CLAVIER (Corpus and LAnguage Variation In English Research) is an interuniversity research centre founded in on June 11th 2008 through an official agreement between the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and the Universities of Bergamo, Firenze, Milano, Modena and Reggio Emilia, Roma “La Sapienza”, Siena and Trieste. The Universities of Bari, Calabria, Pisa, Roma Tre, and Verona have since officially joined CLAVIER. The original agreement has been renewed every successive five years, also incorporating the new Universities.
The now over 100 members of CLAVIER share a methodological framework combines two complementary strands of linguistic investigation – corpus analysis and discourse analysis – to research on language variation in English, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Thus, one of the main aims of CLAVIER is to contribute to an integration of quantitative and qualitative methods in research on language variation in terms of diachronic, geographic and socio-cultural dimensions through the methodological tools offered by corpora. Particular attention is also given to the analysis of different genres and methodological registers.