Abstract
This exploratory study involves 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. Despite its limitations, the most usable tool for the small-scale researcher remains the concordancer. 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. Copyright © 2004 D. Coniam.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 49-55 |
Journal | Language Awareness |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2004 |
Citation
Coniam, D. (2004). Concordancing yourself: A personal exploration of academic writing. Language Awareness, 13(1), 49-55. doi: 10.1080/09658410408667085Keywords
- Academic corpora
- Concordancing
- Text analysis