Applications of Corpus Linguistics Methods for Socio-Legal Research

20 May 2019

School of English, Birmingham City University

Funded by BA/Leverhulme Research Grant

Venue: room C423, Curzon Building, 4 Cardigan Street, Birmingham, B4 7BD

FREE TO ATTEND

The workshop is aimed at socio-legal scholars who work with textual data (e.g. judgements, witness statements, legal statutes, court transcripts) and would like to find out more about corpus linguistics tools that can be applied to such data. Corpus is a database of texts which is searchable according to a number of parameters and can be analysed using a collection of methods (e.g. word frequency lists, key words, n-grams – sequences of words). As a data-driven and bottom-up approach, corpus linguistics provides an objective and quick way of analysing texts.

9:30-10:00

Registration open in the Curzon building lobby

Tea/coffee in C423

10:00-10:15

Welcome from Research and Development Unit for English Studies – Andrew Kehoe

Welcome from the project team – Hilary Sommerlad

10:15-10:30

Group challenge for participants

10:30-10:55

Introduction to Corpus Linguistics – Andrew Kehoe, Matt Gee

10:50-11:20

Applications of Corpus Linguistics 1: Investigating Impact of Training for Frontline Police Officers – Matt Gee, Tatiana Tkacukova

11:20-12:00

Methodological comparison: Content Analysis vs. corpus linguistics methods applied to the dataset of a complete body of ombudsman case law – Richard Kirkham, Elizabeth O'Loughlin, Tatiana Tkacukova

12:00-1:00

Lunch

1:00-1:20

Applications of Corpus Linguistics 2: Analysing court forms filled in by lay litigants vs. legal professionals – Tatiana Tkacukova

1:20-2:00

Applications of Corpus Linguistics 3 & Corpus Linguistic Toolkit Roadshow: Analysing requests posted on online forums and social media moderated by McKenzie Friends – Matt Gee, Tatiana Tkacukova, Hilary Sommerlad

2:00-2:30

Tea/coffee

2:30-3:00

Strengths and Weakness of Corpus Linguistics in Legal Analysis: A Case Study of the LLECJ Project (Law and Language at the European Court of Justice) – Karen McAuliffe

3:00-3:30

Group challenge for participants

3:30-4:00

Discussion led by Hilary Sommerlad

Hilary Sommerlad (School of Law, University of Leeds)

Andrew Kehoe (School of English, Birmingham City University)

Matt Gee (School of English, Birmingham City University)

Tatiana Tkacukova (School of English, Birmingham City University)

Richard Kirkham (School of Law, University of Sheffield)

Karen McAuliffe (Birmingham Law School)

Elizabeth O'Loughlin (University of Sheffield)