The download function lets you save the concordance (or "query result") to your computer. The data is copied to a plain text file with tabs between each field of information. This is a handy format for subsequent processing of your concordance in a database or spreadsheet program, such as Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Access, Excel, etc. As well as the concordance data itself, you can choose to save information about where each line comes from: for example, the gender of the speaker (if it's from a spoken text) or author (if it's a written text), the genre of the text, and its publication date. In your database software the concordance lines and their associated categories become a set of "records" which you can filter, sort, add notes to, print etc.

1. In the BNC Query Result window, select Download... and press Go!



2. Choose the output format. See figure below for an example, followed by explanation of a few terms used.

   

   "Metatextual categories" are labels describing where each text in the BNC comes from. An example of a category is Sex of speaker; the full values of this category are Male, Female, and n/a, while the codes are 1, 2, and 3.

   Size of context should be either

   • one <s>-unit, i.e. the equivalent of a "sentence" in most contexts or
   • one paragraph or utterance unit. An utterance unit is roughly equivalent to a linguistic turn.

   Tagged and untagged versions of your results: in the tagged version each word in the concordance is linked to a part-of-speech (POS-) tag,

   <w PRP>like <w DT0>this.

   In the untagged version all POS-tags are stripped away.

3. Choose the text category and speaker / author infomation you want stored with your concordance. Here is an example:

   

   When working with spoken texts, "Speaker information" is generally more informative than respondent information. "Respondent" refers to the person responsible for collecting the recording, not the speaker(s) within the file.

4. You can reset to the default values at any time by clicking on CLEAR FORM

5. When you click on Download! your browser should ask you what you want to do next: simply pick the option to Save the file, and complete the Save As... steps as you would for any internet file. [ie choose a suitable folder to store the file, and change the name from BNCdownload (or BNCdownload.pl, if you are using Netscape) to something more meaningful to you, e.g. "walk.txt". The .txt suffix here is a convention for plain text files.

   

   In your browser's preferences, you can also define a default application for the MIME Type text/bncweb. This application will then automatically open and display your downloaded query result.

1. Comparison of Download and Save current set of hits functions:

   	Download	Save current set of hits
   Limit to number of hits saved	No	1000 hits
   Can reuse in BNCweb?	No	Yes
   Can reuse in other software?	Yes	No

2. When you open the downloaded file in your database or spreadsheet software, remember to open the file as "Text Only" and specify columns as "Tab-delimited", so that they display correctly.
3. Once you have the file open in your database software, you can refine the formatting of the file further; search, filter and sort on different fields e.g. by male and female speaker (see your database or spreadsheet software manual for guidance). You can also add your own qualitative coding to each concordance line record (e.g., insert a "p" for a performative utterance, or "q" for a question), and filter/sort/count etc. these categories.
4. You can also import the downloaded concordance to a wordprocessor program, such as Word or WordPerfect. The concordance lines can be converted from Text to Table format.
5. You may need to experiment a few times to find the right output format. (Download with different options switched on or off, view the result in your database software, and try again if necessary.)