GenAI and corpus linguistics by Niall Curry

Questions of alignment, application, and literacy

The role of Generative AI (GenAI) in the research process has emerged as a key topic of critical debate in corpus linguistics. For every proposed boon that the use of GenAI heralds, there is a complementary bane, and while both the body of research on Gen AI use and research in corpus linguistics using GenAI continues to grow, we do not appear to have arrived at any clear consensus surrounding its affordances and limitations. In this talk, I draw on some recent work that addresses the issue of GenAI use in corpus linguistics research. The talk spotlights some of the key ideas emerging from this work, addressing questions of GenAI literacy, ethics, knowledge-making, and the relevance of large language models for corpus linguistics research. Through this exploration of emergent key issues, I reflect on the ‘goodness of the fit’ of GenAI for our research activity and consider the research areas in which the application of GenAI may be a) ineffective, b) antithetical to our research agenda, or c) pose some opportunity for research and knowledge-making.

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Bio

Dr Niall Curry is a UKRI Metascience AI Fellow and Reader in Languages and Linguistics at the School of English, at Manchester Metropolitan University. His work addresses issues in applied linguistics, with specific interest in corpus linguistics, contrastive linguistics, discourse analysis, and language pedagogy. His most recent work addresses the use of Artificial Intelligence in applied linguistics, climate discourses across languages and cultures, corpus linguistics for materials development, and studies of public-oriented research communication. He is Series Co-Editor of the Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics and Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides book series, Section Editor of Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, a Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts, and an Associate Fellow of the Global China Academy. For more information about Niall, his publications, and his projects, visit: https://linktr.ee/niallrcurry