Corpus linguistics and historiography

Abstract

This study identified and tracked the major discourses present in the first 50 years of TESOL Quarterly. A corpus of articles published in the journal was collected, tagged, and analyzed for lexical dimensions of variation (the lexical parameters underlyingvariation across texts in the journal). A factor analysis detected the sets of lexical words cooccurring in the texts. The factors were interpreted into five dimensions: (1) critical, social, cultural, discourse or identity versus language assessment and testing; (2) applications of linguistic theory versus language policy, education and planning; (3) quantitative research methods versus positivist teaching materials and techniques; (4) language teaching and learning versus word-based investigations; and (5) reading and writing versus listening and speaking. The dimension scores were entered in a cluster analysis that identified the two principal eras of the journal: the first from 1967 to the early 1990s, and the second from the early 1990s to 2016.