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The Spoken BNC2014 early access projects: Part 1
In January, we announced the recipients of the Spoken BNC2014 Early Access Data Grants. Over the next several months, they will use exclusive access to the first five million words of Spoken BNC2014 data to carry out a total of thirteen research projects. In this series of blogs, we are excited to share more information…
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From Corpus to Classroom 1
The Trinity Lancaster Corpus of Spoken Learner English is providing multiple sets of data that can not only be used for validating the quality of our tests but also – and most importantly – to feedback important features of language that can be utilised in the classroom. It is essential that some of our research…
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What’s wrong with “a bunch of migrants”? Looking at the linguistic evidence
This week at Prime Minister’s Questions, David Cameron used the term “a bunch of migrants” to describe refugees at a camp in Calais. He was subsequently criticised by Labour MPs and members of the general public on Twitter, and the story was reported on in mainstream newspapers like the Guardian and the Telegraph. Critics described…
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FireAnt Launch Event
We will be running a launch event and workshop for a new software tool that we have created called FireAnt. The event and workshop will be held from 13:00 to 17:00 on Monday 22nd February 2016 here at Lancaster University. FireAnt was created by Laurence Anthony as part of the 2015 ESRC-funded CASS-affiliated DOOM project on…
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Welcome Jens Zinn – Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow
CASS is delighted to welcome Jens Zinn to the centre after being awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship! This is an extremely prestigious award, named after the double Nobel Prize winning Polish-French scientist famed for her work on radioactivity. The fellowships support outstanding scholars at all stages of their careers, irrespective of nationality. Jens has studied…
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Workshop on Corpus Linguistics in Ghana
Back in 2014, a team from CASS ran a well-received introductory workshop on Corpus Linguistics in Accra, Ghana – a country where Lancaster University has a number of longstanding academic partnerships and has recently established a campus. We’re pleased to announce that in February of this year, we will be returning to Ghana and running…
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Spoken BNC2014 Early Access Data Grant Scheme – winning proposals
Lancaster University’s ESRC funded Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) and Cambridge University Press are pleased to announce the recipients of the Spoken BNC2014 Early Access Data Grants. These successful applicants will receive exclusive early access to approximately five million words of the Spoken BNC2014 via CQPweb. They will be the first to…
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Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language Project: A methodological journey
Just before Christmas 2015, the AHRC announced that it was going to fund the £1 million Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare’s Language project. I actually had the idea for the project 20 years ago. The fact that it took so long has much to do with method. The approach I envisaged for Shakespeare’s language is analogous to…
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Beyond the checkbox – understanding what patients say in feedback on NHS services
In 2016 I will be working on a new project in CASS, which has received funding from the ESRC (£61,532 FEC). The purpose of this project is to help the National Health Service better understand the results of patient feedback so that they can improve their services. The NHS gathers a great deal of user…
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Language Matters: Communication, Culture and Society
On 12th November, the CASS team made their way over to the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester for the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2015. The theme for this year’s event was “Language Matters: Communication, Culture and Society,” and it featured a series of four informal talks by CASS researchers based at Lancaster. The…
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.