Corpus linguistics is an approach to understanding large amounts of data. Corpora are large collections of language data in a computer readable format. These can be written or transcribed spoken or signed languages. Corpus linguistics has revolutionised linguistic research, but is also an extremely helpful tool for understanding patterns in text data from literature, history, cultural and regional studies. This course is hands-on and will lead students through building corpora, annotation, text-mining, quantitative analysis and visualisation techniques using text data from English, various languages of Asia, the Pacific and beyond.
This course will provide the theoretical foundation to understand how corpora can answer research questions, as well as guided practice with computational skills. By the end of this course, students will have achieved basic computational proficiency to perform corpus-based analyses on their own data for their own research. No prior programming experience is required, simply a willingness to learn.
Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion, students will have the knowledge and skills to:
- Read and critically evaluate a range of literature about corpus linguistics
- Understand basic skills of corpus linguistics and apply these identify patterns in textual data
- Understand basic programming skills
- Undertake application of corpus skills to an advanced research question
- Evaluate appropriateness of corpora to research questions in various fields
- Applying theories from academic literature to own analyses and research
Indicative Assessment
- Assignment 1 - comparing available corpora, apx. 1800 words (15) [LO 4,5]
- Assignment 2 - Analysing corpus data from the web, apx. 2300 words (15) [LO 2,3,4,6]
- Assignment 3 - Recording, Transcribing, Annotating and Analyzing original audiovideo data, apx. 3200 words (30) [LO 1,2,3,4,6]
- Wattle Activities including software/programming tutorials and weekly forum posts (20) [LO 1,3,5]
- Two Class Presentations (20) [LO 1]
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Workload
130 hours of total student learning time made up from:
a) 36 hours of seminars and tutorials: 12 hours lecture, 12 hours lectorial, 12 hours small tutorials
b) 94 hours of independent student research, reading and writing
Requisite and Incompatibility
Prescribed Texts
Understanding Corpus Linguistics, Barth & Schnell 2021, Routledge
Assumed Knowledge
Some linguistics or other comparable field using empirical data such as anthropology, Pacific studies, gender and media studies, history or language classes. Ability to read and evaluate academic literature with guidance. Ideally, a laptop computer that can be brought to class (please contact convenor if this is a concern).
Fees
Tuition fees are for the academic year indicated at the top of the page.
Commonwealth Support (CSP) Students
If you have been offered a Commonwealth supported place, your fees are set by the Australian Government for each course. At ANU 1 EFTSL is 48 units (normally 8 x 6-unit courses). More information about your student contribution amount for each course at Fees.
- Student Contribution Band:
- 1
- Unit value:
- 6 units
If you are a domestic graduate coursework student with a Domestic Tuition Fee (DTF) place or international student you will be required to pay course tuition fees (see below). Course tuition fees are indexed annually. Further information for domestic and international students about tuition and other fees can be found at Fees.
Where there is a unit range displayed for this course, not all unit options below may be available.
| Units | EFTSL |
|---|---|
| 6.00 | 0.12500 |
Offerings, Dates and Class Summary Links
ANU utilises MyTimetable to enable students to view the timetable for their enrolled courses, browse, then self-allocate to small teaching activities / tutorials so they can better plan their time. Find out more on the Timetable webpage.
Class summaries, if available, can be accessed by clicking on the View link for the relevant class number.
First Semester
| Class number | Class start date | Last day to enrol | Census date | Class end date | Mode Of Delivery | Class Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3176 | 23 Feb 2026 | 02 Mar 2026 | 31 Mar 2026 | 29 May 2026 | In Person | N/A |