USING CORPUS METHODS TO ANALYZE GENDER

Abstract

The article is intended to review the application of corpus linguistics methods to the study of gender by examining examples of recent investigations in the sphere of gender linguistics which represent recent methodological advances of corpus methods. The seven selected works, used to demonstrate this, apply a range of techniques that corpus linguistics can offer researchers in gender analysis. The authors of mentioned papers assemble their own corpora and address the most appropriate techniques to rich the goals set in their research. The methods used are compilation of frequency lists, concordance analysis, collocates, keyness, semantic tagging and employment of reference
corpora, which allows a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study. Application of corpus methods in the investigation of gender and language demonstrates among others a number of advantages: operating large collections of texts, quick and reliable search, receiving statistical data, possibility to mix automated and hand approaches, obtaining results which are free of ideological biases and objectivity of conclusions. This article exemplifies and summarizes how cultural, social, psychological, discursive, cognitive and other
approaches to the study of gender in the language are accomplished with new qualitative and quantitative results.