Epistemological relativity, for an ELT professional, means that one accepts
that there are infinite ways of using language and that differences do not
automatically call for judgmental evaluation. (Leung, 2005: p. 138)
Leung, C. (2005). Convivial communication: Recontextualizing communicative competence. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15(2), 119-144.
Check other quotations here.
University of Exeter
Language & Education Network Research Seminar, 22 February 2021.
Corpora have been widely used in applied linguistics research and, to a lesser extent, in other fields such as political science or sociology. However, corpus research methods are rarely taught in education faculties. I will discuss different approaches to using CL methods in education research and examine the underlying assumptions that may justify distinguishing between corpus linguistics (CL) as a methodology and as a set of methods. This talk seeks to contribute to the advancement of the debate about how CL can position itself within the wide spectrum of current educational research methods.
Bednarek, M., Pinto, M. V., & Werner, V. (2021). Corpus approaches to telecinematic language. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 26(1), 1-9.
Cameron, D. & Panović, I. (2014). Corpus-based discourse analysis. In Working with written discourse (pp. 81-96). Sage.
Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2018) Research methods in education. Routledge.
Creswell, J. W. & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage.
Durrant, P., Brenchley, M., & McCallum, L. (2021). Understanding development and proficiency in writing: quantitative corpus linguistic approaches. Cambridge University Press.
Fest, J. (2015). Corpora in the Social Sciences-How corpus-based appraches can support qualitative interview analyses. LFE. Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos, 21,2, 48-69.
Gianfreda, S. (2019). Using a mixed-method approach to examine party positioning on immigration and the european union in parliamentary proceedings.In SAGE Research Methods Cases.
Leech, G. (2000). Grammars of spoken English: New outcomes of corpus‐oriented research. Language learning, 50(4), 675-724.
Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. The Guildford Press.
Pérez-Paredes, P. (2020). Corpus Linguistics for Education: A Guide for Research. Routledge.
Seale, C. & Charteris-Black, J. (2010). Keyword analysis: a new tool for qualitative research. In The SAGE handbook of qualitative methods in health research (pp. 536-556). Sage.
Sealey, A., & Thompson, P. (2004). ‘What do you call the dull words?’Primary school children using corpus-based approaches to learn about language. English in Education, 38(1), 80-91.
Wright, D. (2017). Using word n-grams to identify authors and idiolects: A corpus approach to a forensic linguistic problem. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(2), 212-241.
Vessey, R. (2013). Challenges in cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse studies. Corpora, 8(1), 1-26.
Vessey, R. (2017). Representations of language education in Canadian newspapers. Canadian Modern Language Review, 73(2), 158-182.
From Ortega, L. (2017) New CALL-SLA Research Interfaces for the 21st Century: Towards Equitable Multilingualism. Calico Journal, 34.3, 285–316.
The majority of the world is multilingual, but inequitably multilingual, and much of the world is also technologized, but inequitably so. Thus, researchers in the fields of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and second language acquisition (SLA) would profit from considering multilingualism and social justice when envisioning new CALL-SLA interfaces for the future.
I remain convinced that “in the ultimate analysis, it is not the methods or the epistemologies [or the theories] that justify the legitimacy and quality of human research, but the moral-political purposes that guide sustained research efforts” (Ortega, 2005, p. 438). The need to incorporate ethics and axiology in the study of language learning seems all the more acute in our present world, where human solidarity and respect for human diversity, including linguistic diversity, is under siege, creating serious vulnerabilities for the goal of multilingualism and the lives of many multilinguals. Echoingbut also widening Chun’s (2016) call for an ecological CALL in the post-2000s era, the overarching question that I have submitted to orient CALL–SLA research interfaces for the 21st century is: What technologies, teaching paradigms, views of language, and principal uses of computers can nurture multilingualism and digital literacies for all, not just for the privileged?
