The value of the DCC

The value of the DCC is to provide a means of determining what should be taught to non-native readers in terms of ‘high frequency vocabulary items’, with this specialised corpus facilitating investigation into the literary language employed by Dickens. Some may argue that learning Dickens’s language may not have a useful outcome in terms of language proficiency, as learners of English are not expected to be competent in the English discourse of Dickens’s time. Nevertheless, the case is justifiable as understanding the specialised vocabulary of Dickens is necessary to explore specific texts (e.g.

135 see O’Keeffe et al. 2007: Chap. 10, for the use of high frequency vocabulary items in teaching).

In reviewing the use of corpora for specific teaching purposes, Gavioli (2005) ‘observed that using corpus work with language students seemed to stimulate an ‘investigative’, explorative approach to language learning’ (Gavioli 2005: 53). Baker (2006) suggested that specialised corpora can also be employed ‘to investigate the discursive construction of a particular subject’, and that ‘reference corpora may not contain enough of the text types you are interested in examining or may not have enough references to the subject(s) you want to investigate’ (Baker 2006: 28–9, 31).

Noguchi et al. (2006) highlighted the value of specialised corpus as being to ‘identify features of language that were beyond the scope of thorough observation’ (Noguchi et al. 2006: 156) commonly conducted on general corpus. Identifying these features assists teachers and learners ‘to generate far more objective and reliable data’ for teaching materials, for instance when exploring specific genres. Such data is unlikely to be gathered by merely investigating a general corpus which involves exploring the behaviour of English in general, rather than in a given context, for instance, such as Dickens’s works.

This specialised corpus of Dickensian English also allows investigation of the usages manifested in that context, which further justifies constructing the DCC for the purpose of this study, while exporting the language can facilitate the identification of sources of difficulty for non-native readers of Dickens’s work. An example of such studies that strive to identify a source of difficulty for non-native readers is a study conducted by Umesaki (2000, cited in Noguchi et al. 2006: 156), who found that the ‘variety of referents to the writer in academic papers’ was one source of difficulty for non-native

136 speakers. Noguchi et al. (2006) also underscored the remaining ‘need’ for more studies that investigate various disciplinary fields such as ‘studying professional English in the theoretical and applied sciences’ (Noguchi et al. 2006: 156).

As to why the DCC might be used for teaching Dickens’s works, Rizzo (2010) indicated the usefulness of transferring corpora to the classroom where learners ‘could directly handle data and learn from authentic samples’ (Rizzo 2010: 1). This concept was originally introduced by McEnery and Wilson (2001: 119–121) using ‘corpora in the teaching of language and linguistics’: ‘Such corpora can be used to provide many kinds of domain-specific material for language learning, including quantitative accounts of vocabulary and usage which address the specific needs of students in a particular domain more directly than those taken from more general language corpora’ (McEnery & Wilson 2001: 121).

4.9 Conclusion

Following completion of the compilation of the Dickens corpus (DCC), I apply myself to the analyses of the texts, considering various trends that serve learners of English. Concerning the teaching of English vocabulary, many studies have dealt with this from a range of focal points, and it is important to employ those studies so as to serve the purposes of this study. The stylistic dimension in this research is intended to present empirical evidence, consistency and objectivity in terms of the vocabulary selection by implementing stylistic techniques (e.g. corpus stylistics).

Through adopting this method, the impact is thought to be on the study itself, along with any proposed teaching and learning methodology. For example, Gavioli reasons that the analysis of corpora, within the confines of the ‘text-types and topics collected’, can be a valuable activity to promote

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acquisition, especially for learners of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), in order to illuminate those ’features that are recurrent in the corpus itself. Small, specialized corpora … may provide a source to get an access to uses of specialized language’ (Gavioli 2005: 1–2).

I will employ corpus stylistics to introduce readers who may be unfamiliar with Dickensian discourse to some of the most frequent and significant items of the vocabulary of his works. The first stage in the analysis of the DCC will aim to discover which lexical items occur in Dickens’s works. The analysis should develop some basic resources such as wordlists or arranging Dickens’s novels, for instance according to their vocabulary intensity, rather than their chronological order. Such materials will be produced so as to encourage independent learning intended for learners of English. The wordlists, for example, deal in detail with frequently used words which are common to all of Dickens’s works. It will thus be valuable to understand if the analysis of the DCC could reveal oddities in the use of lexical and discourse features. Biber et al. (1998), for instance, suggest that there is no ‘general language’ as ‘each register has its own patterns or use’ (Biber et al. 1998: 247). One of the DCC’s characteristics may be that it includes different registers for the same author, besides regional and social dialects (see Biber et al. 1998: 247), as considered in the qualitative analysis conducted in Chapter 6.

With the assistance of corpus stylistics’ techniques, empirical evidence will be provided to identify the useful ‘Dickensian’ vocabulary. Consequently, this study will explore the potentiality for improving the pedagogical applications, as well as promoting vocabulary instruction and acquisition by non-native readers. Investigating the construction of Dickens’s texts will reveal some patterns, whereby understanding these should facilitate the process of reading and the comprehension of Dickens’s works for non-native

138 readers. Following Gavioli (2005), my ‘purpose here is to show that corpus linguistics/[stylistics] theory and methodology involve interesting pedagogical insights which teachers and learners may fruitfully develop in their activities’ (Gavioli 2005: 2) to teach the English literature of Dickens.

The dimensions for further investigations include, for instance, organising the DCC’s contents chronologically and investigating each piece individually to trace the progress in Dickens’s works in terms of lexical density, between say Dickens’s first works and later ones, or the development of his style.

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