Involved versus informational production dimension in a spoken corpus of Spanish learners of English for academic purposes

Abstract

Biber (1988) first quantitative analysis of language cast light onto different underlying dimensions of linguistic variation that, while remaining latent in language use, could only be unveiled through corpus-driven research. In his original proposal, Involved versus informational production came first in the list of dimensions, and together with Narrative versus non-narrative concerns, Explicit versus situation-dependent reference, Overt expression of persuasion and Abstract versus non- abstract information presented a comprehensive list of variation phenomena across registers and texts. In this paper we set out to explore the composition of the first dimension as represented in a corpus of 59 Spanish students of English at the Universidad de Murcia (UMU). Linguistic co- occurrence in these samples of language use is analyzed and contrasted against Biber (1988). The paper offers both a discussion of the composition of this dimension and, most significantly, evalua is procedures on non-native speakers.