Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis

Continuum Discourse Series

by Paul Baker

This book examines approaches to carrying out discourse analysis (DA) using techniques that are grounded in corpus linguistics. Assuming no prior knowledge of corpora, the book examines and evaluates a variety of corpus-based methodologies including:

* collocations,
* keyness
* concordances
* dispersion plots
* building and annotating corpora

Illustrated with a number of real-life examples of corpus-based DA from a range of sources and covering a variety of subjects, this is an informative introduction to using corpus linguistics as a methodology in discourse analysis.

Genres: Linguistics, Nonfiction, Research

198 pages, Paperback

First published June 23, 2006

About the author

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Reviews

[Rosa Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d say I know more about Corpus linguists than I did before I read this

[Jeff Lawshe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aside from experiments with Mark Davies' COCA interface and WordSmith Tools, this book was my first exposure to corpus analysis.

[As an aside: corpus analysis is a research methodology originating in linguistics. Today the methodology is associated primarily with large databases and specialized software packages that facilitate the examination of large bodies of text in order to uncover language patterns above the level of the sentence. An example of one such corpus is the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which is continuously updated and at present contains about 425 million words. Corpus analysis uses empirical methods (as opposed to armchair introspection) to develop theories of how natural language is used in specific contexts.]

I think this book works quite well for those who have little experience with the field. As the title suggests, it's also geared more towards the researcher who wants to add some quantitative methods to the usual qualitative tools deployed by a discourse analyst (and probably mostly a critical discourse analyst: Fairclough is cited with fair regularity).

The text's failings are perhaps only by design, since it is meant to be only an introduction and a how-to guide. However, for my tastes I would have preferred more theoretical framing of these methods (particularly in terms of epistemology, semiotics, or social theory). This would have helped me to wrap my mind around the kind of machine-aided pattern-matching typical of corpus analysis. (In general it seems as if the cultural/philosophical/historical significance of corpus as a method isn't touched in this book). At any rate, a brief survey of the literature on topics such as these would have been useful.

[Anastasia Tuple · Rating 1 out of 5]

After reading this introductory textbook on innovative corpus-based discourse studies, I have concluded that modern discourse analysis remains very subjective, even if it is based on the objective means of large text corpora and quantitatively sound statistical analyses.

As the author himself states, not just once but several times in the final part of almost every chapter: "Finally it should be borne in mind that a concordance-informed discourse analysis is still a matter of interpretation. The patterns of language which are found (or overlooked) may be subject to the researcher's own ideological stance. And the way they are interpreted may also be filtered through the researcher's subject position. [...] [Additionally] an analyst identification of a discourse may not mean that the same discourse is viewed in the same way, if at all by other readers." (p. 92, italics and bold are mine)

This short excerpt seems to me to be the most extreme disclaimer for one's scienctific field!

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine introduction to corpora and how they work. There are some good case studies of how corpora can be used in discourse analysis. However, my expectations of what the book would be were a bit different. I was hoping for something a bit meatier. I was also expecting more of a focus on critical discourse analysis rather than plain old discourse analysis (Baker himself notes difference that some see between the two, though I wasn't aware of such a difference myself) and the attention that CDA puts on ideology and power structures in society is more of what I'm after.

[Tova · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled upon this book by accident and picked it up since I thought it could help me out with the third dimension of Wodak's discourse-historical approach, and I'm so glad I did. This book is such a nice introduction to corpus linguistics with its many hands-on examples and step-by-step guides, and I now feel more confident using it as as a tool in my thesis.

[Mohammad Aboomar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an excellent introduction to discourse analysis using corpus methodologies. It is organized based on how a corpus can be analyzed, mainly focusing on techniques like frequency, collocation, keywords and concordances. Each of these techniques are illustrated using an applied research topic, which makes the book a guide through practice.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my Corpus Analysis class. It was the better of the two texts we had for this class. It is a good introduction to the tools of corpus based discourse analysis, and the example analyses were demonstrative and overall helpful. Not a book I would recommend unless you are taking a class on the subject, but good for what it is.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good introduction to Corpus Linguistics. It is engaging and relatively easy to follow.

[Hussain · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good book that shows the different techniques that corpora can be used to investigate different issues such as frequency and dispersion, collocates, keyness, nomalization, modality, metaphor, etc.

[Wajahat Awan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Writer