29.3447, Review: Applied Linguistics; Lexicography; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Szudarski (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3447. Fri Sep 07 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3447, Review: Applied Linguistics; Lexicography; Text/Corpus Linguistics: Szudarski (2017)

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Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2018 09:53:47
From: Tyler Anderson [tanderso at coloradomesa.edu]
Subject: Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-4096.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: Tyler Kimball Anderson, Colorado Mesa University

SUMMARY

Paweł Szudarski’s manuscript serves as an introduction to the field of corpus
linguistics, with a particular focus on vocabulary. The author writes with the
language learner in mind, providing corpus linguistic research techniques that
can be implemented in the classroom and beyond. The book likewise takes into
consideration the language teacher, with the hopes of offering tools to answer
central questions, such as which words should the language student be exposed
to. While the focus of the book is on English language corpora, the techniques
that are explained can easily be transferred to other language corpora that
utilize some of the same interfaces mentioned in the book, such as Davies’
corpora for Spanish and Portuguese.

The book begins with a brief introduction, followed by Chapter 1, “What is
corpus linguistics?”. As would be expected, here the reader is presented with
a working definition of ‘corpus’, followed by a discussion of benefits and
limitations of corpus analysis. The chapter ends with a brief evaluation of
various types of corpora. Chapter 2 “Corpus analysis: Tools and statistics”
then turns to the types of tools used in corpus studies, including frequency
analysis, wordlists, and keywords; the chapter continues with a discussion on
statistical tests included in most corpora interfaces. The author concludes
the chapter by discussing the need to combine these quantitative analyses and
with qualitative approaches. The second focus--vocabulary--takes center stage
in Chapter 3, where the reader is provided with terminology and
conceptualizations of “What is Vocabulary?”. Here the author defines ‘word
families’, ‘lexemes’ and ‘lemmas’, among other relevant terms. As part of this
chapter the author discusses further the utility of corpus techniques for
research related to vocabulary. 

In Chapter 4 the reader is presented with details regarding the importance of
“Frequency and vocabulary” in corpus analysis. Several concepts (e.g. Zipf’s
law and the distinction between core and advanced vocabulary) are discussed,
along with how these concepts can be applied in the language classroom.
Chapter 5 continues the discussion of frequency, this time with an eye on
multiword units; here the reader is introduced to phraseology (the study of
word combinations) and formulaic language. Several more terms are defined and
exemplified, including lexical priming, colligations and collocations.
Throughout the chapter, the author presents concrete practices for applying
these concepts using the British National Corpus as well as the Corpus of
Contemporary American English. 

The author switches focus from corpus analysis to data driven learning, or the
direct use of corpora in the language teaching process. In Chapter 6 “Corpora
and teaching vocabulary,” Szudarski demonstrates how corpora can facilitate
the presentation and acquisition of vocabulary through both direct and
indirect means. One of the direct benefits of corpora use in language teaching
is the ability to increase exposure to the target language. Indirectly,
corpora have begun to be instrumental in the development of dictionaries and
language textbooks, which have taken advantage of the natural language
promoted by corpora as a substitute for the common use of vocabulary in
contrived settings. This chapter also includes a list of websites that are
useful for vocabulary expansion in students.

Chapter 7 “Corpora and learner vocabulary” continues with the theme of
language learners and corpora, but now with a focus on what the learners
themselves produce. The creation of such corpora and how to compare target
language use with that of native users are discussed. In particular, Szudarski
discusses the notion of studying target language lexical growth via
longitudinal comparisons by means of learner corpora. Also included in the
chapter is a discussion of how corpus linguistics can help in language
assessment, with specific focus on the English Profile Project. The author
shifts from learner corpora to other “Specialized corpora and vocabulary” in
Chapter 8. As the author notes, one of the criticisms of corpus linguistics is
that the content is very general. Specialized corpora represent a particular
type of discourse, and thus allow for better analyses regarding specific
domains. Such investigations can focus on genre (e.g. fiction vs. academic),
register (e.g. speech vs. newspapers), language for a specific purposes (e.g.
court trials), specialized vocabulary and academic English. 

In Chapter 9 “Discourse, pragmatics and vocabulary”, the notion of discourse
is defined, and the author then demonstrates how the fields of discourse
analysis and corpus linguistics can be united to mutually inform
investigations. As this tome’s focus is on vocabulary, the author particularly
emphasizes the lexical features of discourse. The chapter concludes with a
discussion of pragmatics and corpus linguistics, including how the latter can
inform such areas as speech acts and semantic prosody. The book concludes with
Chapter 10 “Summary and research projects”, where the author presents ideas
for future research in corpus linguistics; several projects for implementation
in the classroom are also included.

EVALUATION

Paweł Szudarski’s manuscript serves as a welcome addition to the field of
corpus linguistics. The book is very accessible and is written in such a way
that those with minimal contact with the topic will be able to take advantage
of the wealth of expertise included in this volume. Experts in the field will
also find useful insights into how to implement corpus linguistics in the
study of vocabulary and classroom implementation. Only rarely does the author
seem to lose focus of his target audience; for example, in initial chapters he
uses specialized terms that have yet to be introduced to the reader. These
instances aside, the book assuredly reaches its target audience. 

The title of the book is somewhat misleading, as the main purpose of the book
is to provide a practical guide and introduction to those with little or no
experience in corpus analysis. The title, however, makes it appear that one
will find ample information on how to carry out academic research. Perhaps the
use of the word ‘introduction’ in the title would have been merited. The
author does, however, include ample examples of actual investigations that
have used corpora as an instrument in their studies; these serve as models for
future research. 

Overall, there is a great flow to the book, with only minimal errata. The
chapter contents are well thought out, well organized and include great
section headings that aid the reader in understanding the material; each
chapter likewise concludes with a brief summary of the content. Throughout the
book, the author is adept at keeping the entire purpose of the manuscript in
mind. A great example of this is the conclusion of Chapter 3, where the author
presents examples of research questions, and then indicates that future
chapters will answer each of the questions. The author also skillfully
recycles information from previous chapters without making the information
redundant. 

Included in this book are all sections that one would expect to find in an
introductory tome on corpus linguistics and vocabulary. One of the deliberate
limitations of this tome is the lack of focus on languages other than English.
This book can greatly inform future tomes focusing on the creation and use of
corpora from other languages, which are in constant growth. 

Throughout the book the author has included brief tasks which provide the
reader with opportunities to put into practice the concepts being presented.
These tasks serve as transitions from the presentation of theoretical
information to how this information can be applied. Practical in nature, these
tasks utilize some of the more recognized corpora (e.g., British National
Corpus) as well as less familiar resources (e.g. Asian Corpus of English). The
tasks are well thought out, practical and easy to accomplish. This being said,
much more instruction on how to carry out the tasks is required. The novice
that is trying to manipulate the differing interfaces of the selected corpora
will simply flounder due to the lack of guidance that is provided. An
additional critique of these tasks is their presentation. While each is
presented in a grayed-out box, some include instructions for the task in the
boxes themselves, while others are presented in paragraphs either preceding or
following the box, and yet others provide no instructions at all; greater
consistency is needed in their presentation. 

In order to facilitate comprehension, the author provides screenshots of the
corpora discussed in the chapters and used in the tasks. Some images contain
text that is so small that only by the use of a magnifying glass would one be
able to read the contents (i.e. Figure 2.6). In another instance, the task
that is being referenced in the screenshot focuses on verbs, while the image
itself shows how to look for nouns (Figure 8.1). These criticisms aside,
overall the images are beneficial and aid in helping the reader understand the
concepts being presented.

As mentioned previously, in the introductory chapters the author tends to
present some concepts without providing enough detail to make the presentation
useful. For example, in Chapter 2 the author briefly introduces ‘type-token
ratios’, without adequately exemplifying the concept or how to calculate it.
Of particular concern was the presentation of terminology in Chapter 3, which
was at times confusing, lacking examples, and perhaps out of order. For
example, the author uses the term ‘word family’ throughout the initial part of
the chapter without defining it until some three pages later. While the
definitions were concrete and accurate, the failure to point out to the reader
that the concept will be treated in greater detail in future chapters hindered
comprehension.

While most of the sections presented information using an adequate balance of
both succinctness and detail, some areas appeared to have missed the mark. For
example, at one point the author states that the concept of ‘lexico-grammar’
occupies a central position in corpus linguistics, but then only dedicates one
paragraph to the topic (p. 75). At another point, the author discusses the
potential for interaction between corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics, but
subsequently only dedicates a little over a page to the topic of age- and
gender-differentiated corpora; a deeper treatment would have been beneficial
to the reader. 

These omissions aside, Szudarski’s book achieves the goal of presenting corpus
linguistics to those inexperienced in the field and indicates how corpus
linguistics can greatly enhance lexical studies and lexical awareness. Of
particular benefit was the discussion of lexical frequency, first presented in
Chapter 2 and then again in greater detail in Chapter 4. The author adeptly
recycles information from one chapter to another, as witnessed in the
presentation of ‘multiword units’ in Chapter 5. Here terms such as
‘collocation’ and ‘colligation’ are contrasted and exemplified. Similarly, the
presentation throughout the book of tasks, academic articles and research
projects greatly enhance the future scholar in corpus linguistics. While the
book will most likely not spur future investigations by experts in the field,
the ideas that are presented will enable budding scholars to develop their own
lines of research that implement corpora. 

The appearance of “Corpus linguistics for vocabulary: A guide for research” is
a much-needed addition to the field of corpus linguistics. It will serve as a
reference guide to students, teachers and future researchers who have an
interest in vocabulary use and development. Szudarski inspires future research
using corpora and provides an accessible resource to those interested in how
to use them for researching vocabulary. 

REFERENCES

Davies, Mark. 2017. El corpus del español. http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/
(Accessed 28 March 2018)

Davies, Mark. 2015. O corpus do portugués. http://www.corpusdoportugues.org/
(Accessed 28 March 2018)


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Tyler K. Anderson is Associate Professor of Spanish at Colorado Mesa
University, where he teaches courses in language, linguistics and second
language acquisition. His research interests include language attitudes toward
manifestations of contact linguistics, including the acceptability of lexical
borrowing and code-switching in Spanish and English contact situations. He is
currently researching the perceptions of phonetic interference in second
language acquisition.





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