Call for papers for the International Journal of Learner Corpus Research (Benjamins):

 

Special issue on Cumulative knowledge building and replication in Learner Corpus Research

 

Guest editors: Tove Larsson & Doug Biber (Northern Arizona University)

 

Compared to other subfields of linguistics, Learner Corpus Research (LCR) has a relatively short history. For this and other reasons, most of the studies that get published in the field are exploratory in nature and focus on topics that have yet to receive prolonged attention. Such studies no doubt make valuable contributions to the field. However, LCR is arguably mature enough as a field to also have accumulated enough knowledge on certain topics for researchers to be able to instead adopt a cumulative approach.

 

In the cumulative approach to knowledge building, individual studies are viewed as building blocks, carefully pieced together to help us form an increasingly better understanding of a topic. There are three distinguishing characteristics of this approach: First, the literature review focuses on what we have actually learned from previous research on the topic, rather than merely cataloging individual studies. Second, the research ‘gap’ refers to an important missing element in our cumulative knowledge, rather than to a research angle that has not been explored yet; that is, the literature review is used to identify a missing piece in an existing puzzle, rather than to justify starting a new one. And finally, results of the new study are explicitly compared to previous findings, to discuss the state of our knowledge based on all studies taken together.  Through this big-picture thinking, we can collectively refine our understanding of the topic, and further our knowledge in a systematic matter. Put differently, this approach enables us to build a state-of-the-art in the field by moving beyond the results of individual studies.

 

With this call, we invite studies of two kinds:

 

• Empirical studies that set out to test hypotheses arrived at from an existing body of research with the explicit aim of adding to our knowledge on a given topic that has received ample attention in LCR. Examples of topics that may be ripe for studies of this kind include, but are not limited to, linguistic complexity and the formulaic nature of learner language.

 

• Empirical studies that replicate findings from an existing body of research and, importantly, that focus on strengthening and/or tweaking existing generalizations in LCR. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to, claims of the spoken-like nature of learners’ written production.

 

Timeline:

• August 1, 2022: Abstract and title due
• September 1, 2022: Authors are notified
• September 1, 2023: Full manuscript due

 

Please send submissions to tove.larsson@nau.edu