TY - JOUR
T1 - On the status of statistical reporting versus linguistic description in corpus linguistics
T2 - a ten-year perspective
AU - Larsson, Tove
AU - Egbert, Jesse
AU - Biber, Douglas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Edinburgh University Press.
PY - 2022/4
Y1 - 2022/4
N2 - This study investigates (i) whether there has been a shift towards increased statistical focus in corpus linguistic research articles, and, if so, (ii) whether this has had any repercussions for the attention paid to linguistic description. We investigate this through an analysis of the relative focus on statistical reporting versus linguistic description in the way the results are reported and discussed in research articles published in four major corpus linguistics journals in 2009 and 2019. The results display a marked change: in 2009, a clear majority of the articles exhibit a preference for linguistic description over statistical reporting; in 2019, the exact opposite is true. The number of different statistical techniques employed has also gone up. Whilst the increased statistical focus may reflect increased methodological sophistication, our results show that it has come at a cost: a diminished focus on linguistic description, evident, for example, through fewer text excerpts and linguistic examples, which appears to be symptomatic of increasing distance from the language that is the object of study. We discuss these shifts and suggest some ways of employing sophisticated statistical techniques without sacrificing a focus on language.
AB - This study investigates (i) whether there has been a shift towards increased statistical focus in corpus linguistic research articles, and, if so, (ii) whether this has had any repercussions for the attention paid to linguistic description. We investigate this through an analysis of the relative focus on statistical reporting versus linguistic description in the way the results are reported and discussed in research articles published in four major corpus linguistics journals in 2009 and 2019. The results display a marked change: in 2009, a clear majority of the articles exhibit a preference for linguistic description over statistical reporting; in 2019, the exact opposite is true. The number of different statistical techniques employed has also gone up. Whilst the increased statistical focus may reflect increased methodological sophistication, our results show that it has come at a cost: a diminished focus on linguistic description, evident, for example, through fewer text excerpts and linguistic examples, which appears to be symptomatic of increasing distance from the language that is the object of study. We discuss these shifts and suggest some ways of employing sophisticated statistical techniques without sacrificing a focus on language.
KW - linguistic description
KW - linguistic interpretation
KW - statistical reporting
KW - statistical techniques
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85116103560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85116103560&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3366/cor.2022.0238
DO - 10.3366/cor.2022.0238
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85116103560
SN - 1749-5032
VL - 17
SP - 137
EP - 157
JO - Corpora
JF - Corpora
IS - 1
ER -