Introduction: the corpus in context

This chapter explores the potential contribution of a language ‘corpus’ to the knowledge and understanding about language of primary school pupils and their teachers. In language research, a ‘corpus’ is the name given to an electronically stored databank of authentic language that, with dedicated software, can be interrogated as empirical evidence of language use, thus revealing the patterns that emerge when large quantities of language data are gathered together in this way. This chapter describes three examples of evidence for such patterns: the high frequency of certain kinds of words; the mutual influence of grammar and vocabulary on language in use; and the way in which some common words are used differently in writing for children and for adults respectively.

Corpus work was initially developed partly because of its potential to provide teachers and learners of English as an additional language with more accurate accounts and examples of language in use than are available in traditional reference books and textbooks. However, the field has contributed a great deal more than this, so that Hunston (2002), for example, states, ‘It is no exaggeration to say that corpora, and the study of corpora, have revolutionised the study of language, and of the applications of language, over the last few decades’ (Hunston 2002: 1). The tools previously available for language analysis – introspection and assumed grammatical categories, accepted with only minor modifications since classical times – are superseded now that we ‘have the technology to discover patterns in raw textual data’ (Stubbs 2009: 116).