A corpus-driven analysis of the usage patterns of adverb indeed

This corpus-based research explores the usage patterns of indeed, using the one-billion-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) as the source of a randomly queried sample containing one-hundred concordance lines, which were then further classified and analysed based on quantitative and qualitative approach. Firstly, the study investigates the overall frequency of indeed and, moreover, the comparison of the frequency thereof in two chosen genres, namely: among spoken and academic registers. Additionally, the obtained information enables examining the syntactic position and function ascribed to each example across genres as well as, particularly, in academic and spoken materials. Results underscore that the analysis in the scope of corpus linguistics yields a comprehensive delineation of the variety of usage of indeed (especially its initial position in a sentence and confirmation function, though), contrasting with the findings with the existing scientific literature thereon) and proves the viability of the corpus-based approach.