicable. (Bayley 2008
  37)

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Shifting back and forth

• From the corpus
• Key meanings
• From our reading of the articles
• subjective intuitions
• From the corpus
• Discourse patterns
• and so on

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Cant I simply read the articles, then?

• Yes, you can. But
• The availability of a corpus as a point of
  reference gives some objectivity because it
  allows the commentator to keep a distance between
  his or her sensitivities and the job in hand
  (Sinclair 2004 126)

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Ok, but how can I build a corpus?

• Your corpus has to be representative
• You can focus on
• a specific time span (articles about Italy in
  April 08)
• or a specific topic (2008 articles about the
  economic situation in Italy)
• or a specific geographical area (2008 articles
  dealing with Naples or Genova)

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How many articles do I need?

• You need 15,000 words (tokens) in your corpus.
  The number of articles is likely to be between 10
  and 20, depending on their length.
• Have a quick look at the articles first, save
  them, once you have enough texts, read them
  throughly and check whether your corpus is well
  built.

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TextSTAT - Simple Text Analysis Toolby Matthias
Hüning

• http//www.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/textstat/s
  oftware-en.html
• Guidelines for our project (pdf file)

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References

• Paul Bayley, "Weakness and fear a fragment of
  corpus-assisted discourse analysis",
  Investigating English with corpora studies in
  honour of Maria Teresa Prat, Aurelia Martelli,
  Virginia Pulcini (eds.). Milano Polimetrica,
  2008. p. 37-54
• Sinclair, John, Trust the text. London, New York
  Routledge, 2004.