USING CORPORA TO AID QUALITATIVE TEXT ANALYSIS

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Authors

Keywords:

Corpora, text analysis, wordlist, keyness, dispersion plot, corpus building

Abstract

Aim. The aim of this paper is to present and exemplify a number of basic uses of corpus-based text analysis tools that can supplement and provide additional insight for an otherwise qualitative analysis of a text. I attempt to show that nowadays certain corpus tools are easily accessible to any researcher and can be used to enrich the results of studies concerned with texts. 

Methods. This paper comprises the basics of corpus building, the main types of data that can be drawn from a simple corpus and a detailed description of four methods that can aid text analysis: wordlists, concordances, dispersion plots and keywords. Each of those four methods is thoroughly described, including a number of examples of its applications and indicates its possible limitations.

Results. The examples provided suggest that even performing a very simple corpus analysis of a text might unveil certain trends and phenomena not noticeable through the classic qualitative text analysis methods (e.g. close reading). The paper argues that corpus research can hence work as an extension of a quantitative analysis (or be its starting point) by examining themes and keywords present in a given text and enrich the results of a qualitative study with a fresh perspective. Finally, the paper claims that basic corpus analysis can, in fact, be successfully employed by researchers who do not have any prior experience with statistics or corpora.

 

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Author Biography

Jędrzej Olejniczak, University of Wrocław

1. Doctoral Student (University of Wrocław)
2. Corpus linguistics, digital humanities, translation studies, literary and academic translation, translation teaching methodology
3. Language editor: Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia, Between

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Published

2018-09-05

How to Cite

Olejniczak, J. (2018). USING CORPORA TO AID QUALITATIVE TEXT ANALYSIS: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 9(2), 154–164. Retrieved from https://ogrodynauk.pl/index.php/jecs/article/view/10.15503jecs20182.154.164