The EmiBO corpus. EMI lecturer discourse across disciplines and lecture modes

The aim of this paper is to introduce and describe the EmiBO corpus and present some initial data. EmiBO is a corpus of transcribed Master's degree university lectures in English given by Italian lecturers, featuring different disciplines and lecture modes. The corpus is constantly being expanded as new recordings are acquired and their transcriptions added. At present it includes 21 complete lecture events by 14 different lecturers in Engineering and Economics subjects, corresponding to 36 lecture hours and just over 200,000 words. Lecturer and student participant turns are annotated. One part of the corpus includes transcripts of audio and video recordings of face-to-face (F2F) lectures, while the other features transcripts of online lectures, including written elements in the chat. The inclusion of audio and video recordings of different lecture modes make it possible to focus on the interplay between spoken and written input, image and body language, while variations in communicative practices may be tracked as new lectures by the same speaker are added. The different modes brought together in a single corpus constitute a unique opportunity to investigate and compare language and non-verbal elements across EMI lecture contexts. Insights are given into the hitherto under-investigated features of Online Distance Learning in EMI, thus being of interest to others besides EMI scholars. Also of note is that non-native English speaking lecturer discourse practices may be compared cross-sectionally across different modes from a truly ELF-oriented perspective. The paper presents and comments quantitative data resulting from corpus analysis as well as outlining some initial qualitative explorations with suggestions for further development.

本文旨在介绍并描述EmiBO语料库，同时呈现部分初始数据。EmiBO语料库收录了意大利讲师用英语讲授的硕士学位课程讲座转录文本，涵盖不同学科与授课模式。随着新录音的获取及转录文本的补充，该语料库正持续扩容。目前，它包含来自14位不同讲师的21场完整讲座（涉及工程与经济学学科），对应36课时，字数超20万字。讲师与学生参与者的话轮均已标注。语料库的一部分包含面对面（F2F）讲座的音频和视频转录文本，另一部分则收录在线讲座的转录文本（含聊天中的书面内容）。不同授课模式的音视频记录纳入语料库，使聚焦口语与书面输入、图像与肢体语言之间的相互作用成为可能；同时，随着同一讲师新讲座的加入，交际实践的变化趋势可被追踪。单一语料库中整合的多元模式，为研究并比较英语作为教学媒介语（EMI）讲座场景下的语言及非语言元素提供了独特契机。本文揭示了EMI在线远程学习中迄今未被充分研究的特征，因此不仅对EMI学者具有价值，也吸引了其他领域的关注。值得注意的是，从真正以英语作为通用语（ELF）为导向的视角，可跨模式横向比较非母语英语讲师的话语实践。本文呈现并评述了语料库分析得出的定量数据，同时概述了部分初始定性探索，并提出后续发展建议。