Accountability in corpus linguistics: A proposed framework and new tools for analysis

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Written by Monika Bednarek

I recently had the pleasure of attending the 16th American Association for Corpus Linguistics Conference (AACL 2024) at the University of Oregon in the US, where I presented a poster on behalf of myself and my co-authors. The poster was based on a new open access journal article with Dr Martin Schweinberger and Dr Kelvin Lee about accountability in corpus linguistics and was motivated by the recent interest within corpus-based discourse analysis in data and method reflection. In this respect, Marchi and Taylor (2018: 8) speak of a ‘drive to increase reflexivity across the field’. The conference poster and the co-authored article on which it is based aim to make a contribution to this field by introducing a new ‘accountability framework’, which can act as reflection tool, teaching resource, or checklist. As we say in our article,

‘We use accountability as a broad cover term which includes being accountable for all relevant aspects of corpus-based DA, deliberately drawing on the everyday meaning of accountability. Being accountable means being transparent about research aspects, but also being able to justify them, being responsible for the decisions made or positions taken, and critically reflecting on them.’ (Bednarek et al 2024: 6)

This is conceptualised as a multi-faceted phenomenon, as seen in Figure 1 from the AACL 2024 poster presentation (the full poster is available here).

A figure that schematically describes the different elements of the accountability framework
Figure 1 Accountability framework (selected aspects)

Importantly, each component needs to be unpacked further, with additional questions presented in the journal article. We also hope that others will build on and extend this framework further. For example, at AACL 2024, I had interesting conversations about accountability within research teams, including power/hierarchical structures – something which is not yet included in our framework but should certainly fit within the Researcher(s) component.

References

Bednarek, M., Schweinberger, M. & K. K. H. Lee 2024. Corpus-based discourse analysis: From meta-reflection to accountability. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory [Ahead of print] https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2023-0104 (open access)

Marchi, A. & C. Taylor. 2018. Introduction: Partiality and reflexivity. In Charlotte Taylor & Anna Marchi (eds.), Corpus approaches to discourse: A critical review, 1–15. London & New York: Routledge.