Linguistics in the digital humanities: (computational) corpus linguistics

Abstract

Corpus linguistics has been closely intertwined with digital technology since the introduction of university computer mainframes in the 1960s. Making use of both digitized data in the form of the language corpus and computational methods of analysis involving concordancers and statistics software, corpus linguistics arguably has a place in the digital humanities. Still, it remains obscure and fi gures only sporadically in the literature on the digital humanities. Th is article provides an overview of the main principles of corpus linguistics and the role of computer technology in relation to data and method and also off ers a bird's-eye view of the history of corpus linguistics with a focus on its intimate relationship with digital technology and how digital technology has impacted the very core of corpus linguistics and shaped the identity of the corpus linguist. Ultimately, the article is oriented towards an acknowledgment of corpus linguistics' alignment with the digital humanities.