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Module Specifications.

Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025

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Date posted: September 2024

Module Title Digital Methods in Language & Discourse
Module Code LC524 (ITS) / TRA1015 (Banner)
Faculty Humanities & Social Sciences School SALIS
Module Co-ordinatorDorothy Kenny
Module Teachers-
NFQ level 9 Credit Rating 10
Pre-requisite Not Available
Co-requisite Not Available
Compatibles Not Available
Incompatibles Not Available
None
Design and implementation of an explicitly motivated corpus-based research project, reported on in a 4,000 word written submission
Description

This module introduces students to corpus-based research into language and translation, explores the empirical methods used by corpus linguists, and gives students hands-on experience of corpus building and processing and an opportunity to design and implement their own corpus-based research.

Learning Outcomes

1. explain the approach taken to the analysis of linguistic data adopted by selected corpus linguists
2. outline the relevance of corpus research to selected questions in translation studies
3. build their own corpus
4. manipulate corpus data using apppropriate electronic tools
5. analyse corpus data using appropriate conceptual categories
6. design, implement and present a corpus-based research project



Workload Full-time hours per semester
Type Hours Description
Lecture12No Description
Lecture12No Description
Laboratory12Practical exercises conducted in computer lab
Laboratory12Practical exercises conducted in computer lab
Directed learning75Set reading and lab exercises
Directed learning75Set reading and lab exercises
Independent Study50Student-selected reading in preparation for project
Independent Study50Student-selected reading in preparation for project
Assignment Completion101Design, execution and write-up of corpus-based project
Assignment Completion101Design, execution and write-up of corpus-based project
Total Workload: 500

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

history of corpus linguistics
pre-computer corpora and early electronic corpora: Brown, LOB, Cobuild, BNC

corpus linguistics as methodology
corpus-driven and corpus-based research; hypothesis formation and testing; quantitative and qualitative approaches

basic corpus processing
wordlists, keywords, concordancing

using corpus tools
WordSmith; Xaira; Sketch Engine; etc.

collocation and collocation analysis
Firthian and neo-Firthian approaches to collocation, colligation and related lexico-grammatical phenomena (including semantic and discourse prosody); use of measures such as Mutual Information, log likelihood, etc.

corpora and discourse analysis
corpus approaches to the analysis of transitivity, metaphor, and stereotyping

corpus-based translation studies
parallel and comparable corpus studies of 'general features of translation', including explicitation, normalization, simplification, etc; investigation of translator styles and narrative structure

corpus creation
corpus design criteria; using existing resources (e.g. through Sketch Engine)

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment100% Examination Weight0%
Course Work Breakdown
TypeDescription% of totalAssessment Date
AssignmentDesign and implementation of an explicitly motivated corpus-based research project, reported on in a 4,000 word written submission100%Sem 2 End
Indicative Reading List

  • Barnbrook, Geoff: 1996, Language and Computers, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh,
  • Bowker, Lynne: 2002, Computer-Aided Translation Technology: A Practical Introduction, chapter on corpora, Ottawa University Press, Ottawa,
  • Bowker, Lynne and Jennifer Pearson: 2002, Working with Specialized Language: A practical guide to using corpora, Routledge, London/New York,
  • Deignan, Alice: 2005, Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics, 1st, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 978 1 58811 647 5
  • Kenny, Dorothy: 2001, Lexis and Creativity in Translation: A Corpus-based Study, 1st, Saint Jerome Publishing, Manchester, 9781900650380 / 1-900650-38-X
  • McEnery, Tony and Andrew Hardie: 2012, Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 978-0-521-83851-1
  • Olohan, Maeve: 2004, Introducing Corpora in Translation Studies, Routledge, London/New York,
  • Sinclair, John: 1991, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
  • Stubbs, Michael: 1996, Text and Corpus Analysis, Blackwell, Oxford,
  • Stubbs, Michael: 2001, Words and Phrases, Blackwell, Oxford,
Other Resources

None

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