[Corpora-List] Corpus vs Intuition

[Mai Zaki]

Dear colleagues,
 
My question may be a bit basic but I would appreciate your feedback. 
My own research is corpus-based and I am working in the field of lexical semantics/pragmatics where the majority of the literature is based on made-up examples and testing of native speakers' intuitions. So, I still get stuck in my discussions with others trying to convince them that corpus work and real life examples add a different angle to any research. The usual objections are that it's not about numbers and percentages, and that patterns of use are questionable because of the issue of how representative they are. 
I want to include in my own work a part about the advantages of corpus-based work as opposed to arm-chair linguistics, and I would appreciate if you could guide me to any references on this topic as well as your own ideas. 
 
Thank you. 
 
Mai Zaki
Middlesex University

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