A very well written and useful book. The general idea is that you always should keep in mind your linguistic research question and be aware that results obtained through corpus tools may create layers of abstraction between the data and the researcher. A basic understanding of what the tool does with your data (which changes it applies to them) is required. You should always come back to the original texts after obtaining results created with the help of statistical methods.

 

 

“we should always strive to choose minimally sufficiant statistical methods, meaning that we should choose tests that are no more no less sophisticated than the study design requires. (…) Even simple, seemingly straightforward statistical methods may lead to linguistically questionable conclusions caused by layers of abstraction between the data and the researcher” (p. 40).

 

“Statistical tests cannot replace linguistical analysis; they are, and should remain, tools that should assist the researcher in drawing linguistically valid conclusions” (p. 42).

 

“an ever-widening gap between the everyday user and the language contained in the corpus” (p. 70).

 

“end goal of turning corpus-based data into meaningful linguistic information” (p. 70).

 

“[i]nformation is born when data are interpreted” (Stallings, 1989: 2) (p. 71).