1. What is corpus linguistics?
1.1. It is the study of language as expressed in corpora (samples) of "real world" text.
1.1.1. This research approach has developed over the past few decades to support empirical investigations of language variation and use, resulting in research findings which have much greater generalizability and validity than would otherwise be feasible.
2. What are the methods of research using corpus linguistics?
2.1. Corpus studies have used two major research approaches
2.1.1. ‘corpus-based’
2.1.1.1. It is more deductive.
2.1.1.2. This kind of research assumes the validity of linguistic forms and structures derived from linguistic theory.
2.1.1.2.1. This is the analysis of patterns of use for pre-defined linguistic feature (the frequency, functions and variation of any given category or items);
2.1.1.3. The primary goal of research is to analyse the systematic patterns of variation and use for those pre-defined linguistic features.
2.1.2. ‘corpus-driven’
2.1.2.1. It is more inductive.
2.1.2.2. This kind of research illustrates the kinds of analyses and perspectives on language use possible from both corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches.
2.1.2.2.1. It rejects any pre-defined categories and starts normally with simple word forms (its strict version does not consider lemmas);
2.1.2.3. the linguistic constructs (categories) emerge from analysis of a corpus (from the data).