Much of what carries meaning in texts is not open to direct observation: “you cannot understand the world just by looking at it” (Stubbs [after Gellner 1959] 1996: 92).
We use language “semi-automatically”, in the sense that speakers and writers make semi-conscious choices within the various complex overlapping systems of which language is composed, including those of transitivity, modality (Michael Halliday 1994), lexical sets (e.g. freedom, liberty, deliverance), modification, and so on.
This has led to the construction of immensely valuable research tools such as the Bank of English and the British National Corpus.
As well as via wordlists and concordancing, intuitions for further research can also arise from reading or watching or listening to parts of the data-set, a process which can help provide a feel for how things are done linguistically in the discourse-type being studied.
This may consist of the researcher's intuitions, or the data found in reference works such as dictionaries and grammars, or it may be statements made by previous authors in the field.
Researchers in Italy have developed CADS as a specific type of corpus-based discourse analysis, creating a standard set of methods: 'A basic, standard methodology in CADS may resemble the following:' This basic procedure can of course vary according to individual research circumstances and requirements.