Table Of ContentYearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics
Jesús Romero-Trillo Editor
Yearbook of Corpus
Linguistics and
Pragmatics 2013
New Domains and Methodologies
Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics
and Pragmatics 2013
YEARBOOK OF CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND PRAGMATICS
2013
Editor-in-Chief:
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Reviews Editor:
Dawn Knight, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
Advisory Editorial Board:
Karin Aijmer, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Belén Díez-Bedmar, Universidad de Jaén, Spain
Ronald Geluykens, University of Oldenburg, Germany
Anna Gladkova, University of New England, Australia
Stefan Gries, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Leo Francis Hoye, University of Hong Kong, China
Jingyang Jiang, Zhejiang University, China
Anne O’Keeffe, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland
Silvia Riesco-Bernier, Escuela Ofi cial de Idiomas de Madrid, Spain
Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, University of Ghent, Belgium
Anne Wichmann, University of Central Lancashire, UK
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/11559
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Editor
Yearbook of Corpus
Linguistics and Pragmatics
2013
New Domains and Methodologies
Editor
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Departamento de Filología Inglesa
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Madrid , Spain
ISSN 2213-6819 ISSN 2213-6827 (electronic)
ISBN 978-94-007-6249-7 ISBN 978-94-007-6250-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940618
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
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Contents
New Domains and Methodologies in Corpus Linguistics
and Pragmatics Research, an Introduction .................................................. 1
Jesús Romero-Trillo
Part I Current Theoretical Issues in Pragmatics
and Corpus Linguistics Research
Advancing the Research Agenda of Interlanguage Pragmatics:
The Role of Learner Corpora ........................................................................ 9
Marcus Callies
Corpus Linguistics and Conversation Analysis at the Interface:
Theoretical Perspectives, Practical Outcomes .............................................. 37
Steve Walsh
Small Corpora and Pragmatics ..................................................................... 53
Elaine Vaughan and Brian Clancy
Part II New Domains for Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics
Multiword Structures in Different Materials, and with Different
Goals and Methodologies ............................................................................... 77
Britt Erman , Margareta Lewis, and Lars Fant
Discourse Functions of Recurrent Multi-word Sequences
in Online and Spoken Intercultural Communication .................................. 105
Yen-Liang Lin
Formality in Digital Discourse: A Study of Hedging
in CANELC ..................................................................................................... 131
Dawn Knight , Svenja Adolphs, and Ronald Carter
v
vi Contents
A Corpus-Based Classifi cation of Commitments
in Business English .......................................................................................... 153
Rachele De Felice
Part III New Methodologies for the Pragmatic Analysis
of Speech Through Corpora
Can English Provide a Framework for Spanish
Response Tokens? ............................................................................................ 175
Carolina P. Amador-Moreno , Michael McCarthy ,
and Anne O’Keeffe
The Corpus of Language and Nature (CLAN Project)®:
A Tool for the Study of the Relationship Between Cognition
and Emotions in Language ............................................................................. 203
Jesús Romero-Trillo
System Networks as a Tool for the Pragmatic Analysis
of an EFL Spoken Corpus .............................................................................. 223
Silvia Riesco-Bernier
A Cultural Semantic and Ethnopragmatic Analysis
of the Russian Praise Words M olodec and Umnica
(with Reference to English and Chinese) ...................................................... 249
Anna Gladkova
Part IV Book Reviews
Corpus Linguistics: Methods, Theory and Practice
by Tony McEnery and Andrew Hardie ......................................................... 275
Dawn Knight
Cyberpragmatics. Internet-Mediated Communication
in Context by Francisco Yus ........................................................................... 279
Francisco Javier Díaz-Pérez
Author Index.................................................................................................... 285
Subject Index ................................................................................................... 291
New Domains and Methodologies in Corpus
Linguistics and Pragmatics Research,
an Introduction
Jesús Romero-Trillo
The present volume, N ew Domains and Methodologies in Corpus Linguistics and
Pragmatics Research , marks the launch of the new Springer series Y earbook of Corpus
Linguistics and Pragmatics . The series intends to address the interface between
Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics and is conceived to offer a platform to scholars
who combine both disciplines. The rationale behind the series, which follows a peer-
reviewed editorial process, is to publish research that aims at the pragmatic analysis of
language in real contexts through the use of rigorous corpus analysis techniques.
The editor of the series published a volume some years ago (Romero-Trillo
2008 ) that represented a provocative stir in the mutualistic, though sometimes
excluded and excluding, relationship between Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics.
The volume convened scholars who belonged to different generations of linguistics
but shared the intuition that the only way to understand the pragmatic meaning of
interaction was through the analysis of a representative volume of data, sieved
through pragmatics theories. In fact, the volume intended to bridge the gap between
two ways of looking at language: corpus linguistics as a method of analysis primar-
ily informed by mathematics and statistics with the aid of an excellent and meticu-
lous methodology; and pragmatics, on the other hand, which was perceived to have
an indefi nite methodology when it accounted for the interpretation of the pervasive
distance between sentence and intended meaning in communication.
Since then, the scenario has changed and many scholars have trodden the narrow
path between corpus linguistics and pragmatics trying to justify the theoretical prag-
matics density of their descriptions, while at the same time showing a corpus lin-
guistics aptitude that goes from technological to statistical expertise. This ambivalent
orientation has sometimes created incertitude and a n iche-less ambit for research
progress, especially in its application to new linguistic domains.
J. Romero-Trillo (*)
Departamento de Filología Inglesa, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras ,
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid , C/Francisco Tomás y Valiente 1 ,
28049 Madrid , Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Romero-Trillo (ed.), Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2013: 1
New Domains and Methodologies, Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 1,
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6250-3_1, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
2 J. Romero-Trillo
In sum, this new series is aimed at researchers who want to unite the delicacy of
pragmatics analysis with the guaranteed representativeness of corpus linguistics. In
fact, the series volumes will pay special attention to the recently universalised cor-
pus compilation capacity of all scholars via the ubiquitous access to digital, comput-
erised and visual data. I am sure that the near future will bring very interesting and
surprising linguistic data coming from established social networks, such y outube,
facebook, twitter, google+, foursquare, fl ikr, etc., and others in the offi ng for the
general public such as d elicious, pinterest or p aper.li , inter alia . The vibrant combi-
nation of language (spoken, written and mixed –as in chat rooms) and visual infor-
mation in these online networks, with the availability and mobility of technological
gadgets that provide these services, will surely infl uence language and communica-
tion in the near future and will be the source of research for corpus linguistics,
pragmatics, sociolinguistics, language education, psycholinguistics, etc.
One of the fi rst results of this multifaceted data mining possibilities is that
researchers have started to use tailor-made corpora, aside with the classic reference
corpora. The design and pragmatic analysis of these often ad hoc and usually smaller
corpora is also one of the main topics in this volume, as they tend to focus on the
pragmatics of well-defi ned situations in such a way that can illustrate the specifi c
features of communication in new and under-researched contexts. In fact, the pres-
ent volume approaches some the ‘trending topics’ that have been mentioned above,
in combination with some theoretical issues that are currently discussed in the syn-
ergic practice of the two disciplines.
T he volume is structured in four sections. The fi rst three contain chapters that
investigate the following topics: fi rst, ‘Current theoretical issues in pragmatics and
corpus linguistics research’; second, ‘New domains for corpus linguistics and prag-
matics’; and third, ‘New methodologies for the pragmatic analysis of speech through
corpora’. The fourth part reviews two books that will surely be of great interest to
the readers.
The opening chapter of the fi rst part, ‘Current Theoretical Issues in Pragmatics
and Corpus Linguistics Research’ , is authored by Marcus Callies and the title is
‘ A dvancing the Research Agenda of Interlanguage Pragmatics: The Role of Learner
Corpora ’ . The chapter reviews the role of pragmatics in Second Language
Acquisition research and defends a broader role of the discipline in Interlanguage
Pragmatics (ILP). The author argues that pragmatic knowledge in a foreign/second
language (L2) includes more than the sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic abilities
for understanding and performing speech acts. In his opinion, learner corpora can
override the limitations posed by the dominance of data elicitation techniques in
ILP. By way of illustration, the chapter shows empirical results in French and
German learners of English of the pragmalinguistic component of L2 pragmatic
knowledge through the study of information organization in discourse, and the use
of lexico-grammatical means of information highlighting for intensifi cation and
contrast.
The second chapter, ‘ Corpus Linguistics and Conversation Analysis at the
Interface: Theoretical Perspectives, Practical Outcomes’ , authored by Steve
Walsh, offers a theoretical perspective on the pros and cons associated with a
New Domains and Methodologies in Corpus Linguistics… 3
combined Corpus Linguistics (CL) and Conversation Analytic (CA) approach to the
study of language. For the author, Corpus Linguistics and Conversation Analysis
have different origins and research foci, and often some scholars believe that they
incompatible because Corpus Linguistics is mainly quantitative, while Conversation
Analysis focuses on the study of talk-in-interaction. The author compares the
various arguments in favour of one or the other approach, with especial reference
to their possible combination in the co-construction of meaning in an educational
context.
The last chapter of this section is entitled ‘ Small Corpora and Pragmatics ’ and
written by Elaine Vaughan and Brian Clancy. Their contribution describes the grow-
ing interest in the study of pragmatics based on small context-specifi c corpora, both
spoken and written. According to the authors, the advantage of the analysis of lan-
guage at this scale is that fi ne-grained distinctions that pertain to contextual or
genre-based features can be better studied when the corpus collection has been care-
fully controlled. The authors provide evidence with two corpus case studies that
illustrate the symbiosis of contextual control and corpus linguistics for pragmatics
research.
The second part, ‘New Domains for Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics’, opens
with the chapter by Britt Erman, Margareta Lewis and Lars Fant ‘ Multiword
Structures in Different Materials, and with Different Goals and Methodologies’ .
The chapter delves into the patterns of word combinations in Second Language
Acquisition in spoken and written corpora. The authors describe different para-
digms to assess the production of these structures according to some variables:
medium, size, control of task, topic and discipline. Two methods, the lexical bundle
and the ‘comprehensive’ method, are applied to the analysis of spoken language of
English and Spanish native and non-native students. The authors argue that the two
methods can be combined to broaden the conception of these structures, but also to
understand what being native-like means for the design of materials and the analysis
of production in language teaching contexts.
The next chapter, ‘ D iscourse Functions of Recurrent Multi-word Sequences in
Online and Spoken Intercultural Communication ’ by Yen-Liang Lin, also approaches
multi-word sequences. In this case the study investigates the discourse functions of
multi-word sequences comparing computer-mediated communication (CMC) and
face-to-face (FTF) interaction. The author concentrates on some recurrent multi-
word (three-word) sequences fi rstly over time, and then focuses on the 50 most
common three-word sequences. The chapter compares the online and spoken data-
sets and also two reference corpora. The sequences are classifi ed according to three
categories – social interaction, necessary topics and discourse devices – with regard
to the primary discourse function they realise. The chapter concludes with the
explanation of the functional differences present in both types of communication,
face-to-face and computer-mediated.
Dawn Knight, Svenja Adolphs and Ronald Carter author the chapter ‘ F ormality
in Digital Discourse: A Study of Hedging in CANELC ’ . Their study presents a
corpus-based analysis of formality in e-language and compares the levels of formal-
ity in e-language with spoken and written discourse in the BNC. The chapter focuses
