Rate My Professor Mark Davies

Mark Davies served as Professor of Linguistics at Brigham Young University from 2006 until his retirement in 2020, having previously been Associate Professor of Linguistics there from 2003 to 2006. Before returning to BYU, he held positions at Illinois State University as Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics from 1999 to 2003 and Assistant Professor from 1992 to 1999. His academic background includes a BA with a double major in Spanish and Linguistics from Brigham Young University in 1986, an MA in Spanish Linguistics from BYU in 1989, and a PhD in Iberoromance Philology and Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992. A leading scholar in corpus linguistics, Davies created and maintains several of the largest and most influential online corpora, including the 560-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the historical and contemporary Corpus del Español, the Corpus do Português, the 14-billion-word iWeb corpus, and the TV and Movies corpora, all accessible via English-Corpora.org. These resources support research into language variation across dialects, genres, time periods, and cultures, as well as syntactic, semantic, and lexical patterns.

Davies has authored or co-authored more than 80 publications, including major books such as A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge, 2005; second revised and expanded edition, 2017, with Kathy Hayward Davies), A Frequency Dictionary of American English: Word Sketches, Collocates, and Thematic Lists (Routledge, 2010, with Dee Gardner), A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese: Core Vocabulary for Learners (Routledge, 2007, with Ana Maria Raposo Preto-Bay), and Corpus linguistic applications: current studies, new directions (Rodopi, 2009, co-editor with Stefan Gries and Stefanie Wulff). Key articles include "The Coronavirus Corpus: Design, construction, and use" (International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2021), "The TV and Movies corpora: design, construction, and use" (2020), "The advantages and challenges of ‘big data’: Insights from the 14 billion word iWeb corpus" (Linguistic Research, 2019, with Jong-Bok Kim), and "Historical shifts with the into-causative construction in American English" (Linguistics, 2019, with Jong-Bok Kim). His work has garnered significant recognition, including the Karl G. Maeser Research and Creative Arts Award (BYU, 2015–2016), Creative Works Award (BYU, 2017), and Humanities Center Fellowship (BYU, 2013–2017), along with numerous earlier awards and grants from Illinois State University. Davies' corpora have had a profound impact on linguistics, language teaching, lexicography, and even legal analysis.