'It is proper ſubſerviently, to inquire into the nature of experimental chemiſtry'Difficulties in Reconciling Discipline-Based Characteristics and Compilation Criteria in the Selection of Samples for CECheT.

Resumo

This paper discusses the compilation of the beta version of CECheT, the subcorpus devoted to Chemistry in the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing, and reflects on the difficulties faced during this process and how they were overcome. The historical context of science will be examined, particularly that of chemistry, and how this affects the process of compilation. Attention will also be paid to the compilation criteria used in the whole Coruña Corpus, including those regarding the appropriateness of authors and text samples (Moskowich, 2012), and how these criteria have been applied to the compilation of CECheT in order to make it representative of the practices of the discipline at the time. Finally, the corpus will be described briefly, looking at a series of parameters: the topics of the texts, the size of samples, their chronological distribution, as well as the geographical origin and sex of the authors represented.