Investigating a Learner Corpus of Computer-mediated Communication

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26580077
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Gakushuin University (2015-2017); J. F. Oberlin University (2014)
• Principal Investigator: Marchand Tim 学習院大学, 国際社会科学部, 准教授 (20645197)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 阿久津 純恵 東洋大学, ライフデザイン学部, 講師 (20460024)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: learner corpus / CMC / genre / learner proficiency

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project investigated a new type of learner corpus research, the computer-mediated communication (CMC) of Japanese university students. The data comes from a course where lesson materials were provided on a news-based blog. Each week, students wrote their reactions to news stories on the blog, and these comments formed the basis of the learner corpus. After 4 years of data collection, the learner corpus reached 540,000 tokens in size.
The learner corpus together with a reference corpus from a BBC news website were analysed to see how the genre of CMC may be described relative to more traditional forms of communication such as speech and writing. Results showed that CMC tends to be more overtly persuasive in form than the other modes. The difference between learner and native-speaker CMC was also analysed to reveal that learners exhibited much greater personal involvement in their texts. Finally attempts to account for learner proficiency in their CMC were met with mixed results.

Free Research Field

Learner corpus research