Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis

Paul Baker is Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, University of Lancaster.

• Chapter 1 - Introduction; Introduction / Corpus Linguistics / Discourse / The Shift to Post Structuralism / Advantages of the corpus-based approach to discourse analysis / Reducing Researcher Bias / The incremental effect of Discourse / Resistant and changing discourses / Triangulation / Some concerns / Structure of the book / Notes; Chapter 2 - Corpus Building. Introduction / Some types of corpora / Capturing data / Scanning and keying in / Spoken Texts / Online texts / Permissions / Annotation / Using a Reference Corpus / Conclusions / Notes; Chapter 3 - Frequency and Dispersion; Introduction / Join the Club / Frequency Counts / Considering Clusters / Dispersion Plots / Comparing demographic frequencies/Conclusions/Notes; Chapter 4 - Concordances; Introduction / Investigating discourses of refugees / Sorting concordances / Analysing the remainder / Semantic preference and discourse parody / Points of concerns / Step by step guide to concordance analysis / Notes; Chapter 5 - Collates; Introduction / Deriving Collocates / Identifying discourses from collocates / Resistant discourses / Collocational networks / Step by step guide to collocational analysis / Notes; Chapter 6 - Beyond Collocation; Introduction / Nominalization / Searching with grammatical tags / Collocations of grammatical forms / Modality / Attribution / Metaphor / Further directions / Notes; Chapter 7 - Keyness; Frequency revisited / Introducing Keyness / Analysis of keywords / Using a reference corpus / Key clusters / Key categories / Possible uses of key words / Conclusion / Notes; Chapter 8 - Conclusion; Corpus building / Corpus analysis / Notes.

Baker (Lancaster University, UK) looks at how corpora (computerized collections of naturally occurring language samples) can be used for discourse analysis. The book has four particular strengths. First, the author explains corpus methodologies thoroughly, including frequency and dispersion, concordances, collocates, and keyness. Second, the grounds his explanations in concrete analyses of discourse used in tourism brochures, fox-hunting debates, and news articles on refugees (among other texts), thereby offering exemplars of the methodology; included are several tabular examples of analysis. And fourth, he explores the strengths and limitations of corpus analysis, explaining the need for self-reflection with respect to methodological decision-making. An excellent guide to the scope and method of corpus linguistics as applied to discourse analysis, this book on research methods will be valuable to those in linguistics, rhetoric and communication, literary theory and other humanities fields.