Inferring Variation and Change from Public Corpora

Bauer, Laurie

doi:10.1002/9780470756591.ch4

Cited by 12 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…2005; Kretzschmar et al. 2006; Kendall 2007a, see also Bauer 2004). Beal, Corrigan, and Moisl's recent two volumes (2007b,c), Creating and Digitizing Language Corpora , contain papers discussing a range of ‘unconventional’ corpora (from a corpus linguistic perspective) and, as such, have a great deal to offer to sociolinguists.…”

Section: Treating Speech As Data In the Twenty‐first Centurymentioning

confidence: 98%

On the History and Future of Sociolinguistic Data

Kendall¹

2008

Language and Linguist. Compass

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Recordings of natural speech play a central role in the diverse subdisciplines of linguistics. The reliance on speech recordings is especially profound in sociolinguistics, where scholars have developed a range of techniques for eliciting and analyzing natural speech. However, sociolinguists have rarely focused explicitly on the storage, management, and preservation of their data – the interfaces to their data – and this lack of focus has had consequences for the advancement of the field. In this essay, I briefly review the history of data‐management practices within sociolinguistics, insofar as these practices have been discussed in the literature. I then propose new ways to consider and approach natural speech recordings as data for sociolinguistic analysis and provide examples from the North Carolina Sociolinguistic Archive and Analysis Project, a Web‐based digitization and preservation project, to highlight the analytical as well as theoretical benefits of more rigorous considerations of ‘data’ within sociolinguistics.

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Section: Treating Speech As Data In the Twenty‐first Centurymentioning

confidence: 98%

On the History and Future of Sociolinguistic Data

Kendall¹

2008

Language and Linguist. Compass

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“…"conventional") corpora for sociolinguistic research applications (BENDER, 2002;BAUER, 2004;ANDERSON, 2008;ROMAINE, 2008;BAKER, 2010). Baker's (2010) recent book, Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics, points out that the previous literature in these two fields indicates "that some form of 'corpus sociolinguistics' is possible, although it might appear that corpus linguistics has made only a relatively small impact on sociolinguistics" (BAKER, 2010, p. 1).…”

Section: Corpus-based Sociolinguisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, sociolinguistics is a field that has many natural connections to corpus linguistics, and these connections have not gone unnoticed. Several recent collections of papers (KRETZSCHMAR; ANDERSON; BEAL; CORRIGAN; OPAS-HÄNNINEN; PLICHTA, 2006;, articles (BAUER, 2004;ANDERSON, 2008;ROMAINE, 2008), and a book (BAKER, 2010) have explicitly explored some of the relationships between sociolinguistics and corpus linguistics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corpora from a sociolinguistic perspective

Kendall

2011

Rev. bras. linguist. apl.

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In this paper, I consider the use of corpora in sociolinguistic research and, more broadly, the relationships between corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics. I consider the distinction between "conventional" and "unconventional" corpora (Beal et al. 2007a, b) and assess why conventional corpora have not had more traction in sociolinguistics. I then discuss the potential utility of corpora for sociolinguistic study in terms of the recent trajectory of sociolinguistic research interests (Eckert under review), acknowledging that, while many sociolinguists are increasingly using more advanced corpus-based techniques, many are, at the same time, moving away from corpus-like studies. I suggest two primary areas where corpus developers, both sociolinguistic and non-, could focus to develop more useful corpora: Corpora containing a wider range of non-standard (spoken) varieties and more flexible annotation and treatment of spoken language data. KEYWORDS: Sociolinguistics; conventional and unconventional corpora; spoken language corpora; data management; annotation methods. RESUMO: Neste artigo considero o uso de corpora na pesquisa sociolingüística e, de modo mais geral, a relação entre a linguística de corpus e a sociolinguística. Reflito sobre a distinção entre corpora "convencionais" e "não-convencionais" (BEAL ET AL. 2007 a, b) e avalio o porquê de corpora convencionais não terem atraído mais atenção no campo da sociolinguística. Na sequência, discuto a utilidade potencial de corpora para os estudos sociolingüísticos em termos da trajetória recente que tem sido adotada pela pesquisa nesta área (ECKHERT, em avaliação), reconhecendo que, se por um lado, muitos sociolinguistas têm ampliado o seu uso de técnicas avançadas da linguística de corpus, por outro, muitos estão, ao mesmo tempo, se afastando de estudos relaciados a corpora. Sugiro duas áreas principais nas quais compiladores de corpora, independentemente de serem sociolingüísticos ou não, poderiam enfocar para desenvolverem corpora mais úteis: corpora contendo uma amplitude maior de variedades (faladas )não-padrão e um esquema mais flexível de anotação e tratamento de dados orais. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Sociolinguística; corpora convencionais e não-convencionais; corpora orais; gerenciamento de dados; métodos de anotação.

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“…], variation (which may indicate change in progress) can also be discovered in simple corpora, because the set of texts used in a corpus can never be stylistically completely homogeneous. (Bauer 2002: 110)…”

Section: Linguistic and Sociolinguistic Research With Corporamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sociolinguistics, of course, has a need for large, balanced samples of authentic data, whether or not the term ‘corpus’ is used to describe those that are textual in nature. Bauer (2002: 109) notes, for example, that ‘all variationist studies are corpus‐based, but most of the corpora have not been public ones.’ 2 That is to say, much work in sociolinguistics is carried out on relatively small, focused collections of texts created for private research. ‘Corpus linguistics’ is used here with an equally broad scope, to include all research that exploits corpora: that which draws on data and texts from a corpus to test existing hypotheses, as well as research that uses representative corpora to generate insights into language (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corpus Linguistics in the UK: Resources for Sociolinguistic Research

Anderson

2008

Language and Linguist. Compass

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Sociolinguistics has always relied on authentic data, and is increasingly finding value in the methods and textual resources developed by corpus linguists. This article begins by surveying current activity in corpus linguistics in the UK in terms of publications, conferences and networks, and then outlines the range of research currently ongoing, with a particular focus on corpus resources that are readily available and likely to be of use to sociolinguists. This includes general corpora, specialized corpora, and corpora of regional or historical varieties, as well as tools and initiatives for standardization and data‐sharing, which aim to allow users to exploit corpora as fully as possible. The focus is largely on corpora of English, but corpora of other languages are also considered. The discussion treats corpora from the point of view of their availability and the provision of accompanying metadata, both issues central to effective sociolinguistic enquiry.

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Inferring Variation and Change from Public Corpora

Cited by 12 publications

References 16 publications

On the History and Future of Sociolinguistic Data

On the History and Future of Sociolinguistic Data

Corpora from a sociolinguistic perspective

Corpus Linguistics in the UK: Resources for Sociolinguistic Research

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