Introduction: Analysing Web-Based Musical Discourse

Last updated on 2024-04-07 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 50 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • What is corpus linguistics?
  • What can I do using corpus linguistic methods?
  • How does this method differ from analogue ‘close reading’ methods in musicology?

Objectives

  • Recognise the disciplinary objectives of corpus linguistics and natural language processing.
  • Understand the aims of quantitative approaches to understanding texts.

Be ready to activate breakout rooms for the exercise.

Discussion

In groups of 3–4 people, please take 10 minutes to discuss:

– What do you normally read for when you read text?

– What do you read for when you read text about music?

– How does the nature of online text change that?

– How ight working with large amounts of textnchange how we read it or what we read into it?

Please nominate one member of your group to take notes in the Etherpad and be ready to share your thoughts with the whole group once time is up.

Key Points

  1. Corpus linguistics is study of language as part of a body of text, wherein language appears in its “natural” context.
  2. Corpus studies involve the compilation and analysis of collections of text (i.e. the body) which afford insights into the nature, structure, and use of language in this context.
  3. Natural language processing (NLP) is a field that formulates techniques for understanding contexts and rules of language function.
  4. Corpus methods can be used to determine the underlying patterns and contextual associations of words and phrases in a body of text, amongst other uses. This is known as a “distant reading” approach to texts, focused on identifying and quantifying patterns across large datasets.
  5. The insights yielded from NLP approaches to text can supplement more traditional techniques of (critical) discourse analysis.