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Corpus Linguistics Research Group

Keyboard and mouse

Corpus Linguistics is a young discipline, which studies language by looking at large collections of electronic texts. As a result of the tremendous developments in computer technology since the 1960s, a basic methodology has evolved:

  • Tokenisation: identifying the objects of study (words, phrases, etc) in texts

  • Frequency lists: assessing the relative importance of the words/phrases used

  • KWIC Concordances: examining the behaviour of each word/phrase in context

  • Collocation: quantifying significant co-occurrences of words/phrases

The Corpus Linguistics Research Group has been responsible for the following developments at Aston:

1. Resources

We initiated the ACORN (Aston Corpus Network) project, which has created software and corpora (180 million words approximately) of texts and parallel texts (original texts and their translations) in English, French, German and Spanish. These have been made available to all Aston staff and students, who now make over 5000 searches per month. ACORN is also used in teaching and research and has been presented in academic publications and at international conferences.

2. Annual events

We host three events a year - a Symposium, a Postgraduate Conference, and a Summer School, with substantial international participation and publisher sponsorship.

3. Research

We have attracted several PhD students and visiting fellows focusing on corpus-based research. The Volkswagon Foundation awarded us with €125,000 for a research project with Leipzig (Germany) and Wroclaw (Poland) on spoken academic German and English. We have initiated pilot research into the discourse of climate change with colleagues in Sociology, to be published in the Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis.

Recent publications

  • R. Krishnamurthy (2008) ‘Corpus-driven lexicography’, International Journal of Lexicography 21/3, 231-242
  • Kosem, I. (2008) ‘Dictionaries for University Students: A Real Deal or Merely a Marketing Ploy?, Euralex 2008 Proceedings
  • Kosem, I. (2008) ‘User-friendly corpus tools for language teaching and learning’, TALC 2008 Proceedings
  • R. Krishnamurthy & I. Kosem (2007) ‘Issues in creating a corpus for EAP pedagogy and research’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes 6/4, 356-373
  • I. Kosem & R. Krishnamurthy (2007) ‘A New Venture in Corpus-Based Lexicography: towards a Dictionary of Academic English’, in Corpus Linguistics 2007 Conference Proceedings
  • W. Teubert & R. Krishnamurthy (eds) (2007) Corpus Linguistics, (6 volumes) Critical Concepts in Linguistics, Routledge

Find out more

Ramesh Krishnamurthy is the Co-ordinator of the Corpus Linguistics Research Group, building on the strong record of work in this field at Aston. Ramesh is involved in corpus-related teaching and research activities and is Director of the ACORN project. For further information about the Corpus Linguistics Research Group, email Ramesh at r.krishnamurthy@aston.ac.uk.