Applying Corpus Linguistics in Discourse Analysis.docVIP

Applying Corpus Linguistics in Discourse Analysis 　　The present study employed corpus analytical tools to study and compare BP Company’s CSR reports before and after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Corpus linguistics served in the research as a methodological tool since it ensured a more qualitative research methodology. And Fairclough’s three-dimensional conception was employed to explore how an organization uses justificatory discursive strategies to legitimize its operations after perceived disasters. 　　Key words： Corpus linguistics； Discourse analysis； CSR reports 　　Corpus linguistics （CL） focuses on “the study of language based on examples of real life language use” （McEnery Wilson， 1996）. There are two kinds of CL researches. The first kind is called descriptive corpus research， where the researchers work hard to find the linguistic patterns of a language. In the second kind of research， the researchers still work hard to find the linguistic patterns of a language， but in order to explain how the language people use in certain interactional context help constructing the reality they are in. This paper belongs to the second kind of research， applying CL as a methodological tool to understand the construction of discourses. Here we call CL a methodological tool because CL ensures a more qualitative research methodology with the help of large quantity of naturally occurring language data and various corpus software and statistics analytical tools. However， just as Biber （1998） suggests， corpus-based researches（applied corpus researches） have to depend on both the quantitative techniques and qualitative interpretation frameworks. The following are the examples of this kind of research. O’Halloran （2010） analyzed a corpus of British newspaper articles about immigrants， and the researcher employed the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis （CDA） as his interpretative framework. The other studies which are corpus-based and take CDA as the interpretative i