Corpora: Of importance to corpus and computational linguists in the UK onl y

[Mcenery, Tony]

Dear All,

those of us in corpus linguistics and computational linguistics in the UK are
undoubtedly aware of the 'benchmarking' process for Linguistics currently being
undertaken by QAA. The first draft of the benchmark document has been available
for some time now, and nowhere is corpus linguistics or corpora mentioned. This
is in spite of the fact that the document deals with both methodologies and
computational linguistics, two areas where corpora clearly should be mentioned.
You still have time to write to committee members and let them know that
corpora should be mentioned in any reasonable benchmarking document for
linguistics. But if you are going to do anything you must act SOON. The first
draft of "Academic Standards - Linguistics" is now available at the following
web address:

http://www.rceal.cam.ac.uk/benchmark.html

The Benchmarking Committee is making this draft available so that linguists can
comment  at a relatively early stage.  If you have any comments, there are
several ways you can respond:

You can comment directly via a link on the web page.
OR you can pass on your comments to members of the Benchmarking Committee
(listed on the web page)  Their meeting to do the second draft is 14 March, so
you have a month.
OR you can pass on you comments to any member of the BAAL Executive Committee
who are discussing it with a representative of the benchmarking committee on 27
March.

A full timetable of committee meetings and consultations is available on the
web page:  there are consultation meetings at LAGB (Leeds, April 7), the
Bilingual Symposium (Bristol, April 19), and CILT (London, April 20).  The last
committee meeting (the last chance for any changes) is June 1.

This is a crucial moment for corpus linguistics in the UK. The more pressure we
apply now the more likely it is that the benchmarks will acknowledge the
importance of corpora in linguistics. if they fail to do so, there could be
obvious pressure on corpus linguistics in the curriculum of linguistics
departments in the UK. Act now to avoid trouble later!

Best,

Dr. Tony McEnery,
Head of Department,
Reader in Multilingual Corpus Linguistics,
Dept. Linguistics & Modern English Language.