Epistemologies of corpus linguistics across disciplines

Abstract

Despite the growing use of corpus linguistics across an ever-growing range of disciplines such as sociology, sports studies, journalism, media discourse or education, there is a dearth of research that examines the epistemological foundations of corpus methods in these disciplines. This paper builds on well-established conceptualisations about research methodology and the role of methods in the wider literature. Drawing on existing discussions about the use of research methods in objectivist and subjectivist conceptualisations of social reality, we seek to bring to the fore the underlying methodological tensions found in the use of corpus linguistics in the application of corpus methods in research that lies outside the interest of major linguistic disciplines. Through this process, we explore how the notions of natural language use and data elicitation are interpreted by current research in order to advance our understanding of how experts from different research camps engage with and epistemologically localise corpus linguistics.