Corpora: Uses of corpora in research into academic discourse

[Paul Thompson]

I am preparing to write a review article on the uses that have been made
of corpora in the study of academic discourse, such as in :

* research into the vocabulary or grammar of academic discourse
* rhetorical or discourse analysis of academic discourse
* the preparation of teaching materials for Language for Specific
Purposes (for example, EAP) courses
* the provision of data for students to investigate either in language
learning courses or in language study courses
* study of discourse varieties, or in cross-linguistic comparisons

I’d like to ask members of the corpora list who have used corpora for
any of the above purposes (or know of others who have) the following
questions:

What corpus/corpora did you work with? How was the corpus compiled? What
format is/was it in? Is it publicly available?

How was the corpus analyzed / investigated? How many people,
approximately, have used the corpus (if it is possible to put a figure
on this)?

When was the research / teaching done, and were there any end products,
such as software, books, journal articles?

Please reply directly to me, rather than to the list, and I will publish
a summary of the responses, towards the end of May.

Many thanks in advance for your cooperation, and apologies to those who
have no interest in the subject!

Paul



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Dr Paul Thompson
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Language Resource Centre
P. O. Box 241
The University of Reading
Reading RG6 6WB
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