Applied Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics (CL) is a rapidly growing area of research worldwide, and CL techniques and approaches to large scale textual data analysis are being adopted and extended in a wide range of contexts. Corpus research is no longer confined primarily to the study of linguistics and to generalised language description but is now applied in diverse fields, such as forensic linguistics, social policy studies, food studies, anthropology, writing development studies, translation and interpreting, and the analysis of corporate and government communications.

With this broadening of the range of applications of corpus methods and frameworks has come a need for a journal in which studies and reports can be brought together for an audience of researchers and practitioners that are interested in the range of applications of corpus linguistics. The role of Applied Corpus Linguistics is to provide a forum for further theorisation of corpus data analysis techniques, for the sharing of case studies and of new methods, and to advance the development and consolidation of applied corpus linguistics as a major force in social research.

The journal welcomes contributions in the form of full length research articles, discussion papers, short technical papers and book reviews. While the emphasis is on applications rather than on theorisations, it is expected that all studies will be adequately theorised. As the intended readership extends beyond corpus linguistics, however, the focus must be on application and on communication of content to a non-specialist reader. Papers reporting technical innovations and novel data visualisation methods (for demonstrably effective communication) are encouraged.

It is recognised that 'applied' is a term that defies easy definition. Within this journal, 'applied corpus linguistics' is understood to include the use of corpus resources, techniques and tools in order to do something in a real-world context such as to carry out authorship attribution in a legal setting, or to identify the features of test-taker oral performances at different proficiency levels; to explore patterning in public discourses, or to obtain fresh understandings of how language is used in specific contexts. 'Applied corpus linguistics' additionally covers research into how groups of people (typically non-researchers) use corpus resources for their own particular purposes, such as in data-driven language learning or in lexicography. Reports on the development of corpus techniques, tools and resources may also be included provided that the potential applications are made both clearly evident and accessible.