Corpus-assisted discourse studies


Corpus-assisted discourse studies, or CADS, is related historically and methodologically to the discipline of corpus linguistics. The principal endeavor of corpus-assisted discourse studies is the investigation, and comparison of features of particular discourse types, integrating into the analysis the techniques and tools developed within corpus linguistics. These include the compilation of specialised corpora and analyses of word and word-cluster frequency lists, comparative keyword lists and, above all, concordances.
A broader conceptualisation of corpus-assisted discourse studies would include any study that aims to bring together corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. Such research is often labelled as corpus-based or corpus-assisted discourse analysis, with the term CADS coined by a research group in Italy for a specific type of corpus-based discourse analysis.

Aims

Corpus-assisted discourse studies aim to uncover non-obvious meaning, that is, meaning which might not be readily available to naked-eye perusal. Much of what carries meaning in texts is not open to direct observation: “you cannot understand the world just by looking at it”. We use language “semi-automatically”, in the sense that speakers and writers make semi-conscious choices within the various complex overlapping systems of which language is composed, including those of transitivity, modality, lexical sets, modification, and so on. Authors themselves are, famously, generally unaware of all the meanings their texts convey. By combining the quantitative research approach, that is, statistical analysis of large amounts of the discourse in question - more precisely, large numbers of tokens of the discourse type under study contained in a corpus - with the more qualitative research approach typical of discourse analysis, that is, the close, detailed examination of particular stretches of discourse it may be possible to better understand the processes at play in the discourse type and to gain access to non-obvious meanings.
Aims can differ in other types of corpus-based or corpus-assisted discourse analysis; but in general such studies combine quantitative and qualitative research and aim to shed light on discourses, registers, discourse patterns, etc., with the help of a corpus linguistic approach. Specific aims and techniques depend on the relevant project.

In different countries

Traditional corpus linguistics has, quite naturally, tended to privilege the quantitative approach. In the drive to produce more authentic dictionaries and grammars of a language, it has been characterised by the compilation of some very large corpora of heterogeneric discourse types in the desire to obtain an overview of the greatest quantity and variety of discourse types possible, in other words, of the chimerical but useful fiction called the “general language”. This has led to the construction of immensely valuable research tools such as the Bank of English and the British National Corpus. Some branches of corpus linguistics have also promoted an approach that is "corpus-driven", in which we need, grammatically speaking, a mental tabula rasa to free ourselves of the baleful prejudice exerted by traditional models and allow the data to speak entirely for itself.
The aim of corpus-assisted discourse studies and related approaches is radically different. Here the aim of the exercise is to acquaint oneself as much as possible with the discourse type in hand. Researchers typically engage with their corpus in a variety of ways. As well as via wordlists and concordancing, intuitions for further research can also arise from reading or watching or listening to parts of the data-set, a process which can help provide a feel for how things are done linguistically in the discourse-type being studied.
Corpus-assisted discourse analysis is also typically characterised by the compilation of ad hoc specialised corpora, since very frequently there exists no previously available collection of the discourse type in question. Often, other corpora are utilized in the course of a study for purposes of comparison. These may include pre-existing corpora or may themselves need to be compiled by the researcher. In some sense, all work with corpora – just as all work with discourse - is properly comparative. Even when a single corpus is employed, it is used to test the data it contains against another body of data. This may consist of the researcher's intuitions, or the data found in reference works such as dictionaries and grammars, or it may be statements made by previous authors in the field.

CADS as a specific type of corpus-based discourse analysis

Researchers in Italy have developed CADS as a specific type of corpus-based discourse analysis, creating a standard set of methods:
'A basic, standard methodology in CADS may resemble the following:'
  1. Step 1: Decide upon the research question;
  2. Step 2: Choose, compile or edit an appropriate corpus;
  3. Step 3: Choose, compile or edit an appropriate reference corpus / corpora;
  4. Step 4: Make frequency lists and run a keywords comparison of the corpora;
  5. Step 5: Determine the existence of sets of key items;
  6. Step 6: Concordance interesting key items ;
  7. Step 7: refine the research question and return to Step 2.
This basic procedure can of course vary according to individual research circumstances and requirements.
A particular way of conceptualising research questions has also been proposed in such CADS projects:
  1. How does P achieve G with language?
  2. What does this tell us about P?
  3. Comparative studies: how do P1 and P2 differ in their use of language? Does this tell us anything about their different principles and objectives?
A second general type of CADS research question, which might be asked of interactive discourse data, has been conceptualised as follows:
Another common type of research question has been conceptualised thus:
This is a classic “hypothesis-testing” research question: we test the hypothesis that whatever practice has been observed by a previous author in some discourse type will be observable in another. It is a process we might call para-replication, that is, the replication of an experiment with either a fresh set of texts of the same discourse type or of a related discourse type, “in order to see whether were an artefact of one single data set”.
A final example of conceptualising a CADS research question is the following:
Such research aims to ascertain whether different participants use a particular linguistic feature in the same or different ways. The research may proceed to attempt to explain why this is the case.

Some research to date

Studies that bring together corpus linguistics and discourse analysis include the following: