On Friday May 30, Mr. David Frous, the Consul General of the Czech Republic visited the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) at Lancaster University. During the visit, we highlighted both Lancaster’s rich history in the development of corpus linguistics and its continuing leadership in large-scale data analysis.
Lancaster has played a pioneering role in the development of corpus linguistics. It was one of the first centres in the world to engage in this type of research, contributing to, among many other things, the creation of the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen (LOB) Corpus—one of the earliest large-scale collections of written British English used for linguistic analysis.
Looking ahead, we showcased the university’s cutting-edge work with demonstrations of #LancsBox, our state-of-the-art tool for corpus analysis. One of the highlights was a visual presentation of key Czech national security documents, which we examined through the lens of critical concepts, actions and descriptions—demonstrating the powerful insights that corpus methods can bring to complex texts.
The Consul General showed keen interest, asking about the potential applications of corpus-based research across a wide range of fields, from diplomacy to policy analysis.
Arrival: The Consul General captured moments for the Consulate General’s social media feed.
Engaging Discussion: A lively conversation unfolded on the future of linguistics and social science research
International connections: Pictured in front of the CASS world map, from left to right: Mr. David Frous, Dr. Dana Gablasova and Prof. Vaclav Brezina.