Basic structure
(Source: MICASE manual & website)
Academic events vary widely in their tone, substance, and length. The MICASE corpus includes speech events that range in length from 19 to 178 minutes, with word counts ranging from 2,805 words to 30,328 words. In the MICASE corpus, academic speech is defined as that speech which occurs in academic settings. In other words, it is not pre-defined as something like “scholarly discussion.” In academic settings, we might, for example, find such speech acts as jokes, confessions, and personal anecdotes, as well as definitions, explanations, and intellectual justifications. Therefore, the MICASE researchers have taken pains to record a wide variety of academic speech events. Most speech events are fully recorded, from beginning to end, because the beginnings and ends of academic speech events may be of particular interest to researchers.
Figure 1. Word counts for speech events types, showing proportion of words by faculty and students.
Table 1. Word counts by speech event type.
| Speech Event Type |
Words |
% Faculty
&/or Staff |
% Students |
| Advising (2) |
35,275 |
70 % |
30 % |
| Colloquia (14) |
157,333 |
89 % |
11 % |
| Discussion Sections (9) |
74,904 |
33 % |
67 % |
| Diss. Defenses (4) |
56,837 |
37 % |
63 % |
| Interviews (3) |
13,015 |
56 % |
44 % |
| Labs (8) |
73,815 |
32 % |
68 % |
| Large Lectures (30) |
251,632 |
94 % |
6 % |
| Small Lectures (32) |
333,338 |
78 % |
22 % |
| Meetings (6) |
70,038 |
38 % |
62 % |
| Office Hours (14) |
171,188 |
29 % |
71 % |
| Seminars (7) |
138,626 |
65 % |
35 % |
| Study Groups (8) |
129,725 |
0 % |
100 % |
| Student Presentations (11) |
143,369 |
22 % |
78 % |
| Service Encounters (2) |
24,691 |
40 % |
60 % |
| Tours (2) |
21,768 |
39 % |
61 % |
The corpus was designed to be balanced, as much as possible, across several categories of academic speech events as well as across the major academic divisions within the university. Academic events in the professional schools (i.e., medical, dental, business, law) were excluded. The range of speech events includes monologic and interactive speech; undergraduate and graduate students; junior faculty, senior faculty, and staff; and native, near-native, and non-native speakers of English. Furthermore, an attempt was made to get approximately equal amounts of speech from male and female speakers within each academic division.
Table 2. Male and female speakers in MICASE.
| Speaker Category |
|
|
|
Total Speakers |
Total Words |
% of Total Corpus |
| Gender |
Male |
|
|
729 |
786,487 |
46 % |
|
Female |
|
|
842 |
909,053 |
54 % |
| Academic Role |
Faculty |
|
|
160 |
825,829 |
49 % |
|
|
Male |
|
84 |
446,925 |
26 % |
|
|
Female |
|
76 |
378,904 |
22 % |
|
Students |
|
|
1039 |
742,348 |
44 % |
|
|
Undergraduates |
|
782 |
368,433 |
22 % |
|
|
|
Male |
336 |
142,102 |
8 % |
|
|
|
Female |
446 |
226,331 |
13 % |
|
|
Graduates |
|
257 |
373,915 |
22 % |
|
|
|
Male |
121 |
158,696 |
9 % |
|
|
|
Female |
136 |
215,219 |
13 % |
| Language Status |
Native Speakers |
|
1449 |
1,493,586 |
88 % |
|
Non-Native Speakers |
|
122 |
201,954 |
12 % |
| Totals |
|
|
|
1571 |
1,695,540 |
|
Each speech event in MICASE is categorized according to various contextual attributes, and these attributes can be found in the header of each transcript. Speech event attributes include the type of event, the subject area of the event, the extent to which an event is monologic or interactive, as well as the academic role or level of the majority of participants (e.g., whether the class was a graduate or an under-graduate class, or whether a meeting was primarily of senior faculty members).
For a more comprehensive statistical overview, see the MICASE website.
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