ABSTRACT
Once considered a niche and novel method, corpus linguistic approaches to research now feature much more prominently in applied linguistics. However, despite their increasing presence in applied linguistics research, corpus tools still seem to be used primarily in quantitative analysis of language – far fewer studies integrate corpora into the qualitative methods (for example, in the analysis of interview data). After briefly reviewing the growth and spread of corpus linguistic research methods, the current chapter argues for the importance of the qualitative aspects of corpus building and analysis. The discussion then focuses on some under-explored potential uses of corpus tools in applied linguistic research, including how corpus tools can be used in the exploration of qualitative data, such as in content analysis. Several examples will be provided throughout, as well as thoughts regarding future directions for corpus tools in mixed methods research.
