Vol. 9:2 (2004) ► pp.271–298
Concordancing oneself
Constructing individual textual profiles
This paper discusses the construction and analysis of a corpus of an individual's own academic writing. Following an examination of the area of academic writing and the position of academic writing corpora within it, the paper discusses how a ‘personal corpus’ might be put together, along with issues of the necessary quality and quantity of ‘text’, and problems which may arise in the construction of a personal corpus. The paper also proposes a background, general ‘reference’ corpus against which features of academic writing may be measured, whilst admitting that accessibility to, or production of, such a potentially large corpus will generally be beyond the means of many researchers interested in small-scale analyses. Using concordancers, some limited analyses of lexical, syntactic and discourse features are then presented to show how a potential personal profile might emerge. The paper concludes with a discussion of the limitations facing the analysis of one's own writing, but suggests that, despite limitations, worthwhile insights can be gained in respect of one's personal language awareness.
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.9.2.06con
Cited by
Cited by 8 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.