CORPUS LINGUISTICS IN DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW OF METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS AND EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS (2015-202)
Keywords:
corpus linguistics; discourse analysis; corpus-assisted discourse studies; critical discourse analysis; systematic literature review; methodological innovation.Abstract
This systematic literature review investigates methodological innovations and empirical applications of corpus linguistics in discourse analysis from 2015 to 2025. Drawing on 45 empirical studies retrieved from major academic databases; Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, this research identifies emerging methodological patterns, technological advancements, and ongoing theoretical challenges within Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). The findings demonstrate that integrating corpus linguistics with critical discourse analysis has produced substantial methodological synergy, enabling systematic, evidence-based interpretation of linguistic patterns across large-scale textual corpora. The review delineates five principal domains of application: media and political discourse, social group representation, health and environmental communication, multimodal discourse analysis, and the integration of artificial intelligence technologies. Despite these advances, methodological constraints persist, including issues of researcher bias, corpus representativeness, and limited resources for non-English language data. The study’s theoretical contribution lies in providing a comprehensive mapping of CADS as a transdisciplinary framework that fuses quantitative corpus methodologies with qualitative discourse interpretation. Practically, the review underscores the need for greater methodological transparency, development of corpus tools for under-resourced languages, and ethically informed adoption of AI-driven methods in discourse research. Ultimately, this review offers a systematic conceptual foundation for scholars employing corpus-based approaches in discourse studies and highlights future research trajectories involving multimodal analysis, diachronic corpora, and the expansion of CADS in Global South contexts.
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