Corpus linguistics, the humanities, and virtual organizations

Researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) study social groups (of which internets are striking new examples), the new languages and literatures that grow in cybertext culture, and the beliefs and ideas that individuals submerge in their texts. HSS research thus has implications for our understanding of as diverse subjects as digital modes of discourse, mental health, and the ways in which individuals think and access information online. HSS curiosity-based research into the nature of texts, conceived and analyzed computationally, can lead to valuable advances in understanding how virtual organizations can operate effectively. Two examples from Chaucer and Shakespeare research show why. Corpus linguistics, semiotics, and other social- and text-analysis methods can also tell us things about the individual mind that no data-warehousing shopping profile can. Lack of a research infrastructure has prevented HSS, as Marc Renaud, President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, has said, from focusing on new technologies to shape the research questions that can be asked, and to supply the data used to answer those questions. New government infrastructure programs, and new openness on the part of the sciences and the private sector to partner with HSS, offers a hope that the current separation of these two research cultures can be bridged.