I honestly had no idea what the #$@& a "corpus" was. It sounded like a pile of stuff, most likely words. A collection.
This course "expires" in 19 days and I only just barely started it, nudged into it by my dear friend who already knows about this sort of thing.
I listened to the first lecture at 1.5x speed while folding laundry. The lecturer was really interesting, explaining what a corpus is ("a @#$& of a lot of words") and the idea of what it can do (quickly analyze the words), and the limitations of what it can't do (answer why). Which, by the way, I immediately understood. You can't use statistics or science to answer "why".
I got a bit irritated because the lecture quickly turned into "download this tool" and suddenly the lecturer was an unplaceable British accent. I went to stop the video and grinned. Even without the diacritical marks, I knew immediately: the guy was Czech. Vaclav Brezina.
My first impression: Oh man. Is everything in my life slated to have some connection to this place I love so much?!
He showed a tiny glimpse of what a corpus analyzing tool can do, like what it looks like. I got really, really excited. It was not just ideas and theories anymore, but a really concrete way to see and explore them. I wanted to go to my computer and download the thing - actually, to login to the online thing (I don't know what these things are called. Is the tool itself a corpus? I don't know, it seems the pile of words is the corpus) which my friend had given me access to.
But it was interrupted when my kids got home from school and I had to give them a snack, do the dishes, fold the laundry, nurse the baby, hang out with my mom, nurse the baby again...
Hours later, when I was finally, fiiiiiinaaaalllllllly able to claw my way to a computer, I watched the rest of the videos in that lecture.
Actually, first I logged into the online tool thing, and may or may not have given an audible, "Oh!!" I looked through some random lists of shared corpora (what an unfortunate plural). I picked one for Czech Wikipedia. But aside from knowing how to type in a key word (l picked "hlavní") I didn't really know how to use it. Yet. Like, I could see that there was stuff to do with this tool. Amazing stuff. But how?
I went to those lectures, downloaded the other uni's java tool, and followed the dumb tutorial to start exploring it. I was really, really excited by now. My daughter and husband were sitting next to me on computers working on whatever and they kept making fun of me because I kept shouting out things like, "Yesss!" And, "OH!!"
And then it was like a floodgate of tears was released. Alllll the feels from throughout today. I feel like perhaps the only human soul to get really excited about something like this but here is why:
- here is a tool which can have massively useful applications in language teaching, which is something I know about.
- here is a tool I can use to analyze my own writing. A Kate Corpus. Ha!
- or other writing!
- aaaaand DO something with it. I can see this would be useful. My head is a little bit spinning from the possibilities, but they aren't that concrete yet.
- I was already doing something sort of like this before but in a crippled way. This is fantastic.
- I had played with a blog word analyzing tool before but it was so limited and this is so amazing. Like a million times more things can be understood about a text when using a tool like this.
- the point of exploring MOOCs is to try to get an idea of a field of study for my advanced degree, which will come.
- I love Bohemistika but I struggle to know how to use the data. And it's not an option.
- I love Czech but it's not an option.
- translation is interesting but you don't need a degree for it. It's a learning by doing thing. Especially because I'd like to be a Czech to English translator to fill in the massive gap in English material about Czech history. Such a field does not seem to exist in a space where I'd be able to study it.
- I could get a degree in TESOL but I already have one and all the classes look like more of the same. It isn't thrilling. I love teaching English to ESL students but... But what else?
- I love linguistics but it's a massive field. Too massive and the intro level stuff is not my favorite.
- I don't think I can quite stomach the learning curve of becoming a developer even though all the interesting things with applied linguistics seem to be related to computers. Hasn't that ship sailed long ago? Coding felt like being trapped in a dungeon, both literally and figuratively, the act of writing like that. Guilt guilt guilt, I should learn. But it will take forever before I will be able to do anything interesting.
- NOT SO with corpus linguistics. I don't have to be the developer to use this methodology and somebody else's tools in order to do interesting, exciting, fantastically and wildly creative things that haven't ever been done before, that make a difference, that are Awesome.
Basically, I intuitively know that I would be extremely happy in this field. It is a bit unnerving to have such an immediate, gut reaction to a new thing. I should be more cautious and careful before like, committing to a field of study, even on a blog that is read by almost nobody.
But yet, I am also insanely excited. This is it. This is an area of linguistics I could really explore.
Lots of tears.
"Are you happy, or are you sad, or are you tired?" Danny had his arms around me.
"I...I don't know. This is just so amazing. Allllll the feelings. Too many feelings."
Then I had to go nurse the baby, and now I'm writing, which is something I *can* successfully do on a phone one-handedly.
And now it's late.
The world is such an amazing place and there is a tremendous amount of joy to be found just through exploring it. I am so lucky.
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