29.3257, Review: Applied Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Szudarski (2017)
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Subject: 29.3257, Review: Applied Linguistics; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Szudarski (2017)
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Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2018 15:06:52
From: Thi Ngoc Yen Dang [ngocyen1011 at gmail.com]
Subject: Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4037.html
AUTHOR: Pawel Szudarski
TITLE: Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary
SUBTITLE: A Guide for Research
SERIES TITLE: Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2017
REVIEWER: Thi Ngoc Yen Dang, Victoria University of Wellington
SUMMARY
Szudarski’s (2018) book, ‘Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary: A Guide for
Research’, was written with the aim to introduce a range of corpus-based tools
and procedure to students, teachers, and language practitioners who have
little or no experience in corpus analysis but would like to use corpora to
explore different aspects of vocabulary use and research.
The book was divided into ten chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the definition of
a corpus, key factors in designing a corpus, and annotation. It also points
out the strengths and limitations of corpus linguistics as a research tool as
well as presenting various types of corpora.
Chapter 2 describes different kinds of corpus analysis (frequency analysis,
concordancing, word lists, cluster (N-grams) analysis, and keyword analysis)
and types of statistical tests used in corpus linguistics (log-likelihood,
t-score, mutual information, and type-token ratio). The chapter also
emphasizes the importance of combining quantitative and qualitative types of
corpus analysis.
Chapter 3 introduces the area of vocabulary research by pointing out the
significant role of vocabulary in language use and explains key terms in
vocabulary research (e.g., word, vocabulary, lexis, word form, lexeme, lemma,
word family, lexical items, and vocabulary knowledge). It also presents
examples of issues in vocabulary research which can be studied with
corpus-based analysis (e.g., polysemy of words, synonymy as a lexical
relation, metaphoricity and indiomaticity of words, and register variation).
Chapter 4 focuses on frequency by explaining how analysis of word occurrences
in corpora reveals the differences between spoken and written vocabulary and
the proportions of function words and content words in a language. The chapter
also discusses the usefulness of frequency in classifying vocabulary and
creating lexical profiles of individual tests as well as suggesting how
frequency-based information can be effectively employed by language teachers
and material developers.
Chapter 5 deals with phraseology and formulaic language. It shows how
corpus-based analyses can be employed to identify and categorize different
kinds of phraseological units. The chapter also presents how corpora can be
used to examine phraseological patterns and meanings.
Chapter 6 presents direct and indirect applications of corpus linguistics in
the process of teaching vocabulary. In terms of direct applications, corpora
are used to guide the design and development of syllabuses, textbooks,
reference books, dictionaries, pedagogical wordlists, online resources, and
teaching resources. In terms of indirect application, corpus data was used for
data driven learning in which learners themselves engaged in corpus analysis.
Chapter 7 focuses on learner corpora. It describes the characteristics of
learner corpora and types of methodologies that can be applied to analyze
learner data. The chapter also presents different ways in which learner
corpora can be used to examine L2 learners’ lexical competence and develop
teaching materials and assessment tools.
Chapter 8 highlights the importance of specialized corpora in vocabulary
research. It presents characteristics of specialized corpora and the way to
use these corpora to investigate specific uses of vocabulary and lexical
variation in a range of areas (English for Academic Purposes, English for
Specific Purposes, translation studies, literary linguistics, stylistics, and
sociolinguistics).
Chapter 9 examines the use of corpora to investigate vocabulary at the level
of discourse. The chapter presents the benefits of combining corpus and
discourse approaches in the analysis of the uses of words and phrases. The
chapter also discusses the importance of discourse oriented corpus research
for investigating the role of lexical features in discourse construction as
well as demonstrating how to use corpus techniques to analyze the pragmatic
functions of vocabulary use.
Chapter 10 ends the book with a summary of corpus-based vocabulary research
and directions for future projects. It points out the areas in vocabulary
research that are worth investigating with the assistance of corpus
techniques. Then, it presents a selection of ideas for corpus-based projects
that readers can undertake to examine different aspects of vocabulary.
EVALUATION
Corpus techniques have been widely used to explore different aspects of
vocabulary research. However, the widespread use of corpus linguistics in
vocabulary does not mean that the terms and techniques in corpus linguistics
are fully or widely understood by language teachers and researchers given the
highly technical nature of corpus linguistics (O’Keeffe, McCarthy, & Carter,
2007). Szudarski’s (2018) book, ‘Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary: A Guide
for Research’, provides its target audience with an excellent introduction to
a range of corpus-based tools and procedure to investigate different aspects
of vocabulary use and research.
What distinguishes this book from other publications in corpus linguistics, to
the best of my knowledge, is the fact that it is the first publication that
has specifically focused on vocabulary. Throughout ten chapters of the book,
Szudarski has covered the most important issues in vocabulary research and
skillfully linked them with corpus linguistics. The book begins with a brief
overview of corpus linguistics (Chapters 1 and 2) and vocabulary research
(Chapter 3). Then, it presents in detail how corpus-based tools and techniques
are used to investigate various aspects of vocabulary research: frequency
(Chapter 4), phraseology and formulaic language (Chapter 5), vocabulary
teaching (Chapter 6), learners’ vocabulary (Chapter 7), specialized vocabulary
(Chapter 8), and discourse (Chapter 9). The book ends with proposing some
potential vocabulary research projects which can make use of the corpus-based
tools presented in the previous chapters (Chapter 10). The wide range of
topics and the comprehensive structure of the book allow readers to clearly
see the link between corpus linguistics and vocabulary research as well as
being well aware of the value of using corpora to explore multiple aspects of
vocabulary research.
Considering that the target audience of his book do not have much knowledge in
corpus linguistics, Szudarski has managed to explain corpus-based tools and
techniques in a clear and accessible way. Numerous practical activities and
tasks with step-by step instruction and answer keys were designed to
familiarize readers with different aspects of corpus analysis. The author also
presents exemplary studies to show how the tools and techniques have been
applied in actual research. Importantly, Szudarski does not just stop at
presenting the tools but also providing readers with ideas for future research
projects. This is particularly useful for those who are new to corpus-based
vocabulary research.
Another remarkable point of this book is the information presented in the
chapters. Throughout the book, Szudarski has made a great effort to provide
readers with the most updated information in the field of vocabulary and
corpus linguistics. This is particularly useful for not only novice
researchers but also researchers with experience doing corpus-based vocabulary
research. Moreover, when presenting the tools, Szudarski intentionally
introduces free available web-based resources. These resources are very useful
for teachers and researchers, especially those who are under financial
constraints.
However, it might be more useful if the following issues are considered in
further editions. To begin with, instead of presenting only the chapter
titles, the table of contents should provide more information about the main
sections of each chapter. This would provide readers with a better overview of
the book’s structure, which would allow them to see the links among chapters
easily and quickly track down the desired information. Similarly, a short
introduction at the beginning of each chapter which provides the map of the
chapter would make the book more reader-friendly. Additionally, at the end of
each chapter, apart from a list of references cited in the chapter, it may be
helpful to add another section which lists three to five key further readings
together with some brief sentences about the information that readers may find
useful from these references. This would provide beginning researchers with a
better orientation in the selection of their reading materials.
In spite of these minor drawbacks, ‘Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary: A Guide
for Research’ is an excellent book which has nicely brought together corpus
linguistics and vocabulary, two areas that have received growing interest from
researchers in the field of Applied Linguistics. The book is definitely a
valuable resource for students, teachers, and researchers who would like to
conduct corpus-based research in vocabulary studies but have little or no
experience in corpus analysis. Also, the book may be useful for researchers
who have done some work on a certain aspect of corpus-based vocabulary
research and would like to expand their scope to other aspects in this area.
Together with Read’s (2000) ‘Assessing vocabulary’, Schmitt’s (2010)
‘Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual’, Nation and Webb’s
(2011), ‘Researching and analyzing vocabulary’, and Meara and Miralpeix’s
(2016) Tools for Researching Vocabulary’, Szudarski’s (2018) book is a
must-read book for researchers who are interested in the field of vocabulary.
REFERENCES
Meara, P., & Miralpeix, I. (2016). Tools for Researching Vocabulary. Bristol:
Multilingual Matters.
Nation, I. S. P., & Webb, S. (2011). Researching and analyzing vocabulary.
Boston: Heinle, Cengage Learning.
O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom:
Language use and language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Read, J. (2000). Assessing vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitt, N. (2010). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Thi Ngoc Yen Dang is a Lecturer at Vietnam National University, Hanoi. She
obtained her PhD from Victoria University of Wellington. Her research
interests include vocabulary studies and corpus linguistics. Her articles have
been published in Language Learning, English for Specific Purposes, Journal of
English for Academic Purposes, and ITL-International Journal of Applied
Linguistics.
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