ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (Transition Review)

Lead Research Organisation: Lancaster University
Department Name: Linguistics and English Language

Abstract

Corpus linguistics is a UK success story. It is an approach to the study of language, pioneered in large part by UK researchers, that uses computers to permit the analysis of millions, or even billions, of words of data to look for patterns of usage that are not necessarily observable otherwise. Corpus linguistics has revolutionised linguistics, changing the ways that language is analysed and how languages are taught. It is therefore an increasingly well established approach to the study of language among linguists. Yet the analysis of language is not the sole preserve of linguists but, rather, is a thread that runs through all of the social sciences. Since 2013, the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science has brought the benefits of the corpus approach to a range of social science disciplines (including Criminology, Sociology, Accountancy and Psychology), and has enabled new approaches to answering questions in those disciplines (e.g. on understanding hate crime, views on climate change, financial accounting, and learning in primary schools). The Centre has also produced new tools and resources for the large-scale study of language, and made them available free of charge to academics and non-academics in the UK and internationally through the Centre website, Summer Schools, training events, and a dedicated Corpus MOOC. Overall, the Centre has established itself as the world leader in innovative research in Corpus Linguistics and its applications beyond linguistics. The next phase of the Centre's work will maintain and enhance that position, by continuing our core activities and undertaking new ones. In particular, we will maximise the practical impact in four of our areas of activity (Corporate Communication, Climate Change, Language Development and Language Assessment) and bring the transformative benefits of Corpus Linguistics to a social scientific understanding of communication for, about and by people who are ill. We will analyse both existing and new language datasets that are relevant to mental health (including anxiety disorder, psychosis and depression), chronic pain, obesity and medical communication. Our analyses will bring about new understandings of the experience of illness, manifestations of stigma and the communicative needs of medical professionals, and will feed into recommendations and interventions for support, training and policy. This will address three of the ESRC's strategic priorities, and make a positive difference to research and practice in healthcare, and communication about health and illness more generally.

Planned Impact

The Centre's approach to impact relies on engagement with research users at all stages of the research cycle, from the formulation of research questions to dissemination and practical application. This is achieved particularly via the College of Project Ambassadors and through collaboration with public, private and third sector organisations in the relevant areas.

During the transition phase, we will maximise the economic and societal impact of the first phase of the Centre, particularly in four areas of relevance to: the Financial Reporting Council and related organisations; the International Maritime Organisation; educational professionals, trainers, and policy makers, with a particular focus on language development at primary level, and the teaching and assessment of English as a foreign language.

The new research programme on corpus approaches to health(care) communication will be relevant to practice and training in health communication and healthcare, as well as to the health-related concerns and practices of the media and the general public. Through our new Project Ambassador, advisory board, collaborating organisations, dissemination activities and public engagement programme, we will aim to reach and interact with: charities and patients' groups involved with the conditions we will focus on; the NHS, and particularly healthcare professionals, practitioners and policy-makers involved in communication training and language assessment in healthcare; private providers of online social networks for different health conditions and of language assessment for medical purposes; journalists and other writers interested in health-related topics; and the general public in the UK and internationally. Our public engagement programme includes the creation of artworks inspired by the findings of our work packages relating to health(care) and the production of short animations to be made available on the Centre's website and on Youtube.

These different groups will benefit both from our findings and from the opportunity, where appropriate, to be trained in the use of corpus methods for their own research and training purposes.
 
Title Animations based on vaccine metaphors 
Description Five animations were created based on a study of the effects of different metaphors for vaccinations (Flusberg et al. 2024). Each animation demonstrated a different metaphor that addressed a particular vaccination-related question. The five links are as follows: https://youtu.be/DOD854panQg?si=mL1C07AWOSsKas1p https://youtu.be/fWBatEctOvw?si=RBHzXEdSbMq9aRVy https://youtu.be/dKFr3StMQgA?si=X5UJeQ3NolyD0Qcx https://youtu.be/y-lrGamu8nc?si=3UX8wQ_KSIGxVB3_ https://youtu.be/3FR4CjCPu3s?si=8aer29vJ00coYtdi 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2024 
Impact Positive evaluations and expressions of interest. 
URL https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/vaccination-discourse/vaccine-metaphors/
 
Title Metaphor Menu for People Living with Cancer 
Description Our research on metaphors for cancer at Lancaster University (http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/melc/) has shown that metaphors can be a helpful resource for talking and thinking about the experience of illness. However, different metaphors suit different people, or the same person at different times. We have therefore created this 'Metaphor Menu' for people living with cancer - a collection of metaphors inspired by a range of different people who have experienced cancer. 
Type Of Art Artefact (including digital) 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact The Metaphor Menu has been positively evaluated by patients and health professionals. It has attracted media attention and been added to the Reading List recommended by Cancer Research UK. It has been included in a tool for the support of women with breast cancer and used by Cancer Care, Lancaster. 
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/melc/the-metaphor-menu/
 
Title Obesity in the news 
Description Animation on 'Obesity in the news' - based on research findings. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact Further interest in the research. 
URL https://youtu.be/Sdef_q3k4Fc
 
Description OVERVIEW
CASS has a strong track record of innovative research, extensive training provision and transformative impact. Since 2013, CASS has delivered over 1,250 outcomes including over 600 publications, over 550 engagement activities and 39 further grants, addressing issues of high social importance such as climate change, healthcare communication, online abuse, corporate reporting, and language education and assessment. Below we report the key findings of the programme of research that was funded as part of the Transition Review, on corpus approaches to health communication.

MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF OBESITY
Our analyses of large corpora of news reports on obesity suggest that there are significant differences between the ways that tabloid and broadsheet publications represent obesity. The tabloids tend to frame obesity as a medical problem that is caused by individuals not exercising or eating sensibly. The broadsheets, on the other hand, provide more 'political' explanations of the causes of obesity, being more likely to frame it, for example, as something that is caused by the failure of Governments to regulate high sugar- and fat-content food, make healthier food options more affordable, and plan urban spaces in ways that are more conducive to walking and cycling rather than driving. These contrasting 'frames' accordingly place responsibility for preventing and managing obesity with different individuals and groups; for tabloids, responsibility rests with individuals to practise better 'self-care', while for broadsheets, responsibility rests with politicians, regulators and businesses.
Tabloids are also more likely to engage in more explicit shaming strategies involving negative representations of obese people. These include use of nominations like 'porky' and 'fatso', adjective descriptors like 'disgusting' and 'ugly', verb processes involving eating ('guzzle'), mobility ('waddle'), weight gain ('balloon') and physical space ('squeeze into'). These patterns are most commonly associated with The Mail although the reductive distancing strategy of referring to obese people as the obese is most commonly found in The Times.
A further set of early findings pertain to the influence of gender on obesity representations. Comparing references to men and women (and boys and girls) in our data, we have found that not only are women represented as being affected by obesity more often than men, but these groups are also represented in different ways. Where obesity is framed as a problem affecting large swaths of women, it is something that only affects men in exceptional or extreme cases. Moreover, particular focus is given to women as parents (i.e. 'mums'), whose obesity is construed as affecting not only their own but also their children's lives. Fathers, on the other hand, are rarely represented as being obese but instead tend to feature in these contexts as plot devices in obesity redemption narratives; specifically, someone become obese as a result of the death of their father but then, after some time, 'redeems' their self by losing weight. In this way, our initial findings reveal some of the ways in which the press keys into prominent ideas about gender and parenthood in order to represent men and women as being affected by obesity in very different ways.

ANXIETY SUPPORT ON AN ONLINE FORUM
Anxiety is a growing, worldwide phenomenon. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 264 million people living with anxiety disorders, which are characterised by excessive fear and behavioural disturbances, and which include specific phobias, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. In this project, we investigate an online forum dedicated to providing anxiety support and hosted by Health Unlocked: the world's largest social network for health (https://healthunlocked.com/). Like many online forums, Health Unlocked offers users a space to get the informational and emotional support they seek in relation to a range of health-related topics. By examining the contributions and interactions of the Anxiety Support forum, we set out to better understand the lived experiences of those with anxiety, including the coping strategies they adopt to mitigate the impact of anxiety disorders.
Our data comprises approximately 21 million words of text posted to the Anxiety Support forum between March 2012 and October 2020. We are using corpus-based methods to analyse this data with respect to the following areas:
Sketching Anxiety: Our analysis begins with a focus on the word anxiety, using the corpus analysis tool Sketch Engine to provide a detailed 'Word Sketch' of its use in the forum, e.g. looking at its occurrence in different grammatical patterns. In demonstrating how anxiety is discursively constructed, we aim to show how users perceive anxiety disorders and how they talk about strategies for coping with anxiety. We also compare anxiety to related terms such as depression, fear, panic and stress to investigate how users of the forum relate these aspects of their mental health and how they differentiate between these often co-occurring experiences.

The Lived Experience: Research has shown that the stories people tell about their illness experiences "restore a coherent self by providing a meaningful explanation for a being in the world burdened by illness" (Kleinmann, 1988, p.48). We will investigate the narratives provided by contributors to the forum as a way of understanding how anxiety operates in the context of users' lives and how the forum functions for participants to share their stories.
Creating a Community: Online forums provide invaluable opportunities to engage with other people's experiences in a way that facilitates relatability and empathy, ultimately fostering solidarity and a community that extends beyond geographical barriers. Our work will investigate the affordances of the online platform by looking at the ways that participants respond to each other's posts and how users elicit informational and emotional support from others in the forum. Focusing more on interactional aspects of the forum, we consider how users reach consensus and deal with conflict, establishing the conventions for the nature and manner in which participants support each other.
Sex and gender: Diagnoses of anxiety disorders are more common among females than males (4.6% compared to 2.6% at the global level) (World Health Organization, 2017). However, researchers argue that prevalence of anxiety among men is comparable to women and that normative gender ideologies affect how individuals talk about and seek help for experiences of anxiety (Gough et al. 2021). We will explore the forum both in relation to how posts made by female and male users compare in fulfilling particular kinds of support roles, as well as how participants refer to gender stereotypes, that shape their experiences of anxiety, including how and where they find support.
Comparing cultures: The Anxiety Support forum includes contributions from participants around the globe, with 38.84% of posts made by people from the UK and 33.94% made by those from the USA. Our analysis will include a comparison of contributions from the US and the UK, highlighting cultural differences in the way that anxiety is understood (in addition to spelling (favorite) and lexical choices (vacation)). This investigation will help to highlight how the respective health services of these countries shape users' experiences of anxiety and their interactions with support services.
Changing Times: Our corpus contains posts made over an 8-year period, offering us the opportunity to look at how language has changed over the time, focussing on changes in how anxiety discourses are conceptualised (e.g. increasingly medicalised). Research has also shown that national and global events lead to increases in the prevalence of anxiety disorders. We can, for instance, examine the impact of Brexit on how users from the UK use the forum, or how participants discuss the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. The timespan of the data also enables us to investigate how posting behaviour 'evolves' over time. As an online community, we can see how more established contributors demonstrate their expertise and negotiate the communicative practices of the forum with newer participants. The diachronic nature of the forum will also help us to understand how we can support various stakeholders in living well with anxiety.
LANGUAGE AND PSYCHOSIS
A corpus linguistic analysis of two sets of interviews with voice-hearers (clinical and non-clinical) has so far resulted in the following findings:
• There are both similarities and differences in how clinical and non-clinical voice-hearers describe their experiences.
• Non-clinical voice-hearers (spiritualists) emphasize professionalism and the ability to control their emotional involvement.
• Clinical voice-hearers emphasize their own distress and lack of control.
• There are differences among clinical voice-hearers in terms of the extent to which and how they describe their voice as fully-fledged individuals.
* Corpus Linguistic methods can provide evidence in support of the clinical psychological notion of a 'psychosis continuum'
* Corpus Linguistic methods can add nuance to current approaches to hallucinatory voices as social agents

COMMUNICATION ABOUT PAIN
We applied a range of corpus techniques to the analysis of descriptions of pain experiences in: 1) A large corpus of general English; 2) The online forum of the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association; 3) The online forum of the charity Pain Concern. We considered the patterns we identified in relation to the main language-based diagnostic tools for pain, and explored differences based on gender and on the source of the pain.

The main findings are as follows:

• Only a subset of descriptors from the McGill Pain Questionnaire (original and short forms) are regularly used in naturally-occurring descriptions of pain.
• Women tend to use a wider variety of McGill descriptors than men, as well as a wider variety of emotion-related vocabulary in narratives of pain experiences.
• The way in which the original McGill Pain Questionnaire captures pain intensity is undermined by people's tendency to select descriptors that strongly collocate with the word 'pain'.
• It is possible to identify some linguistic differences between descriptions of Trigeminal Neuralgia vs. descriptions of pain due to other causes.

Overall, the findings suggest that corpus methods can be useful both for assessing existing language-based diagnostic tools for pain and for creating new ones.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS
Proficiency in English is crucial for effective and appropriate medical communication and U.K. regulating bodies for nurse and doctor practitioners use standardised tests (such as IELTS, OET, TOEFL) to assess English proficiency of non-UK/EU applicants.
The aim of this project is to investigate a corpus of authentic clinical interactions to identify patterns of interaction and language used by health professionals and as such, determine how well the English tests taken by applicants reflect English as used in 'real life' encounters. Our investigation will help us to identify the key communication skills required to deliver effective clinical care and allow us to support industrial partners with specific recommendations for language assessment and training for healthcare staff.
With a broad focus on the various participant roles within the patient journey through Emergency Departments, we are investigating how the language used by patients, nurses, doctors and other hospital staff reflects their various responsibilities and status. Specifically, we focus on the following aspects of language: -
- Questions: which participants ask questions throughout the encounter? How are they phrased and to what do they refer? How do health professionals check understanding?
- Directives: how do health professionals issue instructions? What types of mitigation or hedging are used?
- Openings: how do the participants introduce themselves and establish their roles? Do health professionals use names/titles?
- Pronouns: how do participants establish and maintain individual/collective identities through the use of pronouns?
- Small talk: how and when do health professionals engage in small talk with patients? Or with other health professionals?
- Empathy: how do we evidence expressions of empathy in the data? What kinds of empathy phrases do we observe and does this differ according to role?
Our approach is designed to identify those recurring interactional features of Emergency Department encounters that can help inform the teaching and assessment procedures that prepare candidates for the 'real world' of healthcare communication.
• Our analysis of authentic Australian Emergency Department interactions highlighted the various ways that questioning utterances are phrased by health professionals to elicit information.
• This comprehensive account of phraseology demonstrated that clinical guidance on 'asking questions' offers only a partial view of how such utterances manifest in context.
• Likewise, we have reported the range of functions that laughter carries in helping patients and health professionals navigate the stressful context of the Emergency Department.

COVID-RELATED PROJECTS
In addition, a series of projects on linguistic aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed that:
• Misrepresentations of Muslims in the UK press have increased during the pandemic (e.g. via accusations about breaking of lockdown rules)
• Scottish newspapers have paid greater attention to face masks/coverings and the settings in which they should be used than national newspapers.
• The Covid pandemic has led to further stigmatisation of people with obesity.
• Among the wide variety of metaphors used in public communication about the pandemic, metaphors of the virus as a fire were particularly apt and versatile.
• Metaphors may be useful in addressing vaccine hesitancy, especially with regard to beliefs that immunity acquired through infection may be superior to immunity acquired through vaccination.
Exploitation Route The findings of the 'Language and Psychosis' work package will be relevant to researchers and practitioners who deal with the diagnosis and support of psychosis and schizophrenia.

The findings of the 'Media representations of obesity' work package are relevant to other social science researchers as well as to charities supporting people with obesity. We are also working with the charity Hoop to use the findings to improve support for people with obesity and organisations operating in this area.

The findings of the work package on 'Anxiety support on an online forum' have been shared with the charity Anxiety UK, and have been used to improve the charity's AI approach to respond to online enquiries.

The findings of the 'Communication about pain' work package have been shared with healthcare professionals at the Pain Unit at Royal Presto Infirmary and at the UK's Trigeminal Neuralgia Institute.

Commissioned research has been carried out to answer questions formulated by several charities, including Runnymede, Young Minds, Pumping Marvellous, Equally Ours, and the #socialcarefuture movement.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Education

Healthcare
URL https://cass.lancs.ac.uk
 
Description We have partnered with over 10 major organisations - including Twitter, the NHS, the Care Quality Commission, the Home Office, Muslim Engagement and Development, the British Library and the BBC - realising tangible impact, such as changes in Twitter's privacy policy, changes in NHS practices based on patient feedback, and the creation of a patient-centered resource for communication about cancer. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, a CASS-led Impact Case Study on corpus approaches to health communication was awarded the maximum score of 4*. This contributed to Lancaster University's ranking of 2nd overall in the UK for Modern Languages and Linguistics. CASS has developed a comprehensive system for research training through online and in-person courses and events; over 75,000 early-career and senior researchers have been trained in corpus methods via our annual Summer Schools in Corpus Linguistics, the 'Corpus Linguistics: Method, Analysis, Interpretation' MOOC and other events. We have paid special attention to training and capacity building in low- and middle-income countries, e.g., training students and researchers in Brazil, Chile and Iraq. Our flagship software tools for corpus analysis (notably, #LancsBox and CQPWeb) have 160k unique users and 1M page visits. We have also developed a set of 'Corpus for Schools' resources - a collection of teaching materials and practical activities aimed at A Level English Language teachers in the UK and English language teachers around the world. Our research is regularly reported in the national and international media. MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS OF OBESITY The findings of the 'Media representations of obesity' work package are relevant to other social science researchers as well as to charities supporting people with obesity. We have worked with the charity Obesity UK (formerly called Hoop) to share our methods and findings to improve support for people with obesity and organisations operating in this area. This has resulted in collaboration with one of the members of Obesity UK to produce a jointly-authored journal article (Baker, P. Brookes, G., Atanasova, D. and Flint, S. (2020) Changing frames of obesity in the UK press 2008-2017. Social Science and Medicine 264.) Additionally, our findings were presented as plenary speeches at the Obesity UK Conference in 2022 and the Humber Obesity Alliance in 2023. As a result of this, we were contacted by an audience member, a Senior Research Associate at Slimming World, who wanted to know how SW can improve its language use and messaging to avoid stigmatising and shaming of people with obesity. We analysed the language on the SW website and provided a brief report for her. In addition, we have developed research on press representation to use a piece of online image-tagging software (Google Cloud Vision) to tag photos used in articles about obesity. This enables an analysis which considers both words and images in a text, and the relation between them - something which has been difficult to achieve on a large-scale to date. The analysis resulted in journal articles in Applied Corpus Linguistics and Visual Communication and this new method of analysis will enable a wide range of multimodal corpus-assisted discourse analysis work, which has already been taken up by other scholars. For example, we are advising Cheng Xiao from East China Normal University in Shanghai on how to build a multimodal corpus for her research. Finally, we have also collaborated with Australian obesity researchers led by Prof Monika Bednarek at The University of Sydney, which has resulted in us sharing our methodological techniques with her team and creating and analysing an Australian news corpus with them. This has resulted in a paper in Applied Linguistics, as well as another paper (under review in Applied Corpus Linguistics). ANXIETY SUPPORT ON AN ONLINE FORUM The findings of the work package on 'Anxiety support on an online forum' have been shared with the charity Anxiety UK. We were interviewed by Anxiety UK, who published the interview in their newsletter. We have also collaborated with Anxiety UK to improve their website chatbot which responds to online enquiries, and have worked with them to co-author a journal article which analyses the evaluation of improvements to the chatbot (the paper is currently under review). COMMUNICATION ABOUT PAIN The findings of the 'Communication about pain' work package have been shared with healthcare professionals (e.g. the Pain Unit at Royal Preston Infirmary and the UK's Trigeminal Neuralgia Institute) and charities (e.g. the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association UK). We have trained hundreds of pain clinicians based on our work on language-based diagnostic tools for pain, and avoided the closure of the online forum of the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association UK, based on our analysis of interactions on the forum. We have had input into a new diagnostic tool for trigeminal neuralgia. OTHER STRANDS OF WORK The findings of the 'Language and Psychosis' work package are relevant to researchers and practitioners who deal with the diagnosis and support of psychosis and schizophrenia. The findings of research on representations of the sea in the UK press have been presented to Defra and the Marine Management Organisation. The findings of research on English language tests are being used to create a chatbot for Trinity College London. Commissioned research has been carried out to answer questions formulated by several charities, including Runnymede, Young Minds, Pumping Marvellous, Equally Ours, and the #socialcarefuture movement. Through additional funding from Trinity College London and the British Council, we have contributed to the improvement of language training and language testing materials that have benefited thousands of teachers and hundred of thousand of test-takers worldwide.
First Year Of Impact 2018
Sector Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Education,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare
Impact Types Societal
 
Description 'Metaphor Menu for People Living with Cancer' recommended by Cancer Research UK
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
URL https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/coping/general-books-links/general-reading-list
 
Description CASS work on representations of social care included in King's Fund report
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
URL https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/social-care-360/quality
 
Description Input into Report on 'How the British media reports terrorism', by the Centre for Media Monitoring of the Muslim Council of Britain
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
URL https://mcb.org.uk/report/how-the-british-media-reports-terrorism/
 
Description Research on representations of Islam in the press quoted in House of Commons debate on Islamophobia (16/5/2019)
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
URL https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000548n
 
Description Research referenced in Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy's report "Biosecurity and national security"
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Citation in other policy documents
URL https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/111/national-security-strategy-joint-committee/news/13799...
 
Description Response to the All Party Parliamentary Group's for Religion and the Media Call for Evidence on religious literacy
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
 
Description Talk by Paul Baker in Parliament for the launch of the Media Monitoring Centre (a group which monitor representation of Muslims in the press)
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
 
Description 4D PICTURE: Design-based Data-Driven Decision-support Tools: Producing Improved Cancer Outcomes Through User- Centred Research
Amount £828,411 (GBP)
Funding ID 10041120 
Organisation European Commission H2020 
Sector Public
Country Belgium
Start 02/2022 
End 02/2026
 
Description Funding from Campbell Village Trust to carry out a project on the representation of social care in the media
Amount £2,000 (GBP)
Organisation Camphill Village Trust 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2018 
End 06/2018
 
Description Improving Patient Experience: Textual Analysis of the National Cancer Patient Survey.
Amount £84,006 (GBP)
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2020 
End 12/2020
 
Description Islam in the media
Amount £349,672 (GBP)
Organisation The Aziz Foundation 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2019 
End 09/2020
 
Description New Methods and Data in Second Language Learning Research
Amount £37,219 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/S013679/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2019 
End 08/2019
 
Description Public Discourses of Dementia: Challenging stigma and promoting personhood
Amount £835,284 (GBP)
Funding ID MR/V022954/1 
Organisation Medical Research Council (MRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2022 
End 01/2026
 
Description Questioning Vaccination Discourse (Quo VaDis): A Corpus-Based Study
Amount £784,028 (GBP)
Funding ID ES/V000926/1 
Organisation Economic and Social Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2021 
End 02/2024
 
Description Realist evaluation of online mental health communities to improve policy and practice
Amount £876,363 (GBP)
Organisation National Institute for Health Research 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2022 
End 12/2024
 
Description Representations of race and racism in the UK press
Amount £2,500 (GBP)
Organisation Runnymede Trust 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 05/2020 
End 09/2020
 
Description Social Care in the 2019 UK General Election campaign
Amount £2,000 (GBP)
Organisation In Control 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2019 
End 01/2020
 
Description Synergy grant of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council: Interventions for better life-time mental health outcomes for young Australians (15-24 years) with disability
Amount $5,000,000 (AUD)
Organisation University of Melbourne 
Sector Academic/University
Country Australia
Start 04/2022 
End 04/2027
 
Description The Future of Human Reproduction: transformative agendas and methods for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Amount £1,019,767 (GBP)
Funding ID 222858/Z/21/Z 
Organisation Wellcome Trust 
Sector Charity/Non Profit
Country United Kingdom
Start 04/2022 
End 08/2025
 
Title BNC2014 Baby+ 
Description This is a 5-million-word sample of current British English ranging from academic writing to fiction, speech and online language. It offers a unique insight into current language use across different genres of British English. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2019 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The dataset was presented at the ICAME40 (Switzerland) and CL2019 (Cardiff, UK) conferences. Further impact activities are planned. 
URL http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox/download.php
 
Title BNC2014 Spoken Corpus 
Description The British National Corpus 2014 is a large collection of samples of contemporary British English language use, gathered from a range of real-life contexts. The BNC2014, which contains millions of words of spoken and written English, is being gathered by Lancaster University and Cambridge University Press, and is a new resource for research and teaching on contemporary British English. It is the successor to the original British National Corpus, which was gathered in the early 1990s. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2018 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Researchers around the world are now able to use this corpus to study present-day spoken British English. 
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/cass-projects/spoken-bnc2014/
 
Title British English Corpus 2021 (BE21) 
Description A 1 million word corpus of British English from 2021 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Ability to compare British English over time. 
 
Title Trinity Lancaster Corpus 
Description Trinity Lancaster Corpus (TLC) is currently the largest corpus of spoken L2 English. The TLC was developed in a cooperation between the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) at Lancaster University and Trinity College London, a major international examination board. The data used in the corpus were collected from 2012 to 2018 as part of the Graded Examinations in Spoken English (GESE), an exam developed and administered by Trinity College London. Overall, the corpus contains 4.2 million words (tokens) of transcribed spoken interaction between exam candidates (L2 speakers of English) and examiners (L1 speakers of English). The L2 data come from over 2,000 L2 speakers from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and with a range of sociolinguistic characteristics. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2019 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact International testing agency Trinity College London are using the corpus to improve their training and testing materials. 
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/trinity-lancaster-corpus/
 
Title Written BNC 2014 
Description A new corpus of British English writing: BNC written 2014 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Tens of thousands of users around the world. 
URL http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/bnc2014/
 
Description Collaboration with Australian National University 
Organisation Australian National University (ANU)
Country Australia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution In order to encourage closer ties, Lancaster University (LU), UK and The Australian National University, as represented by the Research School of Humanities and the Arts have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate cooperation for the establishment of collaboration in areas of mutual interest and benefit to both institutions. Based on principles of equity and reciprocity, this MOU will serve as a general framework for cooperation between the two institutions and is intended to facilitate discussions for more specific programs of collaboration. In particular, each institution will seek to: a) Facilitate research collaborations (including joint funding applications and joint dissemination events), initially through the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) joining the International Consortium for Communication in Health Care, currently led by the Institute for Communication in Health Care at ANU; b) Identify opportunities for exchange of doctoral students, faculty and research staff; c) Facilitate visits by authorised officials from each institution in order to develop cooperative mechanisms and to expand areas of, cooperation; d) Make faculty and students aware of the academic programs, research institutes and educational resources of the other institution; and e) Identify other areas of possible interest and collaboration, particularly in view of Lancaster University's investment in a new Health Innovation Campus.
Collaborator Contribution In order to encourage closer ties, Lancaster University (LU), UK and The Australian National University, as represented by the Research School of Humanities and the Arts have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to facilitate cooperation for the establishment of collaboration in areas of mutual interest and benefit to both institutions. Based on principles of equity and reciprocity, this MOU will serve as a general framework for cooperation between the two institutions and is intended to facilitate discussions for more specific programs of collaboration. In particular, each institution will seek to: a) Facilitate research collaborations (including joint funding applications and joint dissemination events), initially through the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (CASS) joining the International Consortium for Communication in Health Care, currently led by the Institute for Communication in Health Care at ANU; b) Identify opportunities for exchange of doctoral students, faculty and research staff; c) Facilitate visits by authorised officials from each institution in order to develop cooperative mechanisms and to expand areas of, cooperation; d) Make faculty and students aware of the academic programs, research institutes and educational resources of the other institution; and e) Identify other areas of possible interest and collaboration, particularly in view of Lancaster University's investment in a new Health Innovation Campus.
Impact As a result of this collaboration, the Centre has joined the International Consortium for Communication in Healthcare: https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/ich/international-consortium-communication-health-care
Start Year 2020
 
Description Partnership with Sydney Corpus Lab (University of Sydney) 
Organisation University of Sydney
Country Australia 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Lancaster and Sydney Universities for collaboration between CASS and the Sydney Corpus Lab. Collaborative research projects are the core of this MoU. Current plans include a joint research project in the area of media representations of obesity. CASS will build a corpus of Australian news reports about obesity, and advise on the analysis, based on a current CASS project on representations of obesity in the UK Press.
Collaborator Contribution The Sydney Corpus Lab will analyse the Australian corpus. At least one joint journal article will be submitted.
Impact Corpus of Australian news reports on obesity
Start Year 2019
 
Title #LancsBox X 
Description This is a powerful tool for the analysis of large amounts of linguistic data - billions of words. It newly includes features such as graphical analysis of collocations, wordlist and keyword lists. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2023 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact #LancsBox X has an increasing userbase with thousands of new licenses added since its release. It allows users carrying out research that is otherwise not possible. 
URL https://lancsbox.lancs.ac.uk/
 
Title #LancsBox X 2023 
Description Software for analysis of larger corpora (billions of words) 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2023 
Impact Over 1,000 people attended/watched the launch event. 
 
Title #LancsBox v. 4.5 
Description This powerful tool can analyse and visualise large amounts of linguistic data. Version 4.7, which is freely distributed for all operating systems includes a number of innovations, which allow sophisticated data processing and statistical analysis directly within the tool. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2019 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The tool has so far been used by over 30,000 unique users with over 60,000 licenses distributed up to the present day (27/02/2020). The tool has been used in a large number of publications (over 500 citations), which shows practical impact of the tool on the field of corpus linguistics. 
URL http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox
 
Title #LancsBox4 
Description New version of free corpus analysis software developed in the Centre. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2018 
Impact Version 4 of LancsBox was launched as part of the 2018 run of the Corpus MOOC, which attracted over 7,000 participants. The software is being used by students, researchers and practitioners all over the world (e.g. at the Frameworks Institute in Washington DC). 
 
Title App for the analysis of financial reports 
Description A new app produced by Lancaster University Management School, the School of Computing and Communications, and the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science helps cut through hard to understand financial reports. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact Ability for financial sector to carry out computational analyses of financial reports 
URL https://youtu.be/X400X24fxsg
 
Title Lancaster Stats Tools online 
Description Lancaster Stats Tools online offers access to powerful statistical tools through a simple 'click and analyse' user interface, into which the data can be directly copy/pasted from a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel or Calc). The statistical tools offer the power of the R package in the background combined with a user-friendly interface designed specifically for analyses of data in corpus linguistics. To search corpora and obtain frequencies for statistical analysis a range of software tools can be used. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2018 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The software tool brings innovation to corpus linguistics. It offers a comprehensive overview of methods that can be used to analyse linguistic data. It is based on extensive research that was enabled by the ERSC-funded project. 
 
Title LancsBox X 
Description Software corpus linguistic tool for very large corpora. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact This software makes it possible to study the new BNC Written corpus 2014. 
URL http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox/index.php
 
Title Version 5.1 of #LancsBox software (2020) 
Description Corpus analysis tool 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact This software has over 30,000 users worldwide. The launch of the new version has been watched by over 5,000 people. 
 
Title Version 6.0 of #LancsBox software (2021) 
Description Corpus analysis software. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact Cutting-edge suite of corpus linguistic tools. Over 30,000 users worldwide. 
URL http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox/index.php
 
Description #LancsBox X - release 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Almost 1,300 researchers (early career and senior), educators and other stakeholders attended this event, which provided information about the new software tool we released.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://cass.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox-x-innovation-in-corpus-linguistics/
 
Description 2022 Corpus Linguistics Summer Schools 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Free Corpus Linguistics Summer Schools at Lancaster University.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Advice for Centre for Media Monitoring 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Meeting with members of the Centre for Media Monitoring to advise on analytical methods based on analysing a corpus of BBC news data about reporting on Islam
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Advice for Slimming World 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Provided advice to Sarah Bennet, a senior research associate at Slimming World about how to improve their representations around obesity in their articles to avoid stigmatising and shaming.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Analysis of press reports on transsexuality for charity Mermaids 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Analysis of press reports on transsexuality for charity Mermaids
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/representing-trans-people-in-the-uk-press-a-follow-up-study-professor-paul-b...
 
Description Article for The Conversation of the most frequent words in English 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Article for The Conversation entitled: 'Tea, weather and being on time: analysis of 100 million words reveals what Brits talk about most'
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://theconversation.com/tea-weather-and-being-on-time-analysis-of-100-million-words-reveals-what...
 
Description Article in Guardian newspaper 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Authored article in Guardian newspaper on metaphors during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/05/fire-waves-and-warfare-the-way-we-make-sense-o...
 
Description Article on Pandemic Metaphors for emagazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Article on Pandemic metaphors for the emagazine of the English and Media Centre.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine/
 
Description Article on metaphors for Covid-19 for Babel magazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Article on metaphors for Covid-19 for Babel magazine.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://babelzine.co.uk/store-2/babel-issue-37/
 
Description BBC report on CASS support for academics at the University of Mosul 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact BBC report on support provided by Centre for academics and students who are rebuilding the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Mosul in Iraq, following the destruction caused by ISIS.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46208714
 
Description Blog for Cambridge University Press 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Blog post on 'Obesity - blaming and shaming in the British press' for Cambridge University Press.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2022/01/obesity-blaming-and-shaming-in-the-british-press/
 
Description Blog on metaphors for the Covid-19 pandemic 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Blog post on Centre's website on preliminary findings of research on metaphors for Covid-19: 'A fire raging': Why fire metaphors work well for Covid-19
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/a-fire-raging-why-fire-metaphors-work-well-for-covid-19/
 
Description Blog post for 'Social Care Future' blog 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Commissioned blog post on 'A crisis threatening the UK? How newspapers talk about social care' for Social Care Future blog.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://socialcarefuture.blog/2018/06/22/a-crisis-threatening-the-uk-how-newspapers-talk-about-socia...
 
Description Blog post on International Baccalaureate on social media during the pandemic 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Blog post on preliminary findings of research on social media debates around the International Baccalaureate during the pandemic: Covid-19 and the International Baccalaureate
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/covid-19-and-the-international-baccalaureate/
 
Description Blog post on Metaphor Menu for People with Cancer published by European Association for Palliative Care 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Blog post on Metaphor Menu for People with Cancer published by European Association for Palliative Care
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://eapcnet.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/a-metaphor-menu-for-people-living-with-cancer/
 
Description Blog post on press reporting on face masks/coverings 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Blog post on preliminary findings of research on press representations of face masks/coverings: 'Face masks' and 'face coverings' in the UK press during the Covid-19 pandemic: Scottish vs. national newspapers
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/face-masks-and-face-coverings-in-the-uk-press-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-s...
 
Description Blog post on press representations of Muslims during the pandemic 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Blog post on Centre's website on findings of research on the representations of Muslims in the UK press during the pandemic: From careful to careless reporting: The effect of COVID-19 on the representation of Islam and Muslims.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/from-careful-to-careless-reporting-the-effect-of-covid-19-on-the-representat...
 
Description Blog post on press representations of slavery in the 19th century 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Blog post on Centre's website on: Slavery in the News - Slaves and Slavery in the Liverpool Mercury in the Nineteenth Century
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/slavery-in-the-news-slaves-and-slavery-in-the-liverpool-mercury-in-the-ninet...
 
Description Briefing document on Representations of the sea in the UK press 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Briefing document on Representations of the sea in the UK press
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://cass.lancs.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CASS-BRIEFING-15-Representation-of-the-sea.pdf
 
Description Cancer Metaphor Cafe 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 'Cancer Metaphor Cafe' held in London and Lancaster as part of ESRC Social Science Festival. The events were used to launch the Metaphor Menu for People with Cancer
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Consultancy for Trinity College London 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Series of meeting with international testing agency Trinity College London on findings of research aimed at the creation of a chatbot.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Contribution to 'Gravity' podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Contribution to US podcast on metaphors for cancer.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://gravity-27ccc098.simplecast.com/episodes/on-cancer-and-metaphor-with-shekinah-elmore-elena-s...
 
Description Contribution to 'Sickboy' podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Contribution to US podcast on metaphors for cancer.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/434-sickboy/episode/15857505-routine-checkup-cancer-metaphor-...
 
Description Contribution to event in Parliament 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Talk by Paul Baker at launch of the Centre for Media Monitoring, at Portcullis House, Westminster. Audience of 100. 95% were non-academic stake-holders. Attending were the editors of the Sun and the Daily Express.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Contribution to event on the Future of Social Care 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation at event on The Future of Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University; attended by 50 people from the public and charity sectors, including service users.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Contribution to event on the Future of Social Care 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation at event on The Future of Social Care at Manchester Metropolitan University; attended by 60 people from the public and charity sectors, including service users.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Contribution to professional publication 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Piece on emagazine of English and Media Centre, for secondary school teachers: When is a greenhouse not a greenhouse? Metaphors and climate change in science, education and young people's talk
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/e-magazine
 
Description Contribution to workshop on 'High Quality Financial Reporting Narratives' at the Work Foundation 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Contribution to workshop on 'High Quality Financial Reporting Narratives'; Work Foundation; ca 30 participants from the financial sector.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Contributions to Research Methods e-Festival 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Two workshop on corpus linguistic methods for Research Methods e-Festival 2021.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.ncrm.ac.uk/RMeF2021/
 
Description Conversation article on changes in British English 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Article for The Conversation on new evidence about changes in British English
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-internet-era-has-changed-british-english-new-research-1724...
 
Description Conversation article on fake science articles 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact Conversation article on 'How fake science websites hijack our trust in experts to misinform and confuse'
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://theconversation.com/how-fake-science-websites-hijack-our-trust-in-experts-to-misinform-and-c...
 
Description Conversation article on obesity in the media 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Article for The Conversation on the findings of project on media representations of obesity
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://theconversation.com/we-analysed-a-decade-of-media-coverage-of-obesity-this-is-what-we-found-...
 
Description Corpus Linguistics Training Workshop at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact In September 2018, a team from CASS (Andrew Hardie, Robbie Love, and Susan Reichelt) visited Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand (the travel costs, but not the staff time, for this visit was supported by a grant from the Newton Fund, listed under "Further Funding") to undertake a training workshop on the use of National Corpus data (linking to the host institution's "Thai National Corpus" project and the CASS "BNC2014" and "BNC as a Sociolinguistic Dataset" projects). Over 2 days this workshop included practical sessions using corpus software (CQPweb, BNClab) as well as presentations on the outcomes of research by the CASS staff and our Thai collaborators Raksangob Wijitsopon and Pornthip Supanfai, as well as other Thai researchers working on Corpus data at Chulalongkorn. The audience reached was approximately 12-15, consisting of a mixture of academics and postgraduate students. The event was successful and led to extended discussions in January 2019 between Hardie and Wijitsopon about future collaborations including plans to seek further external funding.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Corpus Linguistics Workshop, Australian National University 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Corpus Linguistics workshop at Australian National University
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Corpus Linguistics and health communication 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Webinar for Xian University, China
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Corpus Linguistics training workshop at the International Islamic University of Islamabad (Pakistan) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact In the first week of September 2018, Andrew Hardie (CASS Deputy Director) visited Pakistan to attend a conference; he was invited to deliver a two-day training event after the conference by staff at the International Islamic University of Islamabad (IIUI). Around 40 participants from many different universities around Pakistan, including mostly academic staff but also postgraduate researchers, attended. The workshop covered a variety of material, from the basics of corpus linguistics, to practical skills with #LancsBox and CQPweb, to recent CASS research. The workshop was very well received and indicated a high level of demand for training in corpus methods in Pakistan which this workshop only began to fulfil. Many participants indicated their interest in using corpora in their future research, having been made aware of possibilities they did not previously know of.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Corpus Linguistics workshop for the Society for Editors and Proofreaders 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Two-hour practical workshop delivered by Tony McEnery and Luke Collins to ~20 members of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders as part of their annual conference. Delivered at the Hannaford Lab, Lancaster University.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Corpus MOOC 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Corpus MOOC is an eight-week online training programme in corpus linguistics, allowing the participants to benefit from the results of ESRC-funded corpus research at Lancaster University. In 2020, over 6,000 participants registered for the course; overall, the course attracted 63,482 participants over eight iterations, some of which are included in the previous submissions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.futurelearn.com/admin/courses/corpus-linguistics
 
Description Corpus MOOC 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Corpus MOOC is an eight-week online training programme in corpus linguistics, allowing the participants to benefit from the results of ESRC-funded corpus research at Lancaster University. In 2021, over 6,000 participants registered for the course; overall, the course attracted 69,762 participants over nine iterations, some of which are included in the previous submissions.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.futurelearn.com/admin/courses/corpus-linguistics
 
Description Corpus MOOC 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Over 2,500 students were trained in corpus linguistic methods via an 8-week course with individual support.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.futurelearn.com/admin/courses/corpus-linguistics
 
Description Corpus workshop given as part of the 7th New Zealand Discourse Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Corpus workshop given as part of the 7th New Zealand Discourse Conference. Wellington University.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Corpus- MOOC - new units on sociolinguistics and language learning 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact We created two brand new units featuring the results of the ESRC-funded project. The international audience (over 5000 participants from almost 100 countries in the 2018 run) allowed wide dissemination of the research findings. The corpus MOOC was also instrumental in helping the University of Mosul to rebuild their language studies programme.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://esrc.ukri.org/news-events-and-publications/news/news-items/esrc-centre-helps-mosul-universit...
 
Description Demonstration of tools for NHS England 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Meeting with Peter Williamson, Senior Insight Account Manager, Nursing Directorate, NHS England, Skipton House, London to demonstrate corpus methods of analysing patient feedback and to discuss future collaboration.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Engagement with business/industry: ELTjam 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact Andrew Hardie (CASS Deputy Director) was approached by email by a company working on language teaching software (ELTjam: https://eltjam.com) for advice on issues related to corpus software for English learners, in terms of the range of what is available and what different systems can do. This approach arose from AH's reputation as an expert in this area as the developer of the CQPweb software. This initial approach led to a 1/2 hour consultation call with a manager and a developer from ELTjam, during which AH shared his perspective on a range of issues such as the different kinds of audience for corpus software, user interface design, user experience, and "discoverability" of software affordances. The ELTjam staff reported that they found this consultation valuable and requested a follow-up discussion with one of AH's PhD supervisees, Andressa Gomide, whose thesis topic is in this area. This discussion took place within two weeks and also resulted in a positive engagement.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Episode of Corpuscast podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Episode of CorpusCast on Elena Semino's work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://robbielove.org/corpuscast/
 
Description Episode of Corpuscast podcast - Paul Baker 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Episode of Corpuscast on Paul Baker's work.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://robbielove.org/corpuscast/
 
Description Event on 'Collaborations between Linguistics and the Professions' 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Event on 'Collaborations between Linguistics and the Professions' (4-6 March 2019) - 50 participants, including PhD students, early-career researchers, and speakers/delegates from the private sector.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/mycalendar-events/?event_id1=65
 
Description Forensic authorship analysis for Police Scotland 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Forensic authorship analysis for terrorism case for Police Scotland, resulting in conviction.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.aston.ac.uk/latest-news/linguistics-expert-aston-university-helps-police-scotland-secure...
 
Description Guided reading blog 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact Alll participating teachers (21) were sent the link to the blog, which updated findings from the study. Several teachers responded to say that they found this useful for informing their practice.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/the-guided-reading-project/
 
Description Health in the News event 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact 'Health in the News' event held in London as part of ESRC Social Science Festival.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Interview for USA podcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Interview for USA podcast 'Subtitle'
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://subtitlepod.com/a-metaphor-for-our-times/
 
Description Interview with Canadian TV channel 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Interview with Canadian TV Channel OMNI news on metaphors and Covid-19.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.facebook.com/OMNINewsItaliano/videos/974953992931961/
 
Description Interview with public radio The World 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Interview with public ratio programs The World on metaphors for Covid and cancer
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-04-28/fires-orchestras-parachutes-some-other-ways-describe-coronavi...
 
Description Invited presentations at at Xi'an Jiaotong University and Xi'an International Studies University, Xi'an, China 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Andrew Hardie presented three talks to researchers and postgraduate students in Xi'an, China, with the following titles: "Fundamentals of corpus statistics", "The statistics of collocation: basic principles and potential problems", "Designing and documenting a corpus" (October 2019)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Keynote talk at Diverse Blue Economy Workshop 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Keynote speech, "Blue Economy Contested Narratives", Diverse Blue Economy Workshop, Southern Connecticut State University, USA
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Lancaster Summer Schools 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This large international event took place in June 2018 at Lancaster University. During the four-day intensive training the participants learnt to use new software tools designed as part of the ESRC-funded project. There was a significant increase in the use of the new tools. Lancaster stats Tools online (242 28-Day Active Users), #LancsBox (505 28-Day Active Users).
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummerschools/
 
Description Lancaster Summer Schools in Corpus Linguistics 2019 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact 2019 Lancaster Summer Schools in Corpus Linguistics: three strands; 112 participants.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://ucrel.lancs.ac.uk/summerschool/travel.php
 
Description Lancaster Summer Schools in Corpus linguistics 2020 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Lancaster summer schools in corpus linguistics represent a major annual training event with the most recent results of the project being reported at the event. The training allows participants to apply the methods discussed in their own research contexts. In 2020 the summer schools were online, allowing even a large number of participants to take part.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummerschools/
 
Description Lancaster Summer Schools in Corpus linguistics 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Lancaster summer schools in corpus linguistics represent a major annual training event with the most recent results of the project being reported at the event. The training allows participants to apply the methods discussed in their own research contexts. In 2021 the summer schools were online, allowing even a large number of participants to take part.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummerschools/
 
Description Lancaster Summer Schools in Corpus linguistics 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This online event attracted over 100 students who were trained in corpus linguistics methods, discourse analysis and statistics.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummerschools/
 
Description Launch of BNC Written Corpus 2014 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Hybrid event to launch new BNC Written Corpus 2014
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/celebrating-the-written-bnc2014-lancaster-castle-event/
 
Description Lecture for International Coaching Association 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Lecture on metaphors and why they matter for International Coaching Association.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://en.coachingtag.com
 
Description Lovely nurses and rude receptionists: A corpus analysis of patient comments about the NHS 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Presentation on patient feedback for the NHS at Skipton House, London
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Master classes in Corpus Linguistics for Xian Jiaotong University 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact We held a series of online master classes on all of the Centre's research strands for postgraduate students and staff at Xian Jiaotong University
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Masterclass series for Xi'an Jiaotong University. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Masterclass series on applications of corpus linguistics for Xi'an Jiaotong University.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Media interviews, articles and coms activities - Written BNC2014 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact ·45 UK media outlets (newspaper and radio), including: Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Daily Telegraph, The Mirror, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail (online), BBC 4 Radio station, regional BBC stations (Coventry, Highlands and Islands, Scotland, Solent, Somerset), The Conversation.
·11 international media outlets (Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Ireland, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, US)
·Total monthly reach of these outlets (estimated visitors): 937,091,880 (based on the Lancaster University Press Office audience figures)
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021,2022
 
Description Metaphor and creativity during the Covid-19 pandemic 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Plenary lecture at event on the language of crisis', University of Bari, Italy
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Metaphors and (re)conceptualisation during the Covid-19 pandemic 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Plenary lecture at 2022 conference of the 'Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines' association, University of Bergamo
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description NATE conference: Corpus for schools: Using corpus resources in A level English Language classes 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This event took place at the National Association of Teachers of English conference in Birmingham, 23nd June 2018. Head teachers across the country for attended this event. The event sparked a vivid debate and wide interest in the newly developed tool (BNClab). In the following months several dozen requests for teaching materials available for free at the BNClab platform followed.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpusforschools/2018/09/06/bnclab-at-the-nate-conference-in-birmingham/
 
Description Participation in 'Campus in the City' initiative 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact A demonstration of BNCLab was held as part of Lancaster University's Campus in the City events. Members of the pubic had the chance to use the software themselves.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Participation in 'Campus in the City', Lancaster 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Stand at Lancaster University's 'Campus in the city', enabling the general public to do simple and entertaining corpus searches on spoken data.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Participation in 'Metacare' broadcast 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Participation in 'Metacare' online broadcast
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://youtu.be/-U23fnnowz8
 
Description Participation in BBC Radio programme 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Participation in Radio programme entitled 'Fighting Talk' broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001g8w
 
Description Participation in launch of Sydney Corpus Lab 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Series of talk by CASS members at launch of Sydney Corpus Lab, University of Sydney
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Participation in podcast of the International Coaching Federation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Participation in podcast of the International Coaching Federation, Germany.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://anchor.fm/coachfederation/episodes/Elena-Semino-Metaphor-Menus-epug0t
 
Description Piece on 'Discourses of Islam in the Spectator' for the Muslim Council of Britain 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Piiece for the Muslim Council of Britain entitled: "Discourses of Islam in the Spectator" - to be published in a report by the Centre for Media Management.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Plenary at Universiti Malaya (2023) AUA International Academic Conference on Corpus Linguistics 2023. The added value of image tags: working with a multimodal corpus of news texts 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Plenary at Universiti Malaya (2023) AUA International Academic Conference on Corpus Linguistics 2023. The added value of image tags: working with a multimodal corpus of news texts
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Plenary talk at UK Congress on obesity 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'Changing frames of obesity in the UK press, 2008-2017' - plenary talk at 2022 UK Congress on obesity
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Presentation at event on the future of social care 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Presentation on representations of 'social care' in the UK press at event on 'Social care future: reframing the narrative' in Westminster, organised by Neil Crowther Consulting. Attended by approximately 30 people, including charity CEOs and two MPs.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Presentation for Marine Management Organisation 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Marine Management Organisation, Invited by the MMO to present our findings and recommendations regarding the "representation of the sea" and the need for a more "emotional" representation of the sea in view of raising "ocean citizenship" and address "sea blindness".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Presentation for NHS Insight Team 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk for the NHS Insight Team on the findings of an analysis of patients' feedback on cancer services.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Presentation of new project to Pain Concern charity 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Presentation to staff at Pain Concern charity in Edinburgh on new project on communication on chronic pain.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Presentation to Defra 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Defra - Marine and Fisheries Social Sciences workshop, Invited by Defra to present our findings and recommendations regarding the "representation of the sea" and the need for a more "emotional" representation of the sea in view of raising "ocean citizenship" and address "sea blindness".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Presentation to representatives of Lloyd's Register Foundation and follow-up visit 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact On 30th October 2018, two representatives of the "Lloyd's Register Foundation" (a charitable body associated with the company Lloyd's Register Ltd.) visited Lancaster University with the aim of finding out about computational text-processing methods that they could utilise in work on the digital archive they are in the process of building. The visit was hosted by Lancaster's Pro-Vice Chancellor for Engagement, Prof. Dame Sue Black. As part of the programme arranged for these visitors, a one hour session with CASS researchers (consisting of short presentations plus discussion) was arranged. Paul Rayson (CASS CI) presented on semantic annotation software, and Andrew Hardie (CASS Deputy Director) presented on techniques of corpus analysis, including a demonstration of the CQPweb software and its application to historical data. This meeting went very well and in consequence PR and AH were invited to visit the Lloyd's Register Foundation in London on March 11th, to give more detailed guidance to a broader group of staff.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Presentations for Change - a learning disabilities rights charity 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact We carried out research on media representations of people with learning disabilities commissioned by the charity CHANGE, and presented the findings to the charity's leadership group on several occasions. These findings will be used to inform the charity's own campaigns.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018,2019
 
Description Project mentioned in blog of Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Report in blog of Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. Increased interest in project from Italy,
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://cristinacenci.nova100.ilsole24ore.com/2018/02/28/dottore-ma-e-vero-che-lempatia-narrativa-ne...
 
Description Report for mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact We carried our research on the use of mental health diagnostic labels in colloquial spoken English, in response to a request from our partner charity Rethink Mental Illness. We reported the findings to the charity, who will use them to inform the campaign 'Time to Change' which is run in collaboration with the charity MIND.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018,2019
 
Description Reports for the Muslim Council of Britain 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Two presentations for Muslim Council of Britain, on findings of research on the representation of Muslims in the UK press
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Research cited in Spanish newspaper 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on metaphors for cancer and Covid mention in El Pais
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-03-27/el-peligroso-placer-de-insultar-desde-los-balcones.html
 
Description Research for metaphors for cancer reported in Spanish health news website 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The website Saludadiario.es reported on a talk on metaphors for cancer by Elena Semino, held at Barcelona's General Hospital in February 2019.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.uic.es/es/agenda-actividades/conferencia-how-patients-talk-metaphors-cancer-and-end-life
 
Description Research mentioned in Atlantic magazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on metaphors for Covid and cancer mentioned in Atlantic magazine.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/trump-strength-coronavirus/616682/
 
Description Research mentioned in Daily Mail 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on metaphors for Covid cited in Daily Mail article
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-8200153/Tankers-football-comebacks-green-shoots--just-d...
 
Description Research mentioned in Der Spiegel 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on metaphors and Covid-19 mentioned in German magazine Der Spiegel.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/corona-pandemie-linguisten-finden-die-perfekte-metapher-f...
 
Description Research mentioned in Spanish newspaper El Correo 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research mentioned in Spanish newspaper El Correo
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.elcorreo.com/vivir/tendencias/guerra-20200501115220-ntrc.html?ref=https:%2F%2Ft.co%2FGxa...
 
Description Research on cancer metaphor included in YouTube vide on 'Cancer Research Demystified' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on cancer metaphor included in YouTube vide on 'Cancer Research Demystified'
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbLZdR8gjae4fom9sLmW-nQ
 
Description Research reported by Spanish science news agency 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research reported by Spanish science news agency, and reproduced by other news websites in Spain and South America. Many people on Twitter expressed interest and changes in views/awareness.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.agenciasinc.es/Reportajes/Escribir-bien-sobre-cancer-o-como-luchar-contra-la-larga-enfer...
 
Description Research reported in Atlantic magazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on communication about Covid-19 vaccines reported in Atlantic magazine.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/booster-shot-better-name/620300/
 
Description Research reported in Atlantic magazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on communication about Covid-19 reported in Atlantic magazine.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/01/omicron-mild-severity-immunity/621238/
 
Description Research reported in Huffington Post UK 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on Metaphors Menu for People with Cancer reported in Huffington Post UK
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/the-language-of-cancer-fighting-beating-going-on-a-journey-he...
 
Description Research reported in New York Times 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on communication about pan and cancer reported in New York Times.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/well/mind/chronic-pain-language-effects.html
 
Description Research reported in New York Times 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on communication about pain reported in New York Times
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/well/mind/chronic-pain-language-effects.html
 
Description Research reported in Taipei Times 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on cancer metaphors reported in Taipei Times
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2019/08/22/2003720905
 
Description Research reported in Times article 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research reported in Times article
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Research reported in Washington Post 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Forensic Linguistic research reported in Washington Post
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/11/fact-checking-trumps-misleading-border-wall-spin/
 
Description Research reported in article on NBC News 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research was mentioned in NBC News article on the death of US Senator John McCain from a brain tumour.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
URL https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/john-mccain-did-not-lose-his-battle-glioblastoma-because-cance...
 
Description Research reported in the Guardian 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on metaphors for cancer reported in the Guardian
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/11/war-on-words-cancer-is-a-disease-not-a-battle
 
Description Research reported in the Mirror 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on changes in British English reported in the Mirror.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/full-stop-apostrophes-experts-warn-25456719
 
Description Research reported in the New York Times 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on Polari reported in the New York Times.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Research reported in the Sydney Morning Herald 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on changes in British English reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.smh.com.au/national/long-live-the-apostrophe-a-bulwark-against-chaos-20211121-p59apk.htm...
 
Description Research reported in the Telegraph 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Research on changes in British English reported in the Telegraph
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/11/13/apostrophe-marked-extinction-language-becomes-less-forma...
 
Description School visit - Corpus linguistics: Scientific approach to language. 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Schools
Results and Impact This half-day workshop for A-level English Language students at Ripley St Thomas secondary school took place in Lancaster on 16th July, 2018. The workshop was jointly led by Dr. Dana Gablasova and Dr. Vaclav Brezina. Students learnt how to use a new online tool BNClab that was created as part of this ESRC-funded project. The workshop was well received and stimulated discussion and follow up conversations. Early feedback on the tool was provided.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Talk for Anxiety UK 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Presentation for charity Anxiety UK on findings of analysis of online forum for people with anxiety.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Talk for Pain Unit at the Royal Preston Infirmary 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited talk at Pain Unit at the Royal Preston Infirmary.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Talk for University College London Hospital 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk for Pain Management Centre of University College Hospital London Hospital.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Talk for healthcare professionals at Royal Academy of Medicine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Talk by Elena Semino on 'Language and explaining/describing pain' at event on 'Explain Pain through Art, Language and Movement' at the Royal Society of Medicine. Attended by 100 healthcare professionals (doctors, physiotherapists, etc.). Resulted in requests for further talks and potential collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.rsm.ac.uk/events/pain-medicine/2018-19/pnm03/
 
Description Talk on 'How patients talk: Metaphors, cancer and the end of life' at Hospital Universitari General de Catalunya, Barcelona 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Invited talk for medical staff and students at Hospital Universitari General de Catalunya in Barcelona.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://www.uic.es/es/agenda-actividades/conferencia-how-patients-talk-metaphors-cancer-and-end-life
 
Description Talk on 'Perception of the Sea in Morecambe and Beyond' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Talk on 'Perception of the Sea in Morecambe and Beyond' - part of 2021 Social Science festival.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/activities/public-talk-perception-of-the-sea-in-morecambe-...
 
Description Talk on 'What do newspapers talk about when they talk about drought?' at 'About Drought Showcase' held in Birmingham on 14th March 2018. 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 'What do newspapers talk about when they talk about drought?' by Carmen Dayrell, Helen Baler and Tony McEnery. As part of the Drought Narratives interactive session within the About Drought Showcase held in Birmingham on 14th March 2018.
The event gathered stakeholders, practitioners, and the public, to disseminate the findings, outputs ad datasets resulting from the RCUK Drought and Water Scarcity programme. A total of 150 delegates; about 30 people signed up to attend this specific session
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Three-day Corpus Linguistics training workshop at University of Erlangen 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Three-day CQPWeb 'Bootcamp' (training for advanced users' by Andrew Hardie at University of Erlangen.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Training session for Muslim Council of Britain 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Workshop for the Muslim Council of Britain to train a small group of staff in the use of our methods.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Training workshop at St John's Hospice, Lancaster 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Workshop on communication about chronic pain at St John's Hospice. Attended by 20 hospice staff and volunteers.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Training workshop for Indonesian Government Agency 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A 6-hours training workshop of Introduction to corpus linguistics and corpus tool features (CQPweb and LancsBox) for linguists in the Agency of Language Development and Cultivation, Ministry of Education, Indonesia from 03/11/2020 to 04/11/2020
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
 
Description Training workshop for specialists in Accounting and Finance 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 3-day training workshop at Lancaster in NLP and corpus methods for researchers in accounting and finance. Number of participants capped at 43 (over 120 applications to participate received). Audience equally split between faculty and PhD students, plus one representative from London-based investment management company.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018
 
Description Two-day corpus linguistics workshop at the Australian National University 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Two-day corpus workshop at the Australian National University, in collaboration with the Institute for Communication in Healthcare. Approximately 30 participants, including postgraduate students, academics and healthcare practitioners
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Webinar on 'Metaphors for Covid-19' 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Webinar on 'Metaphors for Covid-19' - part of 2021 Festival of Social Science.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://festivalofsocialscience.com/events/a-war-a-fire-or-a-race-metaphors-for-the-covid-19-pandemi...
 
Description Webinar on Talking Health Online 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Webinar on Talking Health Online, organised in collaboration with the International Consortium for Communication in Health Care.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/talking-health-online/
 
Description Workshop in Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis at Xi'an Jiaotong University 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact Workshop in Corpus Assisted Discourse Analysis at Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Workshop on 'Meeting Future Challenges in Language Testing and Teaching' 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Organisation and participation at workshop on 'Meeting Future Challenges in Language Testing and Teaching', Coventry University
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description Workshop on communication about cancer at St John's Hospice, Lancaster 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Workshop with members of St John's Hospice and Cancer Care in Lancaster to discuss the development of the Metaphor Menu for People with Cancer.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Workshops for the Muslim Council of Britain 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Training workshops in corpus Linguistic methods for the Muslim Council of Britain
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
 
Description Written BNC2014 - launch event 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact The main purpose of this activity was to raise awareness about the new data set (Written BNC2014), its general accessibility via #LancsBox X and early research carried out on current British English. The event was live streamed from Lancaster Castle and allowed both in-person and online participation. Over 1,500 participants joined the event.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://cass.lancs.ac.uk/celebrating-the-written-bnc2014-lancaster-castle-event/