The Text Analysis Research Group or TARG conducts research within the areas of corpus linguistics, text linguistics and discourse analysis. Our research serves 3 broad purposes:

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• Provide insights into issues in education and society
• Create methodological tools allowing new analyses to be conducted
• Provide support for non-specialists to analyse large amounts of text data

TARG focuses mostly on English and Thai languages.

Corpus linguistics studies language patterns in large amounts of real-life language through automated methods. Corpus refers to a collection of language stored on computer. Typical analyses produce findings about the most salient words in the corpus, how words go together, and what common phrases are used. A recent project illustrating our use of corpus linguistics involves analyzing the sermons of cult leaders to see if it is possible to identify which cults are likely to become harmful and destructive. We are planning to move into multimodal corpus analysis examining texts and pictures as combined ways of communicating.

Text linguistics examines patterns in whole texts, such as how topics evolve through a text, how a speaker engages with the audience, or the structure of a text’s argument. Text linguistics often combines quantitative and qualitative analyses in a single study. Examples include investigating what patterns of text organization underpin teachers’ marks on student essays, and identifying the differences in information structure in news articles written in English and in Thai. 

Discourse analysis is a largely qualitative approach examining language use in relation to its social context. Discourse analysis investigates issues such as how cultures work, the effects of a text on its audience, and how beliefs and values are communicated. Much discourse analysis has a political or critical aspect focusing on issues of inequality, unfairness and use of power. 

TARG is also the name of a strange animal in the Star Trek series, which explains our mascot.