Introduction

[Christianna I White]

Greetings,

I am a 4th year student in the Rhetoric and Professional Communication
program at Iowa State University.  I am one incomplete away from totally
finishing my coursework and plan to tackle comprehensive and specialized
exams in the fall.   In my program of study, linguistics is my related
field.  I attended the 94 TESOL institute when it was here at ISU
(structure and function of English grammar from G. Yule and
Sociolinguistics from D. Preston) and I was hooked. I presented at a
Georgetown Linguistics Society Discourse Analysis conference in 1995 where
I was exposed to the possibilities of DA.

My dissertation (which my major prof assures me will be a Rhetoric
dissertation NOT a linguistics dissertation. . . sigh) methodology will be
a combination of corpus-based linguistic and rhetorical analyses.  My
dissertation data set is, at this time, still not fully defined.  I am
doing pilot work on a small corpus I constructed from three articles by the
same 2 researchers on Basilisk lizards (from Central America--they walk on
water) that appear in Scientific American, Journal of Experimental Biology,
and the Journal Nature.  The pilot involves looking at a closed set of
nominals in subject position in non-passive constructions; I use Vantage
Theory to argue that *more technical* texts focus on smaller parts and that
specialization can be demonstrated by analyzing these natural texts.

More than you wanted to know, I'm sure.  I also am a newsletter editor,
parent, avid reader, sometimes poet , and collector of manuals,
instructions, and quirky texts.

I searched the archive for corpora/corpus linguistics and came up empty,
but I'd sure be interested in connecting with others of you who have
interest in/experience with this approach.  I look forward to discussions
on this list.

chris

I  am going to the Corpus Linguistics conference in Ann Arbor next week;
will I see anyone else from this list there?
chris
* * *
don't count on anyone else to bring what you can't live without.