Creation of Spanish Language Corpora as One of the Priorities of RAE in the Era of Digitalization

Abstract

The creation of Spanish language corpora is becoming one of the priorities of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE) in the 21st century. The work on the compilation of Spanish language corpora is a response to the challenges of the modern era of globalization and is based on new computer technologies. Corpora in linguistics are used for language research and are a tool for generalizing data about a language that have a versatile nature, starting with the frequency of use of word forms and ending with the training of artificial intelligence. The purpose of this article is to show how the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), using new approaches in the field of corpus linguistics, expands the areas of its traditional activities, spreading the Spanish language in the digital sphere of human activity. The novelty of this study is that all the main Spanish language corpora created by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language and the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language are analyzed from the point of view of the cultural vector of development of the Spanish-speaking civilization. The authors determine the importance of creating corpora as a way of developing this language culture in the future, which implies the need to use corpora for teaching artificial intelligence. Raising the topic of the importance of the digitalization of language for communication between machines and humans, the authors consider the compilation of corpora to be a necessary basis for launching this process. The article, on the one hand, analyzes the currently existing academic corpora, on the other, describes the possibilities of using corpora for language research and for teaching artificial intelligence, and as a result summarizes the importance of corpora in the digital age.