English discourse analysis: A corpus-based approach

Abstract

    Corpus linguistics, with the method of discourse analysis based on data collected from actual use of language, has become a popular approach in several research on English discourse. This paper presents a general view to corpus linguistics, methods of collecting and building a research corpus; introduces tools for corpus-based analysis such as key words, frequency list and concordance lines; illustrates ways of using software packages for researching a specifrc issue of English discourse in accordance with the method of corpus-based analysis.