scholarly journals Corpus Linguistics : A Closer Look on Meaning in Discourse

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anfinda Mutiara Kasih

This article, analyze and found that corpus linguistic is an interesting area in the learning of meaning in discourse study. Poststucturalism and structuralism is the basic thinking of theories and methodolgy in this paper, which have unlocked new path of the interpretation and analysis of meanings in linguistics and in a series of related disciplines. Using qualitative analysis of DA seen as an existing socio-historical formation of language in particular ways. This study also share a contributions in corpus linguistics study based on Foucault’s historically-oriented “genealogical” analysis. The applications of theory of the concept of social sciences and linguistics focusing on discourse, this study suggest to use record of data and principled collection in order to underlying both the diachronic and synchronic aspect of discourse analysis.

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Haider

Abstract Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) investigates the relationship between language, power, and society. Corpus linguistics (CL) is the study of language based on examples of real life language use. Over the last two decades, various scholars have combined some approaches and notions of CDA with the analytical framework of CL to examine the representation of several phenomena in relatively large texts. This study follows a corpus-assisted (critical) discourse analysis approach to investigate a 2.5 million word corpus of Arabic news articles by Jordan’s News Agency (PETRA). It demonstrates how some researchers following this approach may make some decisions, at some stages of their analysis, which are likely to affect their findings. These potential decisions may include selecting what statistical measures to use, what threshold to consider, what terms from the frequency, cluster, and collocation results to further investigate, which concordance lines to include in their study, and some others. In this study, I argue that some of these decisions can be made to suit the researchers’ preconceived assumptions and pre-existing hypotheses. The study concludes that using corpus linguistic techniques to discursively analyze large data reduces but not completely removes researchers’ bias.


Author(s):  
Ahlam Ahmed Mohamed Othman

Corpus-based critical discourse analysis studies have gained momentum in the last decade. Corpus Linguistics allowed critical discourse analysts to avoid bias in data selection and enlarge their samples for more representative findings. Critical Discourse Analysis, on the other hand, gave depth to corpus linguistic analysis by contextualizing it. The present study combines the two approaches to analyze the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords common to John Updike's Terrorist published in 2006 and Jonathan Wright’s translation The Televangelist published in 2016. The results of the corpus-based analysis show that while the semantic prosody of Islamic keywords is negative in Updike’s novel, it is highly positive in the translated novel. The conclusion is that Van Dijk’s proposition of the polarized representation of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ holds for Updike’s fundamentalist Islamic discourse which negatively represents Islam and Muslims. However, Van Dijk’s proposition holds only partially for Wright's tolerant Islamic discourse which positively represents Islam and Muslims without misrepresenting the other.


2002 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Conrad

This chapter provides an overview of approaches within corpus linguistics that address discourse-level phenomena. The shared characteristics of all corpus-based research are first reviewed. Then four major approaches are covered: (1) investigating characteristics associated with the use of a language feature, for example, analyzing the factors that affect the omission or retention of that in complement clauses; (2) examining the realizations of a particular function of language, such as describing all the constructions used in English to express stance; (3) characterizing a variety of language, for example, conducting a multi-dimensional analysis to investigate relationships among the registers used in different settings at universities; and (4) mapping the occurrences of a feature through entire texts, for example, tracing how writers refer to themselves and their audience as they construct authority in memos. For each approach, a variety of studies are reviewed to illustrate the diverse perspectives that corpus linguistics can bring to our understanding of discourse. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of some other foci in corpus linguistics and suggests that two areas require particular attention for the advancement of discourse-oriented corpus studies: the need for more computer tools and computer programmers for corpus linguistics, and the need for further studies about how best to represent language varieties in a corpus.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 515-538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zahra Mustafa-Awad ◽  
Monika Kirner-Ludwig

This article reports on the first stage of a research project on German university students’ conceptualization of Arab women and to what extent it is affected by the latters’ representation in the Western press during the Arab Spring. We combined discourse analysis and corpus-linguistic approaches to investigate the relationship between lexical items used by the students to express their attitudes toward Arab women and those featuring in news headlines about them published in British, American, and German news media. Results show that the portrayal of Arab women in Western news headlines has a clear impact on German students’ opinions of them. The findings also show that our participants tend to be aware of this effect, which could be partly due to their familiarity with discourse analysis as students of linguistics. These results have implications for incorporating media education systematically in general university courses.


Corpora ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-416
Author(s):  
Tatyana Karpenko-Seccombe

This paper considers the role of historical context in initiating shifts in word meaning. The study focusses on two words – the translation equivalents separatist and separatism – in the discourses of Russian and Ukrainian parliamentary debates before and during the Russian–Ukrainian conflict which emerged at the beginning of 2014. The paper employs a cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse analysis to investigate the way wider socio-political context affects word usage and meaning. To allow a comparison of discourses around separatism between two parliaments, four corpora were compiled covering the debates in both parliaments before and during the conflict. Keywords, collocations and n-grams were studied and compared, and this was followed by qualitative analysis of concordance lines, co-text and the larger context in which these words occurred. The results show how originally close meanings of translation equivalents began to diverge and manifest noticeable changes in their connotative, affective and, to an extent, denotative meanings at a time of conflict in line with the dominant ideologies of the parliaments as well as the political affiliations of individuals.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Winter ◽  
Morgaine Struve

This work is a case study analysis of the contemporary feminist academic pornography discourse. Based on two academic articles, two competing discourses are identified and examined using constructivist grounded theory and discourse analysis. This clash of discourses is traced back firstly to changing social norms on sexuality: Older generations, who still inhabit most positions of power within academia, are largely still representing restrictive attitudes on what constitutes “acceptable” sexualities. Secondly, research conventions within the humanities and social sciences have changed to defy easy explanations. Pornography researchers are therefore forced to choose between conforming to prevalent sexuality norms or research conventions.


2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faiz Bilquees

Commissioned by the Council of Social Sciences (COSS), this volume evaluates the seventeen social sciences departments in the public universities in Pakistan for a given set of parameters. The social sciences departments or the topics covered in this volume and their respective authors include: Teaching of International Relations in Pakistani Universities (Rasul Bakhsh Rais); Development of the Discipline of Political Science in Pakistan (Inayatullah); The Development of Strategic Studies in Pakistan (Ayesha Siddiqa); The State of Educational Discourse in Pakistan (Rubina Saigol); Development of Philosophy as a Discipline (Mohammad Ashraf Adeel); The State of the Discipline of Psychology in Public Universities in Pakistan: A Review (Muhammad Pervez and Kamran Ahmad); Development of Economics as a Discipline in Pakistan (Karamat Ali); Sociology in Pakistan: A Review of Progress (Muhammad Hafeez); Anthropology in Pakistan: The State of [sic] Discipline (Nadeem Omar Tarar); Development of the Discipline of History in Pakistan (Mubarak Ali); The Discipline of Public Administration in Pakistan (Zafar Iqbal Jadoon and Nasira Jabeen); Journalism and Mass Communication (Mehdi Hasan); Area Studies in Pakistan: An Assessment (Muhammad Islam); Pakistan Studies: A Subject of the State, and the State of the Subject (Syed Jaffar Ahmed); The State of the Discipline of Women’s Studies in Pakistan (Rubina Saigol); Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies (Moonis Ahmar and Farhan H. Siddiqi); and Linguistics in Pakistan: A Survey of the Contemporary Situation (Tariq Rahman).


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-97
Author(s):  
Sema Üstün Külünk

Retranslations of the Qur’an constitute an intriguing site of research with particular premises governing their production, dissemination and/or reception in Turkey. Its inherently religion-oriented context is accompanied by discussions on the sacred status of the source text, arguments on its untranslatability, translatorial human agency vis-à-vis the Holy creator, acknowledged Arabicity of the source text, etc. In this regard, each new translation of the Qur’an in Turkish is released with a motivation to justify its necessity amid abundant retranslations available in the target repertoire. Various approaches towards the conceptualization and instrumentalization of these Qur’anic translations create a meta-narrative on its own right. This study aims at exploring this particular discourse on the retranslations of the Qur’an with a bi-faceted study design composed of quantitative and qualitative analyses. The quantitative analysis focuses on the numeric changes of Qur’anic retranslations in respective decades, whereas the qualitative analysis concentrates on the statements of the translatorial agents on the motives behind their translational production. By shedding light on the discursive narrative postulated upon these retranslations, it is claimed that social, political, cultural and financial concerns have prevailingly governed the reproductions of this canonical work in Turkey. Keywords: Qur’an translation, religious-text translation, retranslation, discourse analysis.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Ivan A. Klimov ◽  
Svetlana G. Klimova ◽  
Maria A. Mikheyenkova

This article considers the subject of interdisciplinary interaction among specialists working in exact and social sciences as a practice of exchanging ideas about social reality; mutual adaptation of these ideas; empirical verification of the universal formal logic rules applied to specific tasks of sociological research. Such formulation of the subject goes beyond the problem of adapting educational programs to “literacy classes” for potential partners. It is maintained that in inter-professional communication it is important to formulate conceptual systems of common use not “in general”, not for all possible cases, but with regard to the problem addressed by consolidated effort. For such conceptual systems we use the term “common language area” according to the ideas of epistemologists (Ilya Kasavin). Elements of these conceptual systems include paradigms, concepts, tools and procedures mobilized for collaborative work. Readers are offered a description of the experience of cooperation between mathematicians and sociologists in 1990 – 2010s in the qualitative analysis of sociological data — which is an area of concern for both sociology and exact methods. To find a cooperative solution, we needed to develop a system of basic propositions regarding the object and purpose of the research; to put together a structure of sociological data suitable for using the proposed formal tool; to carry out empirical verification of the formalized language of logic-mathematical reasoning. This work has made it possible to explicate the opportunities and limitations when it comes to interpreting results. The article draws conclusions about the specifics of communication in a team of specialists, including sociologists and mathematicians, and about the development of a common language area in the field of cooperation that deals with qualitative analysis of sociological data. Our experience of cooperation in using formalized qualitative analysis of sociological data shows that, when it comes to the need to solve a common problem, partner role relations turned out to be the most effective (rather than role pairs such as “teacher-student” or “seller-buyer”).


1999 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 119
Author(s):  
José Manuel Martín Morillas

In this paper it is argued that, despite the welcome psycho-social emphasis in educational linguistic theories witnessed in recent decades, and with it, a rapprochement of the social sciences to the psychological sciences, the relationship between these fields has not gone far enough. The actual challenge is a move towards the unification of the social, psychological and language sciences (anthropology and sociology; cognitive science; and linguistics). A step in this interdisciplinary direction is offered by the discipline called 'cognitive anthropolinguistics', and its central concept of 'cultural cognition'. The paper discusses the implication of this concept for the field of educational linguistics, followed by a brief illustration of a cognitive-cultural application of that concept, namely the concept of 'ethnic stereotype', as part of a socio-cultural guide for a cross-cultural pedagogical grammar.


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