This paper uses a type of social scientific data, obtained by semi-structured interviewing, to investigate the extent to which and the ways in which corpus linguistics methods contribute to research in the field of Religious Studies, and in the humanities and social sciences at large. The corpus consists of 73 interviews (357,788 words) with minority communities living in the UK, from various religious (Muslims, Hindus and Christians), ethnic and cultural backgrounds. All interviewees had a strong religious identity and were considered to be well-integrated into British society; either economically, socially, or both. These interviews were conducted in 2005 as part of a government-commissioned study broadly oriented to policy-makers, but located within the disciplinary approach of Religious Studies. Here, we examine how the various communities perceived the role played by their religious faith in the process of establishing themselves in Britain. The analysis seeks to identify common patterns of self-representation, that is, discourse patterns that contribute to the collective representation of each group, focussing on patterns cutting across groups. The major contribution of this paper is to assess how corpus linguistics methods can complement, refine and offer new insights to the type of discourse analysis currently established within the humanities. At the same time, we seek to test the limits of corpus methods, given the data might not be either qualitatively or quantitatively apt in all respects for corpus techniques.
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