2.2 Corpus Linguistics

“Corpus linguistics is a field of linguistics that came into being and has closely linked to developments in computing” (Mahlberg, 2010: 292). Corpus linguistics studies language on the basis of samples of naturally occurring language. These samples are stored electronically in what is called a ‘corpus’. “In linguistics, a corpus (plural corpora) or text corpus is a large and structured set of texts. They are used to do statistical analysis and hypothesis testing, checking occurrences or validating linguistic rules on a specific universe” . Sinclair (1991: 23–24) notes that “in this vision of the subject, a corpus is not merely a tool of linguistic analysis but an important concept in linguistic theory”. Corpus linguistics is more as a research tool, by which we can draw the characteristics of certain language frequency. Frequency of vocabulary and grammar in perse texts are different, therefore, different frequencies can directly reflect the difference between the texts. So corpus-based method is valuable to the analysis of language and texts.