Events

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2024 - May 10  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Identifying situational characteristics of conversation through a mixed-methods register approach

Guest speakers: Elizabeth Hanks (Northern Arizona University)

Friday, May 10 at 8:30am (MT)

Join the Zoom meeting here:

https://nau.zoom.us/j/81965588533?pwd=WmtsYyt3c1BSQmJ0bHdCQS9MRGVyQT09

Meeting ID: 819 6558 8533

Password: 123

Abstract: Research on conversation has informed creation of language learning materials and corpora as well as enhanced understanding of pragmatics, register variation, and prosody; however, there is no widely agreed upon understanding of what constitutes ‘conversation.’ Various operationalizations of conversation differ in terms of their applicability to different purposes (e.g., phatic and/or task-based interaction), formats (e.g., even and/or uneven interlocutor contributions), production constraints (e.g., planned and/or unplanned), and modalities (e.g., spoken and/or written). This lack of consistency in defining and reporting register can inhibit replicability of results while also increasing the risk of overgeneralized findings. To promote consistency in corpus research, the present study develops a comprehensive description of the register of conversation through a mixed-methods approach. Findings from a literature review, systematic review, and interview data suggest that the register of conversation is more broad than previously believed. Implications for research design will be discussed.

2024 - April 26 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Group Check-in

Friday, April 26 from 1:00-1:45pm

LA 111A

Join this meeting to discuss our experience analyzing jury instructions so far and to identify uniform methods we can apply to all words going forward.

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - April 19 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Open Lab

Friday, April 19 from 12:00am-2:00pm

LA 111A

Drop in to work on corpus analyses of jury instructions with other members. This is a great option if you have questions about the methods, would like to set aside work time to keep yourself accountable, and/or want to brainstorm/socialize with other club members

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - April 12 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Group Check-in

Friday, April 12 from 1:00-1:45pm

LA 111A

Join this meeting to discuss our experience analyzing jury instructions so far and to identify uniform methods we can apply to all words going forward.

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - April 5 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Open Lab

Friday, April 5 from 12:00am-2:00pm

LA 111A

Drop in to work on corpus analyses of jury instructions with other members. This is a great option if you have questions about the methods, would like to set aside work time to keep yourself accountable, and/or want to brainstorm/socialize with other club members

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - March 29 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Group Check-in

Friday, March 29 from 1:00-2:00pm

LA 111A

Join this meeting to discuss our experience analyzing jury instructions so far and to identify uniform methods we can apply to all words going forward.

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - March 22 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Open Lab

Friday, March 22 from 11:00am-1:45pm

LA 111A

Drop in to work on corpus analyses of jury instructions with other members. This is a great option if you have questions about the methods, would like to set aside work time to keep yourself accountable, and/or want to brainstorm/socialize with other club members

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - March 8  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Politeness, impoliteness and corpus linguistics

Guest speaker: Dr. Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University)

Friday, March 8 at 9am (MT)

Within the domain of pragmatics, both politeness and impoliteness have been especially controversial because they are so difficult to define. Some scholars say they have nothing to do with linguistic form and instead rely on the judgements users make in a specific context; in other words, they are said to be fully pragmatic. If this is true, that creates a huge problem for the corpus linguist, who typically has form in focus, at least at some point. In this talk, I will discuss some of the issues and corpus solutions in studying (im)politeness, and in doing this I will (a) clarify our theoretical understanding of what (im)politeness is, and (b) cover some of the more general issues that attend corpus pragmatics. More specifically, I will look at the formal aspects of British (im)politeness and its metalanguage. Although I will focus on English, my general ideas could in principle apply to any language. I will conclude with a brief consideration of some of the aspects of (im)politeness for which corpus linguistics does not (yet) provide (easy) solutions.

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_NTFmOTM1ZjgtZmQxOS00NTg4LWFhZDAtM2U0MTE3ZWIxMTA5%40thread.v2/0?context=%7B%22Tid%22%3A%229c9bcd11-977a-4e9c-a9a0-bc734090164a%22%2C%22Oid%22%3A%2228f46791-855f-477b-84ea-7962852f3e49%22%2C%22IsBroadcastMeeting%22%3Atrue%2C%22role%22%3A%22a%22%7D&btype=a&role=a

2024 - March 1 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Group Check-in

Friday, March 1 from 1:00-2:00pm

GSAAL Lounge

Join this meeting to discuss our experience analyzing jury instructions so far and to identify uniform methods we can apply to all words going forward.

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - February 23 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions: Open Lab

Friday, February 23 from 11:00am-1:45pm

GSAAL Lounge

Drop in to work on corpus analyses of jury instructions with other members. This is a great option if you have questions about the methods, would like to set aside work time to keep yourself accountable, and/or want to brainstorm/socialize with other club members

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2024 - February 9 - Methods Series

Methods Series on Jury Instructions

Friday, February 9 at 1:00pm

GSAAL Lounge

The Corpus Club is delighted to announce our methods series, a semester-long project where we'll get hands-on practice with corpus methods while contributing to a worthwhile project. This semester, we will work on  a collaborative project with the two Language and Law PhD seminars, focusing on enhancing the clarity and comprehensibility of jury instructions in court cases. Unlike our previous events, this project will span multiple meetings with the goal of producing a finalized project or set of recommendations for improving jury instructions in state courts.

This gathering will serve as an initial meeting to brainstorm ideas and create smaller groups based on shared interests. Whether you're a seasoned expert in corpus linguistics or just beginning to explore the field, we encourage you to be a part of this exciting project.

This methods series provides a unique chance to engage in a real-world application of corpus linguistics with the bonus of a valuable addition to your CV. Don't hesitate to join, even if you have no prior experience in corpus linguistics.

2023 - December 8  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Linguistic variation across conversational discourse types: Overview of the project and selected research findings

Guest speakers: Dr. Doug Biber (Northern Arizona University) and Dr. Jesse Egbert (Northern Arizona University)

Friday, December 8 at 9am (MT)

https://nau.zoom.us/j/81758342518?pwd=OGtyaWF6NG1SaWplc1JaeVphMDFJUT09

Meeting ID: 817 5834 2518

Password: 123

2023 - November 15  

Corpus & Conviviality

Wednesday, November 15 at 11:30am in the GSAAL Lounge

Join us for a corpus social, that is, an informal get-together where we can learn about each other's research projects, brainstorm about future projects, and just spend some time together to build a community. Those who (a) already use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, (b) would like to use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, or (c) are "corpus curious" and would like to learn more are all invited.

2023 - November 3 - Discussion

Law and Corpus Linguistics Conference Reflection

Friday, November 3 at 12:30pm

GSAAL lounge

In this discussion, we'll reflect on the Law and Corpus Linguistics conference, sharing insights about the talks,  research, and overall experience.  Both those who attended the conference and those who didn't are invited to join the discussion. 

2023 - September 8  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

The effect of the reference corpus on mean-frequency measures of lexical sophistication

Guest speakers: Dr. Raffaella Bottini (Lancaster University) and Elen Le Foll (University of Cologne) 

Friday, September 8 at 9am (MT)

Join the Teams meeting here: join 

Abstract: Measures of lexical sophistication quantify “the proportion of relatively unusual or advanced words” in a text, “appropriate to the topic and style” of the communicative event (Read, 2000:200-203). Mean-frequency metrics, in particular, compute the average frequency value of a text by extracting a frequency score for each of its words using a reference corpus: the lower the mean frequency score of a text, the more sophisticated its vocabulary. Brysbaert and New (2009) argue that the choice of a reference corpus that matches the register of the target texts to be analysed is crucial, and Tidball and Treffers-Daller (2008) suggest the use of spoken reference corpora in research on L2 speech. Similarly, Egbert (2017) highlights the importance of a reference corpus’ situational variables. However, studies on lexical sophistication often rely on a mixture of written and spoken corpora, without matching the mode and/or register of the reference corpora to the target texts. In addition, spoken reference corpora frequently consist of scripted language. The fact that the representativeness of the reference corpus and its comparability to the target texts are rarely evaluated raises serious validity and generalisability issues. In this study, we compute mean-frequency scores of lexical sophistication in L2 English, comparing different reference corpora to investigate the effect of register on lexical sophistication scores. To this end, we analyse texts from the ICNALE corpus, a unique dataset of over 3 million words of written and spoken L2 English (ranging from A2 to B2 CEFR proficiency levels) with which we can control for the potential effects of topic and production time (Ishikawa, 2023). We show that the mode and register of the reference corpus greatly influence mean-frequency scores of lexical sophistication in learner texts of all proficiency. Our results thus raise questions on the reliability of mean-frequency measures of lexical sophistication, as well as the replicability of studies relying on these measures and their potential for cumulative knowledge building.

2023 - May 5  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Using keyword co-occurrence analysis to investigate common discourses of climate change across pseudoscience and consipracy websites

Guest speaker: Dr. Isobelle Clarke, Lancaster University

Friday, May 5 at 8am (MT)

Join the Teams meeting here: join 

2023 - March 27   

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Teaching Link

Discussion group for graduate students

Topic: Larsson, T., Egbert, J., & Biber, D. (2022). On the status of statistical reporting versus linguistic description in corpus linguistics: A ten-year perspective. Corpora, 17(1), 137-157

Monday, March 27 at 8:30am (MT)

Contact Lizzy Hanks (eah472@nau.edu) for the Teams meeting link

2023 - February 3  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Key feature analysis: A simple, yet powerful method for comparing text varieties

Guest speaker: Dr. Jesse Egbert, Northern Arizona University

Friday, February 3 at 9am (MT)

Join the Zoom meeting here:  https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/68995308480 

2023 - February 3  - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus & Conviviality

Friday, February 3 at 10:15am at the HLC cafe

Join us for a corpus social, that is, an informal get-together where we can learn about each other's research projects, brainstorm about future projects, and just spend some time together to build a community. Those who (a) already use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, (b) would like to use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, or (c) are "corpus curious" and would like to learn more are all invited.

2022 - November 4  

Lancaster-Northern Arizona Corpus of American English Research Seminar Group

Obesity in the UK news: A corpus linguistic study

Guest speaker: Dr. Gavin Brookes, Lancaster University

Friday, November 4 at 9am (MT)

Contact Isobelle Clarke (i.clarke@Lancaster.ac.uk) to RSVP and be added to the Teams call

2022 - November 4  - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus & Conviviality

Friday, November 4 at 10:30am at the HLC cafe

Join us for a corpus social, that is, an informal get-together where we can learn about each other's research projects, brainstorm about future projects, and just spend some time together to build a community. Those who (a) already use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, (b) would like to use corpus methods in research and/or teaching, or (c) are "corpus curious" and would like to learn more are all invited.

2022 - September 8th - Friends of NAU dinner

Dinner with NAU alumni, faculty, current students, and friends before the American Association for Corpus Linguistics 2022 Conference hosted at NAU.

2021 - April 9th - Corpus Club meeting

Review of presentations at recent conferences (AAAL and TESOL)

2021 - February 1 9th - Corpus Club meeting

Phraseological Complexity in Languages Others Than English 

With Rachel Rubin and Nate Vandeweerd (UCLouvain|Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

2021 - January 129th - Corpus Club meeting

Q&A Session: Compiling Spoken Corpora

With Dr. Bill Crawford

2020 - September, 11th - Corpus Club meeting

PhD Candidate Larissa Goulart

Introduction to Antconc

TUTORIAL

RECORDING

2020 - April, 16th - Corpus Club meeting

PhD Candidate Larissa Goulart

Introduction to Sketch Engine

Sketch Engine is a corpus manager and text analysis software. This tool allows you to store a corpus, tag it, and conduct several linguistic analyses. You can also use Sketch Engine to explore one of the freely available corpora in the database, such as BAWE, BASE, BNC, and CHILDES. In this Corpus Club meeting, Larissa will first show the basic tools available on Sketch Engine and, then, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using Sketch Engine. You don't need to have a Sketch Engine account in order to participate in this meeting, but, if you want, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial on Sketch Engine's website.:  https://www.sketchengine.eu 

RECORDING

2019 Tuesday 12/3 - 2:30pm - 3:30pm

Dr. Veronika Laippala (University of Turku, FI)

Detecting registers in the multilingual Internet: Is it possible? And what to do with hybrids?

LA 123

2019 Thursday 11/21 

Dr. Tony Berber Sardinha (PUC-SP, BR)

Language on the screen: Television and cinema

HLC 2403

2019 Friday 11/22

Dr. Tony Berber Sardinha will lead a workshop on conducting a lexical MDA

Cline 131 (Practice and Production Studio)

2019 Tuesday 11/26 

Dr. Sam Laporte (University of Louvain, BE)

Construction Grammar and corpus linguistics: A match made in heaven?

Liberal Arts 123

2019 - November, 5th - GSAAL Talk

2:30 pm -3:30pm - Adverb placement in EFL writing: Going beyond syntactic transfer 

Invited Speaker: Tove Larsson

2019 - October, 22nd - Corpus Club meeting

2 - 3:45pm - Learner corpora

Invited speakers: Tove Larsson and William Crawford

2019 - October, 16th and 18th

Wednesday - 4-5pm; Friday 3:10 - 4:10pm

Introduction to COCA, Antconc and Sketch Engine 

With PhD student Larissa Goulart

2019 - September, 27th - GSAAL Public Talk

Text Linguistics and Textualism:  On the role of Linguist(ic)s in Legal Interpretation, with Dr. Egbert

2019 - September - Corpus Club Talk

Teaching English for Police Purposes in Poland. Challenges and Issues in Textbook Preparation, with  Dr. Stanisław Goźdź-Roszkowski

2019 - September - Corpus Club meeting

Alumni reunion preceding Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT) 2019 at NAU

2019 - June - Corpus Club meeting

L2RC – Corpus of second language research journal articles, with Dr. Luke Plonsky

2019 - May - Corpus Club meeting

Review of presentations at recent conferences and special events

2019 - April - Corpus Club meeting

Review of presentations at AAAL 2019 and other recent conferences

2019 - February - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus pragmatics, with Dr. Elnaz Kia

2019 - January - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus triangulation and assessment

2018 - December 

Public talk on Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) by visiting scholars Helmer Strik and Catia Cucchiarini (hosted by Okim Kang)

2018 - November

Introduction to COCA and Antconc

With PhD student Amanda Black

2018 - October - Corpus Club meeting

Re-visiting corpora in English for Nursing Purposes (ENP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP)

2018 - August - Corpus Club meeting

Using corpora in English for Nursing Purposes (ENP) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP)

2018 - July - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus investigations and theories of language

2018 - June - Corpus Club meeting

Corpus triangulation, academic language, and testing

2016 - October - Corpus Club meeting

Introduction to COCA – workshop for first-year Master’s students

2016 - September - Corpus Club meeting

Review of presentations at AACL 2016

2014 - March - Corpus Club meeting

corpus design and corpus linguistics methods mentoring with advanced Ph.D. students – Shelley Staples and Jesse Egbert

2013 - November - Corpus Club meeting

Student work in progress, with Shihua, Qiandi Liu, Seonmin Park, and Jersus Colmenares

2013 - October - Corpus Club meeting

Establishing Corpus Club (Randi Reppen, Doug Biber, Bill Crawford)