A01 cohe4573 01 se fm. Qxd

2
Promoting a learner-centered approach. Learners can access the
information when and where they want.
3
Open-ended source of language data. A corpus offers a discovery approach
to learning.
4
Enabling the learning process to be individualized. A corpus approach
enables the learning task to accommodate the learner’s needs.
Corpora have been valued for a long time because they reflect the way
language is actually used. As one leading corpus expert put it, “(l)anguage
cannot be invented: it can only be captured” and trying to construct natu-
rally sounding text results in usage that is “often embarrassing and never
reliable.”
27
The argument is that it is preferable to search through a file of
relevant examples for what is required than to think up something that
sounds natural, and that while intuition is an important asset, it is not 
reliable as to how words and sentences are combined in actual communica-
tion. For language teaching, many have recommended the use of naturally
occurring data obtained through language corpora, as well as through CA.
24
Biber et al. (1998: 4).
25
Adolphs (2006: 141–4). Both BNC and MICASE allow free-of-charge online searches.
26
Leech (1997: 10 –11).
27
Sinclair (1997: 31).

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1 7 6
T H E N U T S A N D B O L T S O F P R A G M A T I C S I N S T R U C T I O N
Since speech acts, for example, have been found to be often realized 
indirectly, conversation analysts would contend that it is important to look
at more extended discourse rather than isolated utterances to “see how 
particular communicative acts unfold within a conversational sequence.”
28
One way to use a language corpus in pragmatics work would be to take a
phrase used in a speech-act-specific strategy, such as in requesting, and to
search the database for contextualized examples. The following are sample
concordance lines from native and non-native English-speaking students
directed to other students in the classroom, making “can you . . . ?” requests,
taken from the Limerick–Belfast Corpus of Academic Spoken English (LIBEL
CASE):
29
Can you
20 be . . . modest
can you
eh . . . can you give me . . .
21 don’t catch what you say
can you
give a little more detail
22 why? Sunshine
can you
give me some reason
23 . . . your handwriting is . . .
can you
can you mind my take this
24 other sentence you have . . .
can you
show me? . . . eh no just
25 like this song very much . . .
can you
sing a few words for
26 your sentence?
can you
speak out your sentence?
27 agree
can you
speak . . . clearly
We can see how it can be helpful to access examples for how “can you”
requests show up in casual conversations in class – specifically, in collabor-
ative work, where students are working independently of the teacher. Advocates
of the use of language corpora would see making learners aware of classroom
language as a means for facilitating interaction in the classroom in general
and task completion in particular.
30
Along with the benefits of using corpora, corpus experts admit that 
even large corpora may not have readily accessible examples of what you are
looking for, which is why they would recommend using them for language
forms where the variety of patterns is more easily revealed through a search
of the database. So if you are working with electronic corpora for the analy-
sis of pragmatics, you would ideally search for words or language structures
that have been tagged, such as performative verbs (e.g., compliment, apologize,
28
Koester (2002: 167).
29
From Walsh and O’Keeffe (2007: 129), with some of the concordance conventions
removed.
30
Walsh and O’Keeffe (2007: 130).

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D I S C O U R S E , I N T E R A C T I O N , A N D L A N G U A G E C O R P O R A
1 7 7
disagree), discourse markers ( first, but, so), or conventionally indirect 
expressions (why don’t you, why not, how about for suggestions).
31
Say, for
example, you go to MICASE (cited above) to find instances of sorry as used 
in a spoken expression of apology. Fortunately after performing a search 
for a word, you can access the larger context in which sorry appeared and
check it out.
Here is an example from MICASE. In this corpus, we can narrow the
search by specifying speaker and transcript attributes. Let us say we set as
speaker attributes: both genders, 17–23 years old, any academic positions/
roles, native and non-native speakers of English, any first language, and for
transcript attributes: study group, social sciences and education, all academic
disciplines, all participant levels, and highly interactive discourse. The result
was 16 matches from two transcripts, with all of the utterances coming 
from native speakers of American English. The following are slightly edited
versions of five of the 10 cases where sorry was used in an expression of an
apology:
■
Hi, Rachel. I’m sorry my alarm didn’t go off this morning.
■
I feel bad that I haven’t gotten to get my thoughts out because I’ve had
so many thoughts about it but, sorry, I just, I had two really full crazy
days . . .
■
I know you tried to email it too, so sorry you had to do it again . . .
■
I just, I didn’t get into like explaining my reasoning in my movies cuz, 
I just didn’t, I’m sorry.
■
Yeah it’s a little sloppy. I have to leave. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about it.
The following are slightly edited versions of the six instances where the
pragmalinguistic function of sorry was not as an expression of apology, but
rather one of sympathy or regret:
■
It’s a talk show. I’m alarmed, I’m sorry.
■
I’m sorry that that’s she’s not cut out for customer service.
■
She doesn’t want to go. I’m sorry, you’ll have a great time together.
■
Like she m– I’m sorry but, like you know what I mean like sh– maybe
she’s like well she couldn’t be doing anything else right now.
■
And like I’m sorry that like every job has like its pros and cons. She
hates her Angell Hall job?
31
Adolphs (2006).

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