Bilingual Writers and Corpus Analysis

299 Pages·2022·4.068 MB·English

by  Nizar Habash, David M. Palfreyman

Bilingual Writers and
Corpus Analysis
This innovative volume is one of the first to represent the usage of
bilingual writers in both their languages, offering insight into language
corpora as extremely valuable tools in contemporary applied linguistics
research, and in turn, into how much of the world’s population operate
daily.
This book discusses one of the first examples of a bilingual writer
corpus, the Zayed Arabic-English Bilingual Undergraduate Corpus
(ZAEBUC), which includes writing by hundreds of students in two
languages, with additional information about the writers and the texts.
The result is a rich resource for research in multilingual use and learning
of language. The book takes the reader through the design and use of
such a corpus and illustrates the potential of this type of corpus with
detailed studies that show how assessment, vocabulary, and discourse
work across two very different languages.
This volume will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and educators
in bilingualism, plurilingualism, language education, corpus design, and
natural language processing.
David M. Palfreyman is Professor of Language Studies and Assistant
Dean for Research and Outreach at Zayed University, Dubai. He is a
language teacher educator, a specialist in academic biliteracy, and founding
editor of the journal Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf
Perspectives.
Nizar Habash is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the
Computational Approaches to Modeling Language (CAMeL) Lab at
New York University Abu Dhabi. His research includes extensive work
on machine translation, morphological analysis, and computational
modelling of Arabic and its dialects.
Routledge Studies in Applied Linguistics
Contexts of Co-Constructed Discourse
Interaction, Pragmatics, and Second Language Applications
Edited by Lori Czerwionka, Rachel Showstack, and
Judith Liskin-Gasparro
Second Language Prosody and Computer Modeling
Okim Kang, David O. Johnson, Alyssa Kermad
Reconsidering Context in Language Assessment
Transdisciplinary Perspectives, Social Theories, and Validity
Janna Fox and Natasha Artemeva
Evaluation Across Newspaper Genres
Hard News Stories, Editorials and Feature Articles
Jonathan Ngai
Understanding Variability in Second Language Acquisition,
Bilingualism, and Cognition
A Multi-layered Perspective
Edited by Kristin Kersten and Adam Winsler
Crosslinguistic Influence in L3 Acquisition
Bilingual Heritage Speakers in Germany
Eliane Lorenz
Bilingual Writers and Corpus Analysis
Edited by David M. Palfreyman and Nizar Habash
Reflexivity in Applied Linguistics
Opportunities, Challenges, and Suggestions
Edited by Sal Consoli and Sara Ganassin
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Applied-Linguistics/book-series/RSAL
Bilingual Writers and
Corpus Analysis
Edited by David M. Palfreyman
and Nizar Habash
F irst published 2023
b y Routledge
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a nd by Routledge
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© 2023 selection and editorial matter, David M. Palfreyman and
Nizar Habash; individual chapters, the contributors
T he right of David M. Palfreyman and Nizar Habash to be identified
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L ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
N ames: Palfreyman, David, 1964– editor. | Habash, Nizar Y., editor.
Title: Bilingual writers and corpus analysis / edited by David M.
Palfreyman & Nizar Habash.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge
studies in applied linguistics | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022023989 | ISBN 9781032025629 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781003183921 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Bilingualism and literature. | Bilingual authors—
Language. | Corpora (Linguistics) | LCGFT: Essays.
Classification: LCC P115.25 .B56 2023 | DDC 404/.2—dc23/
eng/20220627
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022023989
ISBN: 978-1-032-02562-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-02564-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-18392-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183921
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Contributors vii
1 Why a bilingual writer corpus? Motivations
and approaches 1
DAVID M. PALFREYMAN
2 ZAEBUC design and annotation: guidelines, processes,
and insights 19
NIZAR HABASH AND DAVID M. PALFREYMAN
3 The application of the CEFR to the assessment of L1
competence and plurilingual competence: methodology,
possibilities and challenges 52
SALWA MOHAMED
4 Semantic domains across topics, genders and languages 96
NOURAN KHALLAF, ELVIS DE SOUZA, MAHMOUD EL-HAJ
AND PAUL RAYSON
5 Can adult lexical diversity be measured bilingually?
A proof-of-concept study 121
RIMA ELABDALI, SHIRA WEIN AND LOURDES ORTEGA
6 Lexical collocations in Arabic-English bilinguals’ writing
across two proficiency levels 157
ALI KAMEL AL SHAREF AND MICHAEL BOWLES
7 Personal metadiscourse and stance in Arabic and English
essays: a comparative study 201
BASMA BOUZIRI
vi Contents
8 “Social media has invaded our homes, our lives, even
our dining tables”: metaphor in bilingual writers’
discourse about social media 251
DAVID M. PALFREYMAN AND OMNIA AMIN
9 Corpus-based SLA research: potential applications for
ZAEBUC and beyond 277
STEFANIE WULFF AND SAMANTHA CREEL
Index 288
Contributors
Ali Kamel Al Sharef, Abu Dhabi University, UAE
Omnia Amin, Zayed University, UAE
Basma Bouziri, University of Gabés, Tunisia
Michael Bowles, Zayed University, UAE
Samantha Creel, University of Florida, USA
Elvis de Souza, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rima Elabdali, Georgetown University, USA
Mahmoud El-Haj, Lancaster University, UK
Nizar Habash, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE
Nouran Khallaf, Leeds University, UK
Salwa Mohamed, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University, USA
David M. Palfreyman, Zayed University, UAE
Paul Rayson, Lancaster University, UK
Shira Wein, Georgetown University, USA
Stefanie Wulff, University of Florida, USA; UiT The Arctic University of
Norway

1 Why a bilingual writer corpus?
Motivations and approaches
David M. Palfreyman
Introduction
Although many people in the world regularly use more than one lan-
guage in their everyday life, detailed evidence about how they do this
remains limited in many ways. The purpose of this book is to show how
our understanding of this widespread and everyday achievement could
be enriched by research on bilingual user corpora: large collections of
authentic language use by people in more than one of the languages which
they frequently use. A very few such corpora already exist, but they are
only just beginning to be researched. In this book, we offer examples of
the design and preparation of such a corpus, and of the varied approaches
in corpus linguistics which can be used to understand how bilinguals use
their languages. The examples build on the newly established Zayed Ara-
bic-English Bilingual Undergraduate Corpus (ZAEBUC) (Palfreyman &
Habash, 2021) and are intended to illustrate the potential of this type of
corpus for researchers in all kinds of multilingual contexts around the
world, from internationalized universities (Jenkins & Mauranen, 2019)
to local bilingual communities (Esquinca et al., 2017) or transnational
corporations (Hodges & Seawright, 2019).
In the first part of this chapter, I review the nature of language cor-
pora, the types of corpus currently available and the kinds of research
question for which they are relevant. I then review the focus in recent
years on multilingualism as a key topic in applied linguistics, and the lack
of suitable corpora to support research on multilingual language users.
Following this, I explain the characteristics of ZAEBUC as an example
of a bilingual writer corpus. Finally, I outline the chapters in the rest of
this book, which focus on aspects of methodology and present a range of
research studies using the corpus.
Language corpora
Firstly, let us delimit what we mean by a language corpus, in contrast
to other kinds of language data. Building on the characteristics of a
DOI: 10.4324/9781003183921-1