“What is corpus linguistics?

” – is it a discipline, a methodology, a paradigm

or none or all of these?
 McEnery, Xiao and Tono (2005), “corpus linguistics is a whole system of methods and
principles of how to apply corpora in language studies teaching/learning,
 McEnery and Wilson (1996) Corpus linguistics is also defined as a methodology.
 Bowker and Pearson (2002: 9) “an approach or a methodology for studying language use”
 Aarts (2002), Teubert (2005), and Williams (2006), describe corpus linguistics as a
discipline.

History Harold Palmer 1920 1930 decade ---language pedagogy.

CORPUS
CORPUS speech: represent the oral use of the language

CORPUS Written:

-REFERENCE CORPUS: they serve as a basis for researching grammar, eg. BNC

- MONITOR CORPUS: diachronic studies of the language.

- PARALLEL CORPUS: compilations of texts that have been translated into one or more languages.

- SPECIAL CORPUS: study of the language of a defined social group, small and determined.

Examples:

REFERENCE: BNC 1991 100 MILLONES DE PALABRAS.

EL CORPUS DE ESPAÑOL 2mil millones de palabras

PARALLEL

EUROPARL European Parliament Proceeding Parallel

UNTERM The United Nations Terminology Database

Corpus online

Reverso, Linguee

Article -Charlotte Taylor

(Wynne 2005) There are three considerations that we must attend to in deciding a sampling
policy:

1. The orientation to the language or variety to be sampled.

2. The criteria on which we will choose samples.

3. The nature and dimensions of the samples.

Common criteria include:

1. the mode of the text; whether the language originates in speech or writing, or perhaps
nowadays in electronic mode;

2. the type of text; for example if written, whether a book, a journal, a notice or a letter;

3. the domain of the text; for example whether academic or popular;

4. the language or languages or language varieties of the corpus;

5. the location of the texts; for example (the English of) UK or Australia;

6. the date of the texts.