Readings in Corpus linguistics: A teaching and research guide for scholars in Nigeria and beyond.

Abstract

Corpus linguistics (CL) is an approach to the study of the nature, structure and use of languages or language varieties using corpus data/corpora. In this respect, CL provides a means for empirical linguistic analysis, using a set of procedure, in a bid to answer language-related questions which border on language varieties, theories, acquisition and use in specific contexts. The adoption of CL is premised on the notion that the study of the structure of a language should be based on real-life, context-based language usage (Lindquist, 2009) rather than speakers’ intuitions or invented data which are oftentimes limited and inaccurate. CL was and is still being propelled, essentially, by advances in technology, which has facilitated the compilation of different types and sizes of corpora (O’Keeffe & McCarthy, 2010). No doubt, advances in CL have shaped the study of language in many respects. With an avalanche of machine-readable speech samples, it is now possible to examine language use based on the context of use and compare geographical varieties in real time (Aijmer & Altenberg 1991; McEnery & Wilson, 2001). Besides, the corpus-based approach is now being adopted in many areas of linguistics including language teaching and learning, discourse analysis, stylistics, English for Specific Purposes, forensic linguistics, pragmatics, speech technology, sociolinguistics and health communication, among others (O’Keeffe & McCarthy, 2010).