The oral corpora in Catalan and research into casual Catalan: the corpora of conversation and functional varieties of the Corpus de Català Contemporani de la Universitat de Barcelona (CCCUB)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to present a set of corpora of casual Catalan (especially oral and colloquial) gathered together in the VARCOM and PRAGMAESTIL projects carried out over the past twenty years at the University of Barcelona. The research has been conducted by the Grup d’Estudi de la Variació (GEV-UB), in particular by the Grup d’Estudis de Pragmàtica i Anàlisi del Discurs (GrEPAD). This paper reviews an oral corpus of colloquial conversation (COC, 2002), an oral corpus of registers (COR, 2004) and an audiovisual oral corpus of textual varieties (CAP, 2008). In the CAP, for the first time the images of the interlocutors are shown as they speak, alongside the transcribed texts. This paper focuses on the qualitative and research-oriented nature of these corpora. The final part of the text underlines the research possibilities that the corpora offer and also highlights the gaps remaining in the field of corpus linguistics applied to Catalan and its oral varieties.