Importance of CL

Application of Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics is used for a variety of linguistic research but it also has a number of practical applications. The study of language with the use of real word texts or corpora is most often used in:

Lexicography. Corpus linguistics plays an important role in compiling, writing and revising dictionaries as within a few seconds, the linguist can get examples of words or phrases from millions of spoken and written texts. And since corpora continue to grow and are constantly being expanded with new texts, lexicographers have an instant access to up-to-date information.

Grammar. Just like lexicography, grammatical studies rely heavily on corpus linguistics and the use of corpora. Despite the fact that corpora do not represent the entire language, the huge amount of texts offers a reliable representation of the language to be able to conduct grammatical research as well as to test theoretical hypotheses. Sociolinguistics. Since corpora consist of real word texts and often include all sorts of written and spoken language ranging from literary works to the everyday language, they offer a valuable insight into how language varies from place to place and between different social groups.

Translation studies. Corpora which contain texts in several different languages are a valuable tool for translators as they make it easy to determine how particular words and their synonyms collocate and differ in practical use.

Language learning/teaching. A growing number of textbooks which are used for language learning/teaching contain texts from corpora

Importance of CL

rather than invented situations because they expose the students to real life situations.

Stylistics. Stylistics linguists do not use corpora as often as other researchers from the field of linguistics because they are interested in particular texts and authors. However, stylistics linguists who are interested in wider genres such as the language used by politicians, pop culture, advertising industry, etc. view corpora as an important source of information.

Dialectology. Corpora have been an important source of research for dialectology for a long time. The texts included in corpora are in their original form, including dialect which gives the linguists a priceless insight into geographical variation of a language.

Historical linguistics. Most linguists who use corpora as a source for their study are interested in contemporary language and its development. With the rise of the so-called historical corpora which consist of texts from particular historical periods or even dead language, however, corpora have become a valuable source for historical linguists. This is due to the fact that historical corpora offer an easy access to virtually all known historic books and manuscripts in electronic form.

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