Applying corpus methods to written academic texts: Explorations of MICUSP

Abstract

Based on explorations of the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP), the present paper provides an introduction to the central techniques in corpus analysis, including the creation and examination of word lists, keyword lists, concordances, and cluster lists. It also presents a MICUSP-based case study of the demonstrative pronoun this and the distribution and use of its attended and unattended forms in different disciplinary subsets of the corpus. The paper aims to demonstrate how corpus linguistics and corpus methods can contribute to writing research and provide fruitful insights into student academic writing.