Olga Shalakina

Challenges in cross-linguistic corpus-assisted discourse studies by

Rachelle Vessey

In the research, Rachelle Vessey demonstrates some difficulties and advantages of

applying cross-linguistic CADS. The interest of the analysis is natural language. The
author illustrates four cross-linguistic CADS issues that derived from research in
Canada and offers possible remedies to overcome the problems.

Canada is a country where two official languages coexist: English and French.
Therefore, two bilingual corpora were used: Bouchard Taylor Commission that consists
of a number of texts (2007) and articles from Canadian newspapers (2009). The texts of
each corpus are of the same genre, they are written for the same goal. The main
difference between them in that in the first case French-Canadians prevail and in the
second one, the speakers of the English language. This distinction was the main reason
that caused several difficulties; one of them is that the population of the country is quite
separated by the language and ideology, and this fact demands from the research certain
flexibility.

The first problem is related to “multilingualism” and “monolingualism” of corpora.

Corpora decrease diversity, but it is essential to take into account minority and not
frequent tendencies. So, the minority in Quebec is represented by English speakers, this
group is composed not only of native Canadians but of immigrants too. The Bouchard
Taylor Commission copper was produced by relatively a homogeneous group, the
newspaper corpora, on the contrary, was produced by people who belong to various
groups. Or, monolingual corpora can exclude the minority who are not fluent in the
language in question (Rachelle Vessey 2013: 8). It generates a risk of inaccurate
conclusions. That is why “the recognition of corpus-internal composition is essential”
(Rachelle Vessey 2013: 8). The main disadvantage of monolingual corpora is that it
cannot represent the accurate data in this case because it is not able to represent the
whole population.

The first problem is related to “multilingualism” and “monolingualism” of corpora.

Corpora decrease diversity, but it is essential to take into account minority and not
frequent tendencies. So, the minority in Quebec is represented by English speakers, this
group is composed not only of native Canadians but of immigrants too. The Bouchard
Taylor Commission corpus was produced by relatively a homogeneous group; the
newspaper corpora, on the contrary, by people who belong to various groups.
Monolingual corpora can exclude the minority who are not fluent in the language in
question (Rachelle Vessey 2013: 8). It generates a risk of inaccurate conclusions. That
is why “the recognition of corpus-internal composition is essential” (Rachelle Vessey
2013: 8). The main disadvantage of monolingual corpora is that it cannot display
accurate data in this case because it does not represent the whole population.

The third issue that the researcher discusses is the semantic prosody of translation
equivalents. Semantic prosody reflects characteristics of different cultures, areas,
genres, etc. This can be helpful if there is a necessity to observe the ideology and values
of a group. CADS requires a deeper analysis of equivalents between the languages in
question and its semantic prosodies. It will help to avoid misleading results and will
introduce equilibrium in the analysis.

The last challenge consists of keywords and comparator corpora. The CADS does not
allow direct comparison of multilingual corpora. Two ways are usually used to deal
with it: when one corpus is compared with a bigger one or two corpora are compared
with each other. For the second way, there is a programme called KeyWord that permits
to find significant words. However, it cannot compare different languages directly.
Moreover, it is not useful in the first one because of the lack of existing corpora in a
variety of languages. To analyse “how Quebeckers' identities were negotiated within the
context of the Commission” in frames of the Bouchard Taylor corpus and whether the
ideologies vary between newspapers in different languages, the parallel keyword
analyses were realised (Rachelle Vessey 2013: 16). To complete a parallel analysis, it is
necessary to use good resources of keyword analysis in one language and pay attention
to genre, size, a period of time, etc. of the texts.

The author introduced some novel ideas in working with bilingual corpora. In my
opinion, the article and the results found by the author may be applied for further
research on the issue. What is more, the article reveals the possible mistakes that can be
made and offers solutions that help to avoid misleading or “aboutness” results. To sum
up, the CADS is a useful tool that can be adapted to the needs of research.