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6 - Is Corpus Linguistics Better than Flipping a Coin?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2021

Donald L. Drakeman
Donald L. Drakeman
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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Summary

Paralleling the summing problem associated with identifying a single intention of a multimember lawmaking body, the semantic summing problem appears when there are competing potential meanings for constitutional words or phrases. This chapter addresses the question of whether the new digital tools used in corpus linguistics searches have the potential to offer a “Big Data” solution to the problem. By examining the nature of the digital collections being searched, as well as the data analysis tools being employed, this chapter shows that corpus linguistics will not solve the semantic summing problem, and may well exacerbate it.

Keywords

Corpus linguisticsinterpretationsumming problemoriginalismConstitutionBig Data
Type
Chapter
Information
The Hollow Core of Constitutional Theory
Why We Need the Framers
 , pp. 115 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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