Reflection 8 : Added Value of Corpus Linguistics in Other Linguistics Courses

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          Corpus Linguistics deals with 'real text' people made in their everyday conversation or informal writing in chat room or social media. These texts are used in order to study language and aid linguistics understanding of a phenomenon. Hence, this reflection will discuss how corpus-based study add value to the linguistic framework that we have acquired throughout our BENL courses.

            Firstly, we can observe the language being used in its natural form. For example, in theory we learned in Phonetics and Phonology that the letter 'w' in Received Pronunciation is pronounced as /w/ but in practice sometimes it is pronounced as /ɹ/ as in 'drawing'. Another example is the application of the study of Semantics where it did not look at the form of the sentences made but rather the meaning embedded in the sentence produced. The sentence "Nasi Lemak  also can lah!" might be ungrammatical but the meaning can still be used although it deviates from conventional structure.

            Secondly, these natural forms can help us understand the nature of language better. As an example, in Sociolinguistics there are different form of English around the world such as Manglish and Singlish. These forms of English are structurally different from British English and American English because of cultural differences and the assimilation of the native language.

            Thirdly, it aids us in analyzing errors in second language learners. Error analysis is important in order to aid the language learner to rectify their mistakes. In Error and Contrastive analysis we learned that language learner tends to make grammatical errors because they usually  bring their native language grammatical structure in writing or speaking in English. Hence, by analyzing their essays or conversation recording, we can help them rectify these errors.