Researcher Introduction
My name is Li Lin and I got my PhD in Applied Linguistics from Massy University, New Zealand. Currently I work at Zhejiang International Studies University. My main research interests are corpus linguistics and learner corpus research. I am particularly interested in spoken corpus design and construction and how corpora may be applied to other fields of linguistics, such as language teaching and learning.

Project Description and Invitation
A spoken corpus is a collection of spoken language stored as written transcriptions in an electronic form. It provides researchers with rich samples of spoken language in use. My doctoral research discussed the use of a Chinese discourse marker就是 jiushi by using a small spoken Chinese corpus (over 400,000 words). Because the corpus is small in size, it has the risk to skew the data when conducting the analysis of discourse maker use. Therefore, I am trying to expand the size of the Spoken Chinese Corpus that I built for my doctoral research.
To do this, I would like to gather spontaneous conversations conducted by approximately 200 or more native Chinese speakers, and I am contacting you to join. I hope that this will be mutually interesting. If you are interested in spoken data collection or want to use the corpus data that I gathered in 2018, please do not hesitate to contact me.

The Recordings
You will record the conversation using your phone or other audio recording equipment, and then send the recording to me. All the recorded conversations will be transcribed and contribute to the construction of the Spoken Chinese Corpus which will be publicly available. All the recordings will be stored on a password protected computer and will be listened to only by myself. I will use the information that I gain from the corpus in my academic articles and presentations. However, I will make sure that nobody can identify the participants involved.

Participant’s Rights

You are under no obligation to accept this invitation. If you decide to participate, you have the right to:
- decline to answer any particular questions;
- withdraw from the study at any time before the recording of the conversation;
- ask any questions about the study at any time during participation;
- provide information on the understanding that personal information of speakers involved in the conversation will not be used unless you give permission to the researcher;
- be given access to a summary of the project findings when it is concluded.

Project Contacts
You can ask me questions about the research before you agree to take part. You can contact me by e-mail ([email protected]; [email protected]) or telephone (+86 18201691549) or WeChat (+86 18201691549).

Linguistic Field(s): Text/Corpus Linguistics

Subject Language(s): Chinese, Mandarin (cmn)

Language Family(ies): Chinese