Corpus linguistics meets sociolinguistics: the role of corpus evidence in the study of sociolinguistic variation and change

Abstract

The contribution opens with a general discussion of the relationship between sociolinguistics and corpus-linguistics. The point is made that while the concerns of these two traditions in the study of linguistic variability and variation were rather different at the outset they have meanwhile developed in such a way as to make co-operation fruitful and, indeed, necessary. This point is illustrated from the author’s own work on the recently completed Jamaican component of the International Corpus of English. The variables analysed are the use of person(s) as a synonym for people, the presence or absence of subject-verb inversion in questions, the modals of obligation and necessity, negative and auxiliary contraction and, finally, the use of the “new” quotative be like.

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