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Log Ratio – an informal introduction
In the latest version of CQPweb (v 3.1.7) a new statistic for keywords, collocations and lockwords is introduced, called Log Ratio. “Log Ratio” is actually my own made-up abbreviated title for something which is more precisely defined as either the binary log of the ratio of relative frequencies or the binary log of the relative…
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Dispatch from YLMP2014
I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Poland to attend the Young Linguists’ Meeting in Poznań (YLMP), a congress for young linguists who are interested in interdisciplinary research and stepping beyond the realm of traditional linguistic study. Hosted over three days by the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University, the congress featured over…
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How to be a PhD student (by someone who just was), Part 2: Managing your work and working relationships
After submitting and successfully defending my thesis a few months ago, I’ve decided to share some ‘lessons learnt’ over the course of my 38 months as a PhD student. In Part 2 of this series, I’ll talk about best practices for structuring your work, managing your relationship with your supervisor, and my experience with teaching…
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“My research trip to the CASS centre” by visiting PhD student Anna Mattfeldt
Several times a year, the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science welcomes visiting researchers, from PhD students to professors. Past visitors include Will Hamlin (Washington State University, USA) and Iuliia Rudych (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany); current visitors include Laurence Anthony (Waseda University, Japan) and Anna Mattfeldt (Heidelberg University, Germany). Before returning to her home university, Anna…
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How to be a PhD student (by someone who just was), Part 1: Preparing for the programme
In December 2013, after three years and two months of work, I submitted my PhD thesis. Last month, I successfully defended it, and made the (typographical) corrections in two nights. I’m a Doctor! It’s still exciting to say. A PhD is certainly not easy — I’ve heard it compared to giving birth, starting and ending…
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Twitter’s reaction to the Benefits Britain live debate
Benefits Street was a series of television programmes broadcast by the Channel 4 outlet between 6th January and 10th February 2014 which, as Channel 4 have claimed, “sparked a national conversation about Britain’s welfare system”. The programme focussed on a community of people living in the economically deprived area of Winson Green, Birmingham and specifically…
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The Twitter reaction to the sentencing of the Lee Rigby murderers – 26th February 2014
by Love, R., McEnery, T. & Wattam, S. Introduction The ESRC-funded Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) at Lancaster University has undertaken some preliminary research into the immediate reaction on Twitter to the sentencing of the Lee Rigby murderers on Wednesday 26th February 2014. This document summarises our findings. Background On the afternoon…
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Update on Changing Climates
The Changing Climates project is a corpus-based investigation of discourses around climate change. It aims to examine how climate change has been framed in the media coverage across Britain and Brazil in the past decade. Here, we look at two different scenarios. Recent surveys have shown that climate change is currently considered a high priority…
CASS Briefings
CASS: Briefings is a series of short, quick reads on the work being done at the ESRC/CASS research centre at Lancaster University, UK.