This lecture will comprise three parts. Firstly, I will outline key concepts from corpus linguistics, including keywords, collocation and concordance. I will then discuss the affordances and limitations of corpus linguistic approaches, giving examples of research questions which are amenable to such an analysis. A proviso in this context is that corpus linguistics can and often does involve both automated and manual, quantitative and qualitative analysis. In the second
part of the talk, I will sketch areas of interest within the study of language and sexuality,
including variationist studies, the construction of identity and relationships in spoken
interaction, the representation of social groups in written discourse, and the expression of
desire in language. I will then discuss how such interests could be and, in some cases, have been addressed with corpus linguistic methods. The final part of the lecture will zero in on corpusassisted discourse studies, presenting a preliminary analysis of relationship-building in a small corpus of Facebook posts by social groups of gay/bi/queer women.
