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Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 29:1 (2024) ► pp.34–58

Concordancing for CADS

Practical challenges and theoretical implications

ORCID logo | Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)
ORCID logo | Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)

Concordance analysis is widely recognised as one of the main techniques in a corpus linguist’s toolkit. However, despite a growing body of work critically exploring previously unquestioned mainstays of corpus methods (Mautner, 2015; Taylor & Marchi, 2018), this has not focused on concordance analysis specifically. In this paper, we aim to discuss issues that researchers may encounter when interpreting concordances. We begin in Step One with a cursory examination of 800 concordance lines in order to identify potential issues. In Step Two, we assess the distribution of those issues in a reduced sample of 200. As a result, we identify eight interpretability issues: noise in the corpus, non-standard syntax, unclear referring expressions, unclear quotation source attribution, technical terms/jargon, acronyms/initialisms, unspecific co-text, and lines unrelated to the research question. After reflecting on practical challenges, we discuss the epistemological implications of removing concordance lines uncritically and suggest ten recommendations for future work.

Keywords: concordancing, concordance analysis, corpus-assisted discourse studies, epistemology, interpretability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Analysing concordances
    • 2.1The concordance line: A useful artefact
    • 2.2Reflections on procedure
    • 2.3Types of concordance analysis
  • 3.Our research design
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Step One: Cursory examination of 800 concordance lines
    • 4.2Step Two: Categorising interpretability issues
  • 5.Epistemological implications
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 27 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.21168.gil
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