Applying Corpus Linguistics in Discourse Analysis

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Applying Corpus Linguistics in Discourse Analysis

作者：WANG Dongmei

来源：《Studies in Literature and Language》2013年第02期

The present study employed corpus analytical tools to study and compare BP Company’s CSR reports before and after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Corpus linguistics served in the research as a methodological tool since it ensured a more qualitative research methodology. And Fairclough’s three-dimensional conception was employed to explore how an organization uses justificatory discursive strategies to legitimize its operations after perceived disasters.

Key words： Corpus linguistics； Discourse analysis； CSR reports

Corpus linguistics （CL）focuses on “the study of language based on examples of real life language use” （McEnery & Wilson， 1996）. There are two kinds of CL researches. The first kind is called descriptive corpus research， where the researchers work hard to find the linguistic patterns of a language. In the second kind of research， the researchers still work hard to find the linguistic patterns of a language， but in order to explain how the language people use in certain interactional context help constructing the reality they are in. This paper belongs to the second kind of research，applying CL as a methodological tool to understand the construction of discourses. Here we call CL a methodological tool because CL ensures a more qualitative research methodology with the help of large quantity of naturally occurring language data and various corpus software and statistics analytical tools. However， just as Biber （1998） suggests， corpus-based researches（applied corpus researches） have to depend on both the quantitative techniques and qualitative interpretation frameworks. The following are the examples of thi s kind of research. O’Halloran （2010） analyzed a corpus of British newspaper articles about immigrants， and the researcher employed the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis （CDA） as his interpretative framework. The other studies which are corpus-based an d take CDA as the interpretative include Fairclough’s （1995） study of media discourse，Hajer’s （1997） study of environmental discourse，Chen & Lam’s （2012） study on Western perceptions on Hong Kong a decade after the reversion of the sovereignty from Britain to China in 1997，Bhatia’s（1997） study on public discourse in Hong Kong，Fang’s（2001） study on Chinese print news media discourse，Flowerdew’s （2004） study on globalization discourse，etc. The above-mentioned researches conducted quantitative analysis with the help of large general corpora and corpus processes （keyword， frequency， dispersion， concordance）. At the same time， the analytical framework of critical discourse analysis was employed to interpret how language， whose linguistic patterns have been found in CL analysis， served as a form of social practice. In the next part， I will take my research on CSR reports as an example to show how to conduct a corpus-based critical discourse analysis.