INTERNATIONAL CORPUS OF ENGLISH, The. Short form ICE. An international electronic CORPUS of STANDARD ENGLISH involving at its outset 23 territories worldwide: 9 with English as a native language (Australia, Canada, the Irish Republic, Jamaica, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the UK, the US, and Wales as a distinct entity: with their own corpora); 9 with English as a second language, with official status (Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe: with their own corpora); and 5 with English as a foreign language (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden: no national corpora). The project derives from the SURVEY OF ENGLISH USAGE at University College London, whose director Sidney GREENBAUM proposed it in 1988. The collection of texts began in 1990, with the aim that each national corpus would contain 1m words and all would be compiled, computerized, and analysed in similar ways. In addition, there would be supplementary projects dealing with: translations into printed English; English in international spoken communication; and English in teaching material for learners of the language. The texts in the supplementary corpora would be drawn from varieties similar to those in the national corpora. The aim of ICE as a corpus of corpora has been to make comparative studies easier for national varieties of English, both as a native and a second language. The SEU component (known as ICE-GB) would also provide the means for investigating recent changes in the language through a comparison with the original Survey corpus. Greenbaum noted in 1991:
Although the standard varieties of British and American English are the most firmly established, other English-speaking countries have begun to claim linguistic independence, looking to their own varieties for what is correct or appropriate. At this stage, research can have practical applications in language planning by preventing the national standards from drifting too far apart. In that way research can help to preserve the international character of at least written English.(‘ICE: the International Corpus of English’, English Today, 28, October).


Greenbaum edited a book on the project, Comparing English Worldwide: The International Corpus of English, and compiled The Oxford English Grammar, both published by Oxford University Press in 1996, the year in which he died. Bas Aarts was appointed director of the SEU in 1997 and, despite the founder's death and ongoing difficulties in funding, the ICE projects continue, focusing in particular on the computer tagging and PARSING of corpus texts.