<p style="font-size: 120%; line-height: 150%;">Quantifying methods have been used to analyse language for almost a century. The interest in such methods has increased since the popularisation of computer technologies in the 1980s which has changed language practices on the one hand and the way these languages are studied by researchers on the other hand. In recent years this had a huge impact on the research landscape: numerous initiatives, platforms and projects have occurred under the label of digital humanities and big data.
Notwithstanding the opportunities these new infrastructures offer it has to be asked how far they can account for language practices in a given society or in a part of it. What can we draw from quantitative data in order to better understand the construction of society and its structure, in particular if we are taking a discourse analytical perspective? If Foucault (1969: 66-67) calls for an analysis of discourses as ‘practices which systematically form the objects of which they speak’ the question is how and with which methods these practices can be examined. Even though Foucault rejects a simple analysis of signs designating certain things (ibid.) as has been practised in the structuralist paradigm, linguistic methods have been used extensively to analyse discourses. Beside the numerous studies by discourse linguists with qualitative analytical categories different quantitive approaches to text corpora have been developed to analyse discourses. These developments have often taken place within different languages, disciplines or schools without taking notice of eachother. For example, in the UK, corpus linguistic tools have been developed rather in the tradition of lexicography using for instance key word analysis contrasting a smaller research corpus with a large reference corpus (McEnery/Hardie 2013). In contrast, in France corpus linguistic tools have been developed closer in the context of discourse analysis under the label of lexicometrics since the 1970s focussing rather on data-driven, exhaustive, contrastive methods (Lebart/Salem/Berry 1998) analysing partitions based on Benzécri’s multifactor analysis or Reinert’s descending hierarchical classification. These methods are used as heuristic tools to explore the data and in order to reveal the underlying lexical structure of the text material concerning the chronological development and/or the lexical distance between different discourse participants. In Germany there have been attempts to complete the predominant qualitative perspective of the discourse linguistic approach with quantifying methods, combining them with qualitative approaches. Whereas some scholars try to retrace language use patterns in a certain part of society or in the representation of a certain topic, others emphasise rather the heuristic strength of lexicometric methods.
The panel reflects on possibilities and limits of quantifying methods for discourse analysis. It tries to bring together researchers that work with similar methods but that normally don’t meet because of language or institutional boundaries between different disciplines.
<strong>We particularly welcome papers:</strong>
• Coming from all disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities that have an interest in analysing discourse (in the Foucauldian sense) with quantifying methods
• On the interpretation of quantitative data with regards to an discourse analytical research interest
• Trying to combine quantifying and qualitative methods
• Focussing on the construction of data and research outcome
• Focussing on the interpretation of visuals and its limits for discourse researchers
<strong>Working language: English</strong>
However, in some cases papers might be given in French or German. In such cases please get in touch with the organisers before submitting your abstract. If you intend to present in another language than English, please be prepared to write a summary of your talk or a full paper in English prior to the conference.
If you have questions concerning the panel please write to Ronny Scholz (R.Scholz@warwick.ac.uk) or Marcus Müller (marcus.mueller@gs.uni-heidelberg.de).
In order to submit your abstract, you must have an account on http://www.discourseanalysis.net and be logged in. If you don't have one yet, you need to go to the top right corner of this web page and create an account. After registering, you will be able to use the web page's functions and also receive discourse-related emails with call for papers and other announcements. To choose your language and filter messages that you do not want to receive in the future, just log in on www.discourseanalysis.net, go to 'my account' and then to 'language preferences' (or equivalent expressions if you registered in a language other than in English). If you do not want to receive any discourse-related emails you can uncheck all boxes.
If accepted, the early-bird fee will be 150 € for fully funded researchers and a reduced fee of 75 € for enrolled students without access to institutional funding. For further information please visit the conference webpage (http://dnc1.discourseanalysis.net). For general questions concerning the conference (fees, travel, invitations for visa etc.) please write to the conference organisers dnc1@discourseanalysis.net.
<strong>Calendar for deadlines</strong>
Submission of abstract (200 words): <strong>15th of March 2015 – late submission 31st of March 2015</strong>
Notifications of acceptance: <strong>1st of May 2015</strong>
Register with early-bird fee: <strong>1st of July 2015</strong>
Conference: <strong>24th - 26th of September 2015</strong>
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<strong>References:</strong>
Foucault, Michel (1969): L'Archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard.
Lebart, Ludovic, André Salem and Lisette Berry (1998): Exploring textual data. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
McEnery, Tony and Andrew Hardie (2013): 'The history of corpus linguistics', In: Keith Allan (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the history of linguistics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 727-745.
Dr Marcus Müller (Universität Heidelberg)
Prof André Salem (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3)
Dr Ronny Scholz (University of Warwick)