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Corpora, Grammar and Discourse: In honour of Susan Hunston
Edited by Nicholas Groom, Maggie Charles and Suganthi John
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 73] 2015
► pp. 183–210

Chapter 8. Chatting in the academy

Informality in spoken academic discourse

| University of Cambridge
| University of Nottingham
In this chapter we explore a recently acknowledged phenomenon: the way in which formal discourse is increasingly now inflected with forms more commonly associated with informal discourse. The phenomenon has been referred to as conversationalisation or informalisation and has been discussed in relation to such varieties as newspaper discourse, political rhetorics and media reporting. This chapter seeks to account for the extent to which this same phenomenon appears in university lectures and classes, and at the same time makes a methodological case for integrating quantitative and qualitative perspectives when doing corpus-based discourse analysis.
Published online: 30 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.73.09but
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