Corpus-Driven Analysis of Frequent Keywords and Collocations in Religious Corpus - An Analysis of Kuan Yin Texts

Hsin-Yi Lien ； Chih-yang Liu

《Taiwan International ESP Journal》 8卷1期 (2016/06) Pp. 32-60

https://doi.org/10.6706/TIESPJ.2016.8.1.3

摘要

Research into English for Specific Purposes has long recognized the value of corpus analysis of academic and professional texts. However, few studies have explored religious texts. The Kuan Yin corpus (KYC) plays a significant role in Buddhist literature. This study investigated the keywords and collocates that most frequently occur in the Kuan Yin legends, historical accounts, images, myths and prophesies that make up a specialized KYC comprising 384,598 tokens of running texts in 63 different online texts and books related to the Kuan Yin. The most frequent keywords and collocates were found using WordSmith Tools 6.0. Experts then refined the lists manually. Utilizing the BNC as a reference corpus, 727 of the most frequently occurring word families and 311 collocations from the KYC were ultimately determined. The lists of keywords and collocates defined by this research provide language learners and instructors with direction when learning English related to Buddhism.

關鍵字

corpus analysis ； keywords ； collocations

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