4  Some general guidelines

Authors
Affiliation

Thomas Brunner

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Vladimir Buskin

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

4.1 Do’s

Tip

  • Re-read a published sociolinguistic study before you start writing.

  • Try to write a good first and a good last sentence.

  • Papers should be written in clear and concise English.

  • Show and discuss many examples from your corpus in the results section.

  • Discuss pros and cons of your corpus (cf. Lange and Leuckert 2020: Chapter 4)

  • Artificial Intelligence: If you used AI for any part of your paper - whether it is for proof-reading, generating content or even code for programming - indicate so in a footnote and/or by providing the full prompt and response in an appendix. For citing AI, you may follow the practical suggestions by the APA.

  • Term papers: Provide a plagiarism declaration signed by you (e.g., „Ich habe die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel benutzt.”). Additionally, consider including „Ich versichere, dass ich in dieser Arbeit die Nutzung von KI-Werkzeugen vollständig gekennzeichnet habe.“

  • Closely follow the stylesheet of the department or journal where you are planning to submit your work. A great number of linguistic publications tend to follow the Unified Stylesheet for Linguistics.

  • If required, ensure your submission includes all relevant supplementary materials (e.g., datasets, code, additional figures or tables etc.).

Adhere to the conventional structure of empirical corpus-linguistic studies (cf. Gries and Paquot 2020):

Part Content
Introduction What is the question?
Motivation of the question: Why is this problem important?
Overview of previous relevant work
Formulation of hypotheses
Methods Choice of method (e.g. diachronic vs. synchronic corpus data; tagged vs. untagged corpora; etc.)
Source of data (which corpus/corpora?)
Operationalization of variables
Retrieval algorithm or syntax
Software that was used
Data filtering/annotation (e.g., how were false hits identified? What did you do to guarantee objective coding procedures? How did you annotate your data? etc.)
Choice of statistical test(s) and how they are implemented
Results Summary statistics
Graphic representation
Significance test: Test statistic, degrees of freedom (where available), and \(p\)
Effect size: The difference in means, the correlation, etc.
Discussion Implications of the results for your hypotheses
Implications of the results for the research area

4.2 Don’ts

Important

General content and style

  • An overly general introduction

  • No obvious coherence between corpus and linguistic phenomenon

  • Narrative elements: First, I thought that… But then, I decided that…

  • Trivial statements: The gender is very important in the field of linguistics.

  • “Steep” introductions

  • Opinions presented as facts

  • Biographies, historical details with no relation to your topics, overly long summaries of textbooks, etc.

  • Sweeping conclusions

Statistics

  • Use of variables in the results section that have not been prepared and introduced in the background section.

  • Figures or tables that are not discussed in the text.

  • Comparisons of non-normalized raw frequency data: use percentages!

  • Graphs based on raw data: use percentages!

  • Figures without corresponding percentage tables, percentage tables without corresponding figures, or percentages without raw data.

4.2.1 Language

  • Avoid expressions like a lot of.

  • Avoid contractions: won’t, doesn’t, mustn’t, etc.

  • Avoid overly verbose and pompous language.

4.2.2 Structure

  • Avoid placing content or results in the introduction, the methods section, or the background section.

  • Avoid repetition of arguments (e.g., in introduction and background sections).

4.2.3 Form

  • Avoid sloppy formatting of the table of contents.

  • Avoid different fonts in the paper (e.g., footnotes, page numbers, graphs, tables, etc.).

  • Don’t forget to use italics when referring to linguistic entities (e.g., the verb eat).

  • Avoid spelling mistakes in your references.

  • Avoid using accents instead of apostrophes: English apostrophe: Don’t vs. accent (e.g., in French): é, è. Wrong: Don´t, Don`t.

  • Avoid CAPITALS if you actually want to use small capitals.

  • Avoid using the past tense for quotations: Chomsky (1957) claims that… rather than Chomsky (1957) claimed that….

4.2.4 References

  • Avoid sources from the internet/unpublished sources/sources which have not gone through a peer review process.

  • Avoid indirect references such as quoting Labov using someone else’s quotation of Labov.

4.2.5 General

  1. No collaboration.

  2. No plagiarism.

  3. No ghost writers.