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Filtering the Flood: Semantic Tagging as a Method of Identifying Salient Discourse Topics in a Large Corpus of Hurricane Katrina Reportage

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Corpora and Discourse Studies

Part of the book series: Palgrave Advances in Language and Linguistics ((PADLL))

Abstract

With the use of various tools and databases currently available, very large corpora can be collected with (relative) ease to meet a single researcher’s precise specifications. However, this scope, combined with the computing speed offered by contemporary corpus processing systems, can often present the same researcher with a Pandora’s Box of results to contend with. Honing in on salient features requires — at a minimum — both a keen understanding of the content of the corpus (including how it might help to address various hypotheses) and a flexible, scientific method of down-sampling.

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© 2015 Amanda Potts

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Potts, A. (2015). Filtering the Flood: Semantic Tagging as a Method of Identifying Salient Discourse Topics in a Large Corpus of Hurricane Katrina Reportage. In: Baker, P., McEnery, T. (eds) Corpora and Discourse Studies. Palgrave Advances in Language and Linguistics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431738_14

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