The future for Corpus Linguistics

International experts gather to discuss future directions in a first for Wales

Academics specialising in the study of language are to head to the Welsh capital for the 10^th International Corpus Linguistics Conference in 2019.

Running since 2001, the biennial conference has been previously been hosted across the UK at universities including Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool and the University of Birmingham.

Hosted by the Centre for Language and Communication Research at the University, the 2019 conference aims to draw attention to the challenges facing Corpus Linguistics, through an in-depth look at a variety of live snapshots of current research.

Dr Dawn Knight, lead of the CL2019 organising committee, said:

‘CL2019 aims to draw attention to some of the challenges and opportunities which corpus linguistics has encountered, continues to encounter and may well encounter in the future. It offers a snapshot of the various perspectives which corpus linguistics provides, from a range of different academic disciplines, and will help to outline the value of using this linguistic approach to investigating a range of real-world questions, issues and problems’.

Corpus linguistics is an empirical approach to the study of language, based on real-life collections of language in use or corpora.  A corpus is an electronic resource, so users can use corpora to find out, for instance, how frequently a specific word is used, or how patterns of meaning are developed through the use of sequences of words.

Leading international figures in the field Svenja Adolphs (Nottingham), Tony McEnery, (Lancaster), Bróna Murphy (Edinburgh), Hilary Nesi (Coventry) and Elena Semino (Lancaster) join the debate as plenary speakers.

The conference is sponsored by John Benjamins Publishing Company, Elsevier Linguistics, Edinburgh University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, quarterly language magazine Babel and Cardiff University’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

The 10^th InternationalCorpus Linguistics Conference runs for five days at Cardiff University (22– 26July 2019). For latest updates including the latest programme listings, visit the conference website or follow on the conference on Twitter @CLconf2019.