SLAT7829 Text Analysis and Corpus Linguistics
2023-02-21
Preface
Basic Course Information
Course Description
The analysis of texts is undoubtedly a core aspect of many academic fields and important applications in education as well as the private sector. This course introduces students to the study of texts using computers, commonly called text analysis or corpus linguistics. Over the past decades, corpus linguistics has emerged both as a field in its own right but also as an important methodology across the language sciences including studies on language acquisition and learning, language variation and change as well as language use. As such, text analysis and corpus linguistics have helped to place linguistic theorizing on a sounder empirical footing by allowing researchers to explore massive amounts of textual data, be it learner essays, transcriptions of dinner table conversation, or historical documents. This course covers the fundamental concepts, origins, and methods of corpus linguistics and text analysis with a focus on a hands-on approach and using specific examples of how corpora can be used in applied linguistic research.
Course Introduction
This is a postgraduate-level course on compiling corpora (collections of language samples), working with and analyzing texts using corpus linguistic methods, with a particular focus on the areas of language use, learning, and teaching. The course covers a wide variety of issues and topics related to corpus linguistics and text analysis such as the fundamental concepts, origins, and methods of corpus linguistics and text analysis, the focus is placed on a hands-on approach by exploring collections of texts, applying computational methods, and using specific examples of how corpora can be used in applied linguistic research. In so doing, it will motivate students to apply the skills and methods to a diverse set of textual data sources with a focus on learner data.
Course Staff
Course Coordinator
Dr Martin Schweinberger
Phone: 3365 6374
Email: m.schweinberger@uq.edu.au
Office: St Lucia campus, Gordon Greenwood Building, Room 32-514
Lecturers
Martin Schweinberger (m.schweinberger@uq.edu.au)
Rui Yin (ruihua.yin@uq.edu.au)
Aims, Objectives & Graduate Attributes
Course Aims
The course aims to introduce corpus linguistics and text analysis with a particular focus on with a particular focus on the areas of language use, learning, and teaching. It will present the fundamental skills needed to plan and carry out analyses of language based on text samples (corpora). Students will learn to compile, work with, use, and explore collections of texts as well as how to apply computational methods in applied linguistic research. In so doing, it will motivate students to apply the skills and methods to a diverse set of textual data sources with a focus on learner data. Course assessments will provide the opportunity to apply these skills in relevant research tasks.
Learning Objectives
After successfully completing this course you should be able to:
- Describe and explain how language is used in different contexts
- Understanding of concepts and methods in text analysis and corpus linguistics
- Effectively apply the concepts and theories studied in the course to the analysis of language data (texts)
- Practically apply text analysis and corpus linguistics methods
- Critically evaluate analyses of language data
- Identify differences between learners and native speakers of English
Learning Resources
Required Resources
Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2020. Corpus linguistics. A guide to the methodology. Language Science Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3735822
O’Keeffe, Anne & Michael J. McCarthy (eds.). 2022. The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Routledge. DOI: https://doi-org.ezproxy.library.uq.edu.au/10.4324/9780367076399.
Lecture recordings and tutorial recordings are made available on Blackboard.
The course book for this course is O’Keeffe, A., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics. 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
O’Keeffe and McCarthy (2022)
Recommended Resources
Pinto, P. T., Crosthwaite, P., de Carvalho, C. T., Spinelli, F., Serpa, T., Garcia, W., & Ottaiano, A. O. (Eds.). (2023). Using Language Data to Learn About Language: A Teachers’ Guide to Classroom Corpus Use. University of Queensland.
University Learning Resources
Access to required and recommended resources, plus past central exam papers, is available at the UQ Library website (http://www.library.uq.edu.au/lr/SLAT7829).
The University offers a range of resources and services to support student learning. Details are available on the myUQ website (https://my.uq.edu.au/)
Other Learning Resources & Information
See Blackboard for Learning Resources.
Language Technology and Data Analysis Laboratory (LADAL) available via https://ladal.edu.au/
Teaching & Learning Activities
Learning Activities
Recording of Lectures: Please be aware that teaching at UQ may be recorded for the benefit of student learning. If you would prefer not to be captured either by voice or image, please advise your course coordinator before class so accommodations can be made. For further information see PPL 3.20.06 Recording of Teaching at UQ.
Course plan
Weeks | Activities | Lectures |
Week 1 | What is a corpus? What is corpus linguistics? | Introduction to the Course and to Corpus Linguistics and Text Analysis |
Week 2 | How to design and build a corpus? | Types of Corpus and bulding corpora |
Week 3 | What can we do with corpora and corpus tools? | Basic Concepts in Corpus Linguistics and Text Analysis |
Week 4 | Analysing corpus and text data | Using Corpus Software for Text Analysis |
Week 5 | What can corpora tell us about grammar? | Getting started with R and RStudio |
Week 6 | What can corpora tell us about lexis? | String Processing and regular expressions |
Week 7 | What can corpora tell us about register? | Concordancing and words lists |
Week 8 | What can corpora tell us about discourse? | Frequency information and collocations |
Week 9 | What can corpora tell us about language learning? | Analyzing collocations |
Week 10 | How can corpora be used in language teaching? | Annotation: tagging and, parsing |
Week 11 | Using corpora for research | Comparing texts I |
Week 12 | Applied corpus linguistics | Comparing texts II |
Week 13 | Summary, review, and outlook | Summary and round-up |
Other Teaching and Learning Activities Information
Weekly learning activities consist of a one-hour face-to-face or online lecture and a two-hour tutorial (conducted either in class or via zoom). Weekly lecture content is either delivered face-to-face or consists of pre-recorded lectures that are uploaded to Blackboard one week before the scheduled week. Weekly tutorials are conducted face-to-face or online via Zoom following your scheduled timetable allocations. Throughout the semester you will be expected to contribute substantially and consistently to our tutorial activities and discussions of research approaches and methodologies drawing on your own ideas and experiences. Please make sure that you keep up with the course content by reviewing the online materials made available on Blackboard (e.g., lecture podcasts, lecture and tutorial slides, readings) and completing the assessments.
Allocations usually take a few weeks to finalise so please be patient.
Public Holidays 2023: If your tutorial falls on one of these, a make-up class will be held in the same or the following week - the dates and times for make up classes will be announced via Blackboard. Please wait for information about this. Friday, 7th April (Good Friday) Monday, 10th April ( Easter Monday) Tuesday, 25th April (ANZAC Day) Monday, 1st May (Labour Day)