ABSTRACT
One of the most basic applications of corpora is ranking words on the basis of their frequency of occurrence. Information about the frequency of words obtained from corpora can be applied to explore the use of language in specific contexts. For instance, a frequency-based analysis can be employed to make comparisons between the use of vocabulary in speech and writing. Speech is more interactive, spontaneous and dynamic, whereas written language is more planned, detached and takes more time to be produced. This chapter discusses the importance of frequency for corpus research. It explains how frequency-based analyses of word occurrences reveal differences between spoken and written vocabulary. The chapter also discusses the usefulness of frequency when it comes to categorizing vocabulary and creating lexical profiles of individual texts. It presents how information about the occurrence of words can be usefully employed by language teachers and materials developers.
