Corpus Linguistics Workshop by Lancaster University’s Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS)

This free workshop, arranged jointly by the Australian National University and Lancaster University’s Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science, offers a series of sessions on topics in corpus linguistics and the application of corpus techniques in discourse studies and the study of health(care) communication. The sessions will include both lectures and hands-on tutorials. The lectures will introduce the fundamentals of Corpus Linguistics, and show how corpus methods have been applied to investigate representations of health and illness in different kinds of data, including patient online forums and online feedback on the UK’s National Health Service. In the tutorials, participants will have the opportunity to carry out some analyses using state-of-the-art corpus tools developed at Lancaster University.

We welcome anyone who wants to learn more about this versatile methodology for language analysis; no specialised knowledge about language corpora is required, but basic familiarity with the use of computers and a good understanding of English are presupposed. The workshop offers a mixture of practical and theoretical sessions in which the participants will learn to apply corpus techniques in a number of contexts. Registration in advance is required, as places are limited.

The team will consist of three members of Lancaster University’s Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) and Department of Linguistics and English Language: Professor Elena Semino (CASS Director); Dr Gavin Brookes (UKRI Future Leaders Fellow) and Dr Luke Collins (CASS Senior Research Associate). The Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University is currently ranked 12^th in the world for Linguistics (QS World University rankings). CASS has received 10 years of funding from the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council for research in the applications of Corpus Linguistics, including particularly applications to health(care) communication. In 2015, Lancaster University was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its excellence and achievements in Corpus Linguistics.

PROGRAMME

9.30 – 10.00	Registration
10.00 – 11.00	Introduction to Corpus Linguistics (interactive lecture)
11.00 - 11.30	BREAK
11.30 - 12.30	Corpus-based approaches to health communication (lecture)
12.30 - 13.30	LUNCH
13.30 - 15.00	Practical session – Analysing a corpus of Emergency Department Interactions
15.00 - 15.30	BREAK
15.30 - 16.30	A corpus-based study of online patient feedback on healthcare services in the UK (lecture)