-
‘Face masks’ and ‘face coverings’ in the UK press during the Covid-19 pandemic: Scottish vs. national newspapers
Carmen Dayrell, Isobelle Clarke and Elena Semino (Lancaster University) 1 Introduction Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of face masks or face coverings as a means of reducing the transmission of the virus has been a major area of debate in many countries around the world. In the UK specifically, the first…
-
Introductory Blog – Hanna Schmueck
I am very honoured to have received the Geoffrey Leech Outstanding MA Student Award for my MA in Language and Linguistics. This award traditionally goes to the MA student with the highest overall average. I started my postgraduate journey in September 2019 after finishing my undergraduate degree at the University of Bamberg (Germany) in 2018…
-
Representations of Obesity in the News: Project update and book announcement!
Gavin Brookes and Paul Baker We are delighted to announce the forthcoming publication of a book based on research carried out as part of the CASS project, ‘Representations of Obesity in the News’. The book, titled Obesity in the News: Language and Representation in the Press, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.…
-
English language assessment and training for medical professionals
Proficiency in English is crucial for effective and appropriate medical communication and U.K. regulating bodies for nurse and doctor practitioners use standardised tests (such as IELTS, OET, TOEFL) to assess English proficiency of non-UK/EU applicants. The aim of this project is to investigate a corpus of authentic clinical interactions to identify patterns of interaction and…
-
Covid-19 and the International Baccalaureate
A month passed, but yet our pain hasn’t diminished and justice unserved (#ibscandal, Aug 6) Three months ago, when I wrote my introductory post for the CASS blog, I had a clear research plan for my SSHRC (Canada’s Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council) postdoctoral fellowship, which involved examining IB discourses in a large corpus…
-
Time to Celebrate: Trinity Lancaster Corpus
On Wednesday 30 October, The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches (CASS) organised a small get-together in its new location, Bailrigg House, to celebrate the research that is being carried out at the centre. Specifically, on this occasion, we wanted to highlight the Trinity Lancaster Corpus, a corpus of spoken learner English built in collaboration between…
-
CASS is strengthening its links with colleagues at the University of Mosul in Iraq
As reported in the media, in recent months we have been delighted to support staff and students at the University of Mosul in Iraq who are rebuilding the Department of English after the devastation caused by the so-called Islamic State group . Via the CorpusMOOC and other forms of long-distance support, we have begun to…
-
Introductory Blog – Gavin Brookes
This is the second time I have been a part of CASS, which means that this is the second time I’ve written one of these introductory blog pieces. I first worked in CASS in 2016, on an eight-month project with Paul Baker where we looked at the feedback that patients gave about the NHS in England.…
-
Learn about the BNC2014, scan a book sample and contribute to the corpus…
On Saturday 12 May 2018, CASS hosted a small training event at Lancaster University for a group of participants, who came from different universities in the UK. We talked about the BNC2014 project and discussed both the theoretical underpinnings as well as the practicalities of corpus design and compilation. Slides from the event are available…
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.