All events are via MS Teams, and are free to attend.
The registration link for each event will be added two weeks in advance.
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Meeting #8 Thursday 9 November 2023, 2-3 pm (GMT)
Katia Adimora (Edge Hill University, UK)
Towards more positive portrayals of Mexican immigration/immigrants in the American and Mexican press
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Meeting #9 Thursday 14 December 2023, 2-3 pm (GMT)
Dan Malone (Edge Hill University, UK)
The Tale of the Lone Wolf: A critical exploration of terrorist representations in the UK press
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Meeting #10 Thursday 11 January 2024, 2-3 pm (GMT)
Benet Vincent (Coventry University, UK)
Methodological issues and challenges in the use of phrase-frames to investigate phraseology
[This talk is based on a project in which my collaborators are Lee McCallum & Aysel Şahin Kızıl]
Abstract
The importance of gaining a better understanding of phraseology has been recognised for some time now in the area of English for Academic Purposes (EAP). A widespread approach is to extract from a corpus frequently-occurring fixed strings (lexical bundles, or clusters) of potentially useful phrases/multi-word units (see e.g. Gilmore and Millar’s 2018). A limitation of this sort of study is the focus on fixed continuous sequences when phrases are well-known to allow a degree of variation (see e.g. Gries, 2008). One proposal to address this limitation is the ‘phrase frame’ (p-frame), a fixed sequence of items occurring frequently in a corpus with one or two empty slots (Lu, Yoon & Kisselev, 2021). This approach allows researchers to retrieve the most frequent p-frames in a particular corpus, then identify which items typically fill these slots and what meanings / functions might be associated with them. The idea is that the results of such research can help us better understand how members of a specific discourse community typically express themselves, which in turn may inform EAP pedagogy (Lu, Yoon, & Kisselev, 2018). Our project aimed to use a p-frame approach to create a list of pedagogically useful phrases to help novice writers of RA introductions in Health Sciences. A number of studies have used a p-frame approach with similar aims though for different discipline areas, including Fuster-Márquez and Pennock-Speck (2015), Cunningham (2017) and Lu et al., (2018, 2021). However, analysis of these studies indicates that they lack consensus on a number of issues central to p-frame methodology, presenting a challenge for new work in this area. This presentation will provide an overview of the key issues in p-frame research which we have identified and show how we have addressed them. The main aim will be to underline the importance of ensuring that the methods applied by a p-frame study align with the aims of the project.
References
Cunningham, K. J. (2017). A phraseological exploration of recent mathematics research articles through key phrase frames. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 25, 71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2016.11.005
Fuster-Márquez, M., & Pennock-Speck, B. (2015). Target frames in British hotel websites. International Journal of English Studies, 15(1), 51–69. https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes/2015/1/213231
Gilmore, A., & Millar, N. (2018). The language of civil engineering research articles: A corpus-based approach. English for Specific Purposes, 51, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2018.02.002
Gries, S. (2008). Phraseology and linguistic theory. In Phraseology: An interdisciplinary perspective, S. Granger & F. Meunier (eds.), 3-26.
Lu, X., Yoon, J., & Kisselev, O. (2018). A phrase-frame list for social science research article introductions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 36, 76–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.09.004
Lu, X., Yoon, J., & Kisselev, O. (2021). Matching phrase-frames to rhetorical moves in social science research article introductions. English for Specific Purposes, 61, 63–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2020.10.001
Bio-note
Benet Vincent is Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at Coventry University in the UK. His research covers applications of corpus linguistics in a range of areas including English for Academic Purposes, Translation, Pragmatics and more generally for the analysis of discourse. He is currently guest editing two special issues for peer-reviewed journals: ‘Corpus Linguistics and the language of Covid-19’ in Applied Corpus Linguistics and ‘Decision-Making in Selecting, Compiling, Analysing and Reporting on the Use of Corpora in Applied Linguistics Research’ in Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
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Meeting #11 Thursday 29 February 2024
Matteo Di Cristofaro (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)
A broad view of corpus approaches
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Meeting #12 Thursday 25 April 2024
Sylvia Jaworska (University of Reading, UK)
Human vs Machine: A critical evaluation of the usefulness of topic modelling vs a corpus-assisted approach to discourse
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