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Using version control software for corpus construction
There are two problems that often come up in collaborative efforts towards corpus construction. First, how do two or more people pool their efforts simultaneously on this kind of work – sharing the data as it develops without working at cross-purposes, repeating effort, or ending up with incompatible versions of the corpus? Second, how do…
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Is this the way to do Corpus Linguistics? Feedback system for the Corpus Linguistics MOOC
Corpus linguistics (CL) is a set of incredibly versatile methods of language analysis applicable to a number of different contexts. So, for example, if you are interested in language, culture, history or society, corpus linguistics has something to offer. Today, thanks to the amazing development in computer technology, corpus linguistic tools are literally only a…
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Trinity oral test corpus: The first hurdle
At Trinity we are wildly excited – yes, wildly – to finally have our corpus project set up with CASS. It’s a unique opportunity to create a learner corpus of English based on some fairly free flowing L2 language which is not too constrained by the testing context. All Trinity oral tests are recorded and…
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Exploring the grammar of Netflix in The Atlantic
A journalist with The Atlantic has used AntConc — a concordance program by CASS affiliate scholar Laurence Anthony — to deconstruct and reconstruct the grammar of Netflix genre descriptions. “If you use Netflix, you’ve probably wondered about the specific genres that it suggests to you. Some of them just seem so specific that it’s absurd. Emotional Fight-the-System Documentaries? Period…
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Two plead guilty over Twitter rape threats
Trial Tuesday 7th January saw John Nimmo and Isabella Sorley plead guilty to sending messages “menacing” in nature to Feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy via multiple Twitter accounts. In July 2013, Criado-Perez had been successful in campaigning for author Jane Austen to appear on the £10 bank note. Shortly after in…
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Introducing CASS PhD student Amelia Joulain-Jay
I am Amelia Joulain-Jay and I have just started some corpus-based doctoral research on the representation of places in nineteenth-century British newspapers. I grew up in Belgium, the daughter of an American mother and a French father, and this multi-lingual and multi-cultural environment fed my curiosity about the way people interact and communicate. After some…
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New CASS Briefing: Representations of Islam in the British press, 1998 – 2009
Representations of Islam in the British press, 1998 – 2009. Is the British press Islamophobic? How are Islam and Muslims typically written about? Have representations of Islam and Muslims changed over time, particularly since 9/11? Are some newspapers less ‘friendly’ towards Muslims than others? Read this CASS: Briefing of a large-scale corpus-based discourse analytical study to discover more. New resources will…
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Debuting 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. Commissioning work from internationally recognised academics in the field of Corpus Linguistics, CASS: Briefings set out to make cutting edge research easily accessible, providing a good introduction to the variety of vital and exciting research…
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Discourse, Gender and Sexuality South-South Dialogues Conference
Last week was spent in at Witwatersrand (Wits) University in Johannesburg where I had been invited to give a workshop on corpus methods, as well as a talk on some of my own research. The week was topped off by the first Discourse, Gender and Sexuality South-South Dialogues Conference which was organised by Tommaso Milani. Many of…
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.