In 2023, the Sydney Corpus Lab is pleased to be featuring edited extracts from Dr Robbie Love’s CorpusCast podcast about corpus linguistics. In each blog post published throughout the year, we present the answers of leading corpus linguists to three questions. Specifically, all blog posts present answers to the following two questions:

• What are the biggest changes you’ve noticed in corpus research throughout your career?
• How will corpus linguistics make an impact on the world in the future?

Posts from episodes 1-4 additionally present answers to this question:

• What has surprised you the most about your work in corpus linguistics?

Posts from episodes 5 onwards instead present answers to this question:

• What is the biggest misconception of corpus linguistics you have encountered?

This blog post features Eric Friginal. We have transcribed the relevant part of the interview but have edited answers for readability (taking out hesitation marks, discourse makers, etc). Interview answers were transcribed by Kelvin Lee from the Sydney Corpus Lab. The full interview (also featuring Malila Prado and Andrew Schneider) can be found here. We are grateful to Robbie Love and Sam Cook for their assistance in creating these posts.

ROBBIE LOVE: What are the biggest changes you’ve noticed in corpus research during your career?

ERIC FRIGINAL: I guess, I jump to one big change – the Internet. Sketch Engine as the second one. Just really the notion of you go online, there will be access to corpora, there will be access to tools, and it’s amazing. It worries me, Robbie, just because I feel like “do I need to learn that?” A lot of things going on now. I read articles. I get new publications and I know nothing about the tool compared to before when I felt like “oh, I attended the conference; I knew about the tool”. Now, there are so many. The other thing, I mentioned this earlier – natural language processing, computational linguistics, and corpus linguistics. I mean we need to articulate what these things are. What is corpus? What is NLP? What is not NLP? What is not corpus? With these things coming out, there are a lot of overlaps. My emphasis is just to really be able to, if you’re doing corpus linguistics, then do corpus linguistics but learn what it actually is. You cannot argue for like “this is corpus linguistics because I use text and I use tools”. I feel like articulating that is very important. Sometimes you read what arguably would be a corpus linguistics paper but then the citations are computation or NLP paper. There will be those kinds of overlaps that are happening because the fields are really overlapping if you may. I feel like we need to further redefine and create a clearer articulation of what is corpus, what is not corpus linguistics.

ROBBIE LOVE: I think that’s a really good point. Related to that, I suppose, is what is the biggest misconception of corpus linguistics that you have encountered?

ERIC FRIGINAL: That it’s going to change the world, I guess. I guess because that’s what I thought before. Considering that I felt, especially in the late 90s, that was amazing. Not that I don’t believe in it anymore, I mean I obviously still do, but it is a research approach. It is an approach. It’s something that will help us teach registers more. Just like, again, what our two colleagues are doing. Malila and Andy, to describe phraseology, to standardise the language of aviation, they go to corpus. They go to their corpus. They go to what they have collected. They argue for like “this is how you best teach this”. So, I feel like that’s what we’re doing. It’s practical, it’s functional, but it’s teaching. It goes back to what we do as teachers. So, it’s very important and it’s near and dear to me but it’s not a revolutionary world-changing thing. It’s something that we just utilise because we have amazing data, and we know how to take it to the next level.

ROBBIE LOVE: So, in a way, you’re saying that it’s maybe closer to existing conceptions of language than maybe the misconceptions that you thought was really, really different. But actually it’s just a method for doing the kinds of work that people were doing anyway.

ERIC FRIGINAL: Yeah, and I sounded kind of dramatic there, Robbie. I did not want to minimise the doing side – it’s already very important. The doing side and the teaching side of it is already what I really wanted to achieve in the first place.

ROBBIE LOVE: Okay, that makes sense. And finally, I’m very curious to hear your answer based on what you just said to this final question. How will corpus linguistics make an impact on the world in the future?

ERIC FRIGINAL: The applied side of corpus linguistics to me is really very, very important. So, the impact is how we can connect with policy makers globally. I’m really fascinated by the works of legal discourse analysts and how they make use of corpora in defining how legal terms and laws should be interpreted. I think that’s the way to go. Obviously in the legal environment and in the field, they have various debates about this as well – interpreting the intent of the law and something like that. But I feel like the debate and how corpora contribute to it will be very, very important. I’m proud that what we’re doing is trying to really successfully define what happens in communication events with the understanding that we understand demographics. That’s the notion of register – that Biber and Conrad definition of what is register in language. I feel like that’s very important. Language is mediated by register. What I say, what we don’t say in a situation like this – it’s because of the register and I feel like that’s what corpus is telling us. So, how do we take that into making communication as easier, as meaningful, as impactful – if I can use that word – as possible. It’s something that we can contribute using our field and it will make the world better in my opinion.