key term - British National Corpus

Definition

The British National Corpus (BNC) is a large, structured collection of texts from a wide variety of sources that represents contemporary British English. It serves as a valuable resource for linguistic research, helping to analyze language use, patterns, and variations in both written and spoken forms of English.

5 Must Know Facts For Your Next Test

1. The BNC contains over 100 million words and includes texts from spoken conversations, fiction, newspapers, academic texts, and more.
2. It was compiled between 1991 and 1994 and was designed to provide a balanced representation of British English in various contexts.
3. Researchers utilize the BNC for studies in areas like semantics, pragmatics, and language evolution by examining how language is used in real-life scenarios.
4. The BNC includes metadata that provides contextual information about each text, such as the genre, date, and author, aiding in linguistic analysis.
5. The corpus is accessible to researchers worldwide and has influenced the development of teaching materials and dictionaries based on real language use.

Review Questions

• How does the British National Corpus contribute to our understanding of linguistic variation in contemporary British English?
  • The British National Corpus offers insights into linguistic variation by providing a diverse range of texts from various genres and contexts. By analyzing the corpus, researchers can observe how language differs based on factors such as region, social class, or situational context. This empirical data helps linguists understand the complexities of language use in contemporary society and recognize patterns that may not be evident from isolated examples.
• Discuss the significance of the BNC for studies in semantics and pragmatics. How can it be utilized to examine meaning in context?
  • The BNC is significant for semantics and pragmatics because it allows researchers to study how meaning is constructed and interpreted in real-world language use. By examining specific words or phrases across different contexts within the corpus, linguists can analyze how meaning shifts based on situational factors or discourse patterns. This empirical approach enhances understanding of implicature, presupposition, and other pragmatic phenomena that are crucial for effective communication.
• Evaluate the impact of the British National Corpus on linguistic research methodologies and teaching practices in linguistics.
  • The British National Corpus has profoundly impacted linguistic research methodologies by introducing corpus-based techniques that emphasize data-driven analysis over intuition or anecdote. Researchers now commonly employ software tools to analyze vast amounts of textual data for frequency counts and collocational patterns. Additionally, the BNC has influenced teaching practices by providing authentic examples of language use, enabling educators to develop materials that reflect real-world communication instead of relying solely on prescriptive grammar rules.

Related terms

Corpus Linguistics:

The study of language as expressed in corpora (bodies of text) and the methods used to analyze the frequency and patterns of language use.

Token: An individual instance of a word or phrase in a corpus; tokens are counted to analyze frequency and usage.

Linguistic Variation: The differences in language use across different contexts, regions, or social groups, often studied through corpora.