Abstract: The author examines the process of creating and methodology of applying the mini-corps to solve the problems in the field of language choice learning in the sphere of speech etiquette. The different stages of compiling a mini-corps from the peculiarities of material collection to the construction of theoretical models of language use of speech etiquette are considered. The terminological apparatus of the study is introduced. The features of different methods are compared and the need for a comprehensive approach to compiling a mini-corpus is substantiated. The shortage of corpora for the study of language choice in a bilingual situation is stated. Advantages and disadvantages of the chosen methodology are described. In particular, the necessity of selecting authentic examples of spontaneous speech taken from videos based on the method of non-included observation is pointed out. The place of the mini-corpus technique in the set of methods used in this study is shown. The result is a corpus-based description of the algorithms of speakers' use of etiquette expressions in a particular language under the influence of various configurations of factors and parameters of the social context. It is concluded that this method allows, on the one hand, to obtain the necessary and sufficient material for the analysis, on the other hand, it does not involve the use and processing of a large array of data.
The prospect of researching the method is to apply it in other situations of bilingualism in order to complement and correct the theoretical models obtained in the course of the study. Thus, the method of compiling bilingual mini-corps makes it possible to reach the level of generalization of linguistic facts, sufficient to build universal models for interpreting the patterns of language choice of etiquette expressions in bilingualism.