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Pragmatics and its Interfaces
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Neal R. Norrick
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 294] 2018
► pp. 241–266

Corpus linguistics and pragmatics

| Philipps University Marburg, Germany
| Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland

Pragmatics and corpus linguistics were long considered mutually exclusive. In recent years, however, common ground has been discovered thus paving the way for the new field of corpus pragmatics. This chapter shows that corpus pragmatics integrates the qualitative methodology typical of pragmatics with the quantitative methodology predominant in corpus linguistics. To illustrate, we examine the choice between indicative was and subjunctive were in as-if clauses in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings suggest that the choice is co-determined by the factuality of the comparison expressed in the as-if clause and the syntactic functions of the as-if clause in the matrix clause. We finally discuss the was/were alternation as a form of negative empathetic deixis.

Keywords: as-if clause, corpus, corpus linguistics, corpus pragmatics, deixis, pragmatic markers, qualitative, quantitative, verticle reading
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Case study: Indicative was and subjunctive were in as-if clauses – a case of empathetic deixis?
    • 2.1Introduction
    • 2.2Data
    • 2.3Methods
    • 2.4Results
  • 3.Discussion
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 7 September 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.294.11ruh
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