Language Communities, Corpora, and Cognition

Language data are digitized for analyzing and computing patterns of linguistic form, meaning, and use shaped and reshaped in the interactions of the users in social–cultural contexts in homogeneous or heterogeneous language communities. In this chapter, the rationale and tenets of the corpus-driven paradigm are introduced. Then, three areas of studies of linguistic patterns and cognition based on digitized corpus data collected from different language communities are discussed so as to understand what kinds of corpus data are employed in language studies, how the corpus data manifest the recurrent patterns of linguistic form, meaning, and use in various social–cultural contexts, and how the linguistic patterns reveal the linguistic cognition of a language community. In the first study, the corpus-based linguistic findings in news media demonstrate the intricate patterns of language in the social–cultural discourse in Taiwan. In the second, the use of language and gesture in Taiwan Mandarin shows the cross-modal behaviors and cognition embodied in people’s perceptual and bodily experiences in recurrent individual and social–cultural practices. Finally, in the third study, the narrative data produced by typical and atypical children in Taiwan Mandarin sheds light on the developmental integration of social–emotional, cognitive, and linguistic abilities across the two groups of young language users.