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ELT Journal 1996 50(3):219-224; doi:10.1093/elt/50.3.219
© 1996 by Oxford University Press
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Do concordances require to be consulted?

Charles Owen

Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Birmingham. He has an MA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Reading. He has taught English in Italy, Spain, Germany, and Singapore, and written articles on applied linguistics, corpus linguistics and grammar, as well as guides to the Collins COBUILD dictionaries.

Recent research in corpus linguistics has suggested that our intuitions about language are too unreliable to be used as a basis for prescription, whereas consulting ‘the evidence’ in a corpus will be much more reliable. This article begins by revisiting the debate on linguistics and prescription, with particular reference to corpus linguistics. It then describes an encounter with a large corpus, and concludes that intuitive prescription, far from being a disreputable activity, is an essential and desirable aspect of language teaching which does not depend on corpus evidence for its integrity.


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