Corpus: A Writing Instructor’s Best-Kept Secret

Any writing instructor will tell you that one of the most important skills for writing with excellence is learning to write with precision. This means using words accurately, with exactness. 

Language scholars, however, will contest this idea with the question: Accurate according to whom? 

When I lived overseas, I worked with a number of colleagues from all over the world, and it soon became clear that a number of us had different ways of saying the same thing. For example, I make decisions; my friends from the U.K. take decisions. When a friend told me she was going out to buy some aubergine, and I told her I didn’t know they were selling amber jeans. My British friend went to public school, and that means she went to private school. A ‘nip to the loo,’ I learned, is not actually a British variation of the folk song ‘Skip to my Lou.’ 

When I returned from nine years living abroad, my sense of “accurate” language use was somewhat befuttled with a mesh of different usages and direct translations. I was surprised to learn that not everyone calls a cell phone a mobile. ‘As you like’ is not something we say in colloquial English. I was confused over whether I should make a decision or take a decision.  

As a writing instructor, this posed a serious problem. How was I supposed to uphold standards of precision?  

It is comforting to know that there is no such thing as “standard English.” Languages depend on the norms of a community. Norms flux and change. New words and practices come; old words and practices go. Just ask anyone over thirty-five about the use of “reach out” as a replacement for “contact.”

Still, I needed a resource to help me as I reoriented to the norms of the academic English community in the U.S.

COCA, or Corpus of Contemporary American English, was exactly that resource. 

A corpus is a collection of various texts. What makes COCA so amazing is that it is the largest freely available corpus of English texts, with over 560 million words, and it includes newspapers, magazines, fiction, academic texts, and spoken language. 

Here are some of my favorite ways to use COCA:

1. To verify collocations

Collocations are words that commonly occur together. ‘Draw a conclusion’ and ‘close a deal’ are both examples of collocations. 

Every once in a while, I’ll encounter a phrase in student writing that looks a little strange, and I’ll want to verify if it’s something new that I’m not familiar with, or if it is a misuse of a collocation.

Let’s say someone is trying to say ‘close a deal’ and instead writes ‘lock a deal.’  

When I search for ‘close a deal’ in COCA, 57 hits come up. 

When I search for ‘lock a deal,’ no hits come up. This helps me be certain that the phrase is a misuse of a collocation rather than a new trend in the usage. 

2. To see new words in context

This semester, I learned a new word: oblate. Because this word was new to me, I wanted to see how it was being used. By looking it up in COCA, I was able to see the word in 67 different contexts. 

I can get the meaning from a dictionary, but COCA helps me understand how and in what circumstances a new word is used. 

3. To verify if a word is really a word

One of my favorite words that is not really a word is obnoxiousity. My husband used it one day, and I was pretty sure he just made it up, but he insisted that it was a real word.

As our domestic dispute ensued, Google, as always, came to the rescue. 

When we Googled obnoxiousity, it actually came up with some definitions. My husband radiated with triumph. But when I put obnoxiousity through COCA, I found out that it’s not really a word in usage.

Victory is mine! (For now).  

4. To enhance precision

In my example above, I wrote “My husband radiated with triumph.” As I was writing that sentence, I got stuck searching for the right word to use next to ‘with triumph.’ Was it gleam, glow, flushed? 

I knew there was a word out there that matched the visual I was trying to elicit. What was that word? 

I went to COCA and entered ‘with triumph.’ Here are some options that emerged: 

rang with triumph

giddy with triumph

glow with triumph

agleam with triumph

flushed with triumph

radiant with triumph

bright with triumph

purring with triumph

suffused with triumph

I found the word I was searching for: radiant. Yes, he was radiant with triumph. Make it a verb in the past tense and, bingo, I’ve got my sentence.

Final note

Linguists have developed corpora for a multitude of purposes, and they use corpora for research all the time. For writers, a corpus can be a valuable tool for crafting meaning with precision.

Now you know, so use corpus for all it’s worth; it’s too precious a resource to be anyone’s best-kept secret.