Dr Paul Thompson PhD

Photograph of Dr Paul Thompson by Rory Buckland

Department of Linguistics and Communication
Honorary Research Fellow in Applied Corpus Linguistics

Contact details

Email
p.thompson@bham.ac.uk
Personal email
paul_ccr@fastmail.fm
View my research portal

Dr Paul Thompson worked at University of Birmingham from 2009 to 2026. Dr Thompson is an applied corpus linguist with particular interest in specialised discourses, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Corpus Linguistics journal. Dr Thompson is still attached to the department as an Honorary Research Fellow.

Qualifications

  • PhD in Applied Linguistics, University of Reading
  • MA in TEFL, University of Reading
  • PGCE, University of York
  • BA in English & Related Literature, University of York

Biography

Dr Paul Thompson took up the post of Director of the Centre for Corpus Research at University of Birmingham in September 2009, after working for thirteen years as a lecturer in EAP/Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. Dr Thompson had taught in Kenya (one year) and Japan (fourteen years) before moving to Reading in 1996 to do doctoral research.

Research

With Susan Hunston, Dr Paul Thompson was Principal Investigator on an ESRC project (ES/K007300/1) on 'Investigating interdisciplinary research discourse: the case of Global Environmental Change', August 2013 to November 2015.

With Alison Sealey and Mike Scott, Dr Thompson worked on an ESRC project (R000223900), 'An investigation into corpus-based learning about language in the primary school', June 2002 to May 2004.

With Hilary Nesi, a lecture and seminar recording project, the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, funded by a Resource Enhancement grant from the Arts and Humanities Board (RE/AN6806/APN13545), April 2002 to March 2005.

With Hilary Nesi, Sheena Gardner and Paul Wickens, an ESRC funded project, "An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education" (RES-000-23-0800), December 2004 to November 2007. The major output of this project was the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus.

Dr Thompson's research interests are in academic and other specialised discourses, in the linguistic aspects of human-computer interaction, in uses of educational technologies in language learning, and in the exploitation of corpus resources and methodologies in learning about language.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Thompson, P & Hunston, S 2019, Interdisciplinary research discourse: Corpus investigations into environment journals. Routledge Applied Corpus Linguistics, 1 edn, Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003009344

Article

Alzeer, S & Thompson, P 2024, 'Toward a tool for evaluating corpus-based word lists for use in English language teaching contexts', Applied Corpus Linguistics, vol. 4, no. 3, 100098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2024.100098

Xodabande, I, Atai, MR, Hashemi, MR & Thompson, P 2023, 'Developing and validating a mid-frequency word list for chemistry: a corpus-based approach using big data', Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, vol. 8, no. 1, 32. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-023-00205-5

Thompson, P & Nasseri, M 2021, 'Lexical density and diversity in dissertation abstracts: revisiting English L1 vs. L2 text differences', Assessing Writing, vol. 47, 100511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2020.100511

Thompson, P & Alzeer, SNM 2019, 'A survey of issues, practices and views related to corpus-based word lists for English Language Teaching and Learning', International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 43-53. https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.8n.6p.43

Daoudi, A, Harun, FN, Ismail, MM & Thompson, P 2019, 'The Driving Restriction on Saudi Women: Critical Analysis of Modality in Arabic Online News Discourse', Journal of Fatwa Management and Research. <https://doi.org/10.33102/jfatwa.vol13no1.137>

Thompson, P, Hunston, S, Murakami, A & Vajn, D 2017, 'Multi-dimensional analysis, text constellations, and interdisciplinary discourse', International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 153–186. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.2.01tho

Murakami, A, Thompson, P, Hunston, S & Vajn, D 2017, ''What is this corpus about?': Using topic modelling to explore a specialised corpus', Corpora, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 243-277. https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2017.0118

Chapter

Thompson, P 2022, Building a specialised audiovisual corpus. in A O'Keeffe & M McCarthy (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. Second edn, Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics, Routledge, London, pp. 75-88. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367076399-7

Thompson, P 2016, Genre approaches to theses and dissertations. in K Hyland & P Shaw (eds), The Routledge Handbook of English for Academic Purposes. First edn, Routledge, pp. 379-391. <https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bham/reader.action?docID=4387845&ppg=402>

Thompson, P 2015, Changing the bases for academic word lists. in P Thompson & G Diani (eds), English for Academic Purposes: Approaches and Implications. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, pp. 317-342.

Abstract

Glaas, S, Costello, B & Thompson, P 2021, 'Facilitating a partnership learning community: a novel analytical protocol for understanding free-text feedback comments from students', AdvanceHE Assessment and Feedback Symposium 2021, 4/11/21 - 5/11/21.

Comment/debate

Murakami, A, Hunston, S & Thompson, P 2024, 'Contextualising topic models in corpus linguistics: Opportunities and challenges', Discourse Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614456241293896

Conference contribution

Neilson, S, Shaw, K, Spry, J, Cottrell, S, Cummins, C, Fitzmaurice, N, Greenfield, S, Heath, G, Miller, J, Skrybant, M, Thompson, P, Parry, J & Vyse, J 2020, The ambulance service and the child and young person’s advance care plan: listening to families and professionals. in The ambulance service and the child and young person’s advance care plan: listening to families and professionals. . BMJ Publications.

Review article

Benitez-Castro, M-A & Thompson, P 2015, 'Shell-nounhood in academic discourse: a critical state-of-the-art review', International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 378-404. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20.3.05ben

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

The language of academic discourse; how language use varies from one discipline to another; building collections of text for electronic storage (corpus-building).

Alternative contact number available for this expert: contact the press office