AntConc Hands-on Practice
By the end of this session, you can:
(Without looking at your notes)
A corpus is:
Even expert speakers:
A corpus helps us test patterns in real data.
Today we focus on the first one — with a tool that does much more.
Think of one question about language you could answer with a corpus. Some examples:
AntConc is a freeware, cross-platform software tool for:
Developed by Laurence Anthony (Waseda University, Japan).
It runs on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.
AntConc works with:
AntConc.exeflatpak run org.antconc.AntConcDownload and install AntConc on your laptop.
Open the program and make sure it starts.
Raise your hand when you see the main window.
AntConc contains ten tools, each with its own tab in the tool window:
| # | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | KWIC | concordance lines — usage in context |
| 2 | Plot | barcode-style distribution of hits across texts |
| 3 | File View | full source texts with hits highlighted |
| 4 | Cluster | frequent word sequences around a query |
| 5 | N-Gram | frequent n-word sequences in the corpus |
| # | Tool | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Collocate | words that co-occur near a query |
| 7 | Word List | frequency lists of words |
| 8 | Keyword List | statistically distinctive words vs. a reference corpus |
| 9 | Wordcloud | visualizes results as a word cloud |
| 10 | ChatAI | interact with an AI model using tool output as context |
Every tool follows the same pattern:
File → Open Corpus Manager, or File → Open File(s) as a Quick CorpusRemember this pattern — it repeats for all ten tools.
Open “File”, check the “Open Corpus Manager” option, and click the “Corpus Library” tab.
Find the corpora you want to download, and click the “Download” icon. After downloading, click “Tar” to set it as the Target Corpus.
Regular expressions (“regex”) are a compact language for describing patterns of text, not just exact words.
Instead of searching for one word, you search for a shape that many words or phrases can fit.
E.g., we want all forms of a verb — walk, walks, walked, walking, walker, to walk — not just one form. One regex can catch them all in a single search.
| Symbol | Means | Example pattern | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
. |
any one character | b.g |
bag, big, bug (not boog) |
* |
previous item, 0+ times | be*t |
bt, bet, beet, beeet |
+ |
previous item, 1+ times | be+t |
bet, beet (not bt) |
| Symbol | Means | Example pattern | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
? |
previous item, 0 or 1 time | colou?r |
color, colour |
[ ] |
one of these characters | analy[sz]e |
analyze, analyse |
[a-z] |
one character in the range | [aeiou] |
any one vowel |
\| |
or | cat\|dog |
cat or dog |
| Symbol | Means | Example | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|
^ |
start of the token | ^un |
unhappy, unfair… |
$ |
end of the token | ing$ |
going, reading… |
\b |
word boundary | \bcan\b |
can, not cannot or scan |
These are how you say “the whole word”, “starts with”, or “ends with” inside a regex.
walk(s|ed|ing|er)? — catch walk, walks, walked, walking, walker in one search: parentheses group the endings, | means or, and ? makes the whole ending optional\d+ — any number (3, 2026) — \d means a digit\b(\w+)\s+\1\b — the same word twice in a row (“the the”, “is is”)Go to regex101.com
Paste the text I uploaded to moodle into the Test String box.
\d+\w+ and \W+[\w.]+@[\w.]+[\w']+,\s[A-Z]{1}.[\s,]What did you catch with the above Regex?
teach* — words starting with a sequence*ing — words ending with a sequencestudent|pupil or [student,pupil] — alternativesCan I help_[?] — a word followed by a non-word marker (“Can I help?”)Wildcard searches are fast and flexible — the best first step beyond simple lookup.
Token-level regex — each space-separated token is a pattern:
colou?r — matches color or colourdata.* driven — two tokens, first starts with dataFull-text regex — one regex against the whole document text (raw-files corpora only):
\bcorpus\s+linguistics\b — multi-word sequence, flexible spacing\b(\w+)\s+\1\b — backreference: the same word repeatedFull Regex has the largest performance cost — use it with care on very large corpora.
Using the KWIC tool:
The KWIC tool generates concordance lines for a search query — each hit is shown with its left and right context.
Designed for:
Key move: double-click a KWIC row to open that hit in the File View tool.
Load the practice corpus and open the KWIC tab.
Search for a word you are curious about.
The Plot tool shows where search hits occur across files, as barcode-style distribution plots along each document’s timeline.
Designed for distribution analysis: is a word evenly spread, or concentrated in specific documents or sections?
Click a plotted hit line to jump to its location in File View.
Using the Plot tool, search for a keyword from this week’s reading (e.g., corpus).
The File View tool displays the full text of a selected file and highlights search hits directly in the text.
Designed for close reading: inspect local context and move quickly between hits.
File View connects to KWIC: you can send a highlighted hit to KWIC to search the whole corpus for it.
The Cluster tool finds recurring multi-word sequences around a search term and summarizes them as ranked cluster types.
Designed to reveal phrase-level patterning: which combinations are frequent, widespread, and worth inspecting in KWIC.
Using the Cluster tool, search for the.
Set cluster size to 3, search term position “On Right”.
The N-Gram tool extracts recurring multi-word sequences of a specified length and ranks them by frequency and range.
With “Open Slots” enabled, you can examine patterned variation inside sequences (e.g., the ___ of).
Using the N-Gram tool, set n-gram size to 3 (no query).
the * of. What words fill the slot?The Collocate tool identifies words that co-occur with a search term within a defined left/right window span.
Designed for co-occurrence analysis: compare directional frequencies, range, and association strength to find meaningful collocational patterns.
Sort by Likelihood or Effect to find the strongest associations, not just the most frequent.
Using the Collocate tool, search for important.
The Word List tool generates a frequency list of word entries from the target corpus, ranked by frequency, range, or lexical form.
Designed for lexical profiling: how often items occur, and how widely they are distributed across files.
Using the Word List tool, leave the query blank and run a full word list.
The Keyword tool compares a target corpus against a reference corpus to find items that are unusually frequent (or, optionally, unusually infrequent) in the target.
Depending on the selected Source, it can generate keywords for words, clusters, n-grams, or collocates.
File → Corpus ManagerKey idea: a keyword is not simply a frequent word — it is distinctive compared to a reference.
The Wordcloud tool turns text or table outputs into a weighted word cloud — each item’s size reflects its value (e.g., frequency).
Sources: a Scratchpad text area, or exported results from KWIC, File View, Cluster, N-Gram, Collocate, Word, and Keyword.
AntConc offers four search strategies — choosing the right one moves you from quick exploration to detailed pattern analysis.
| Strategy | When to use it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | exact word or phrase lookup | language, corpus analysis |
| Wildcard | prefix/suffix families, alternatives | teach*, *ing, student\|pupil |
| Regex (token level) | precise token-level patterns | colou?r, data.* driven |
| Full Regex | multi-word spans, cross-token patterns | \bcorpus\s+linguistics\b |
The full wildcard list is in Global Settings → Searches.
Work alone or in pairs.
Your mini report should answer:
*ful, *less) — which ending is more common in this corpus?the * of or a * of. What words fill the slot, and why?You have about 40 minutes to search and prepare your report.
Ask for help any time.
Each person/pair: –10 minutes.
Please see more detailed documentation in the AntConc help file.
Advanced English II