Contrastive studies have experienced a dramatic revival in the last decades. By combining the methodological advantages of computer corpus linguistics and the possibility of contrasting texts in two or more languages, the structure and use of languages can be explored with greater accuracy, detail and empirical strength than before. The approach has also proved to have fruitful practical applications in a number of areas such as language teaching, lexicography, translation studies and computer-aided translation. This volume contains twelve studies comparing linguistic phenomena in English and seven other languages. The topics range from comparisons of specific lexical categories and word combinations to syntactic constructions and discourse phenomena such as cohesion and thematic structure. The studies highlight similarities and differences in the use, semantics and functions of the compared items, as well as the emergence of new meanings and language change. The emphasis varies from purely linguistic studies to those focusing on practical applications.

This volume showcases some of the latest research on academic writing by leading and up-and-coming corpus linguists. The studies included in the volume are based on a wide range of corpora spanning first and second language academic writing at different levels of writing expertise, containing texts from a variety of academic disciplines (and sub-disciplines) and of different academic registers. Particularly novel aspects of the collection are the inclusion of research that combines rhetorical moves with multi-dimensional analysis, studies that cover both fixed and variable phraseological items (lexical bundles, phrase-frames, constructions), and work that is based on corpora of English as an academic lingua franca. Going beyond merely summarizing their findings, the authors also discuss what their research means for academic writing practice and pedagogical settings. The volume will be of interest to researchers, students, and teachers who would like to expand their knowledge of how academic writing functions and what it looks like in a variety of contexts.

Covering the major approaches to the use of corpus data, this work gathers together influential readings from leading names in the discipline, including Biber, Widdowson, Sinclair, Carter and McCarthy.

This book provides an up-to-date survey of current issues and approaches in corpus linguistics in the form of twenty-two recent research articles. The articles cover a wide range of topics illustrating the diversity of research that is characteristic of corpus linguistics today. Central themes are the relationship between theory, intuition and corpus data and the role of corpora in linguistic research. The majority of the articles are empirical studies of specific aspects of English, ranging from lexis and grammar to discourse and pragmatics. Other areas explored are language variation, language change and development, language learning, cross-linguistic comparisons of English and other languages, and the development of linguistic software tools. The contributors to the volume include some of the leading figures in the field such as M.A.K. Halliday, John Sinclair, Geoffrey Leech and Michael Hoey. The theoretical and methodological issues addressed in the volume demonstrate clearly the steady advance of an expanding discipline inspired by an empirical, usage-based approach to the study of language. The volume is essential reading for researchers and students interested in the use of computer corpora in linguistic research.

Do men use bad language more than women? How do social class and the use of bad language interact? Do young speakers use bad language more frequently than older speakers? Using the spoken section of the British National Corpus, Swearing in English explores questions such as these and considers at length the historical origins of modern attitudes to bad language. Drawing on a variety of methodologies including historical research and corpus linguistics, and a range of data such as corpora, dramatic texts, early modern newsbooks and television, Tony McEnery takes a socio-historical approach to discourses about bad language in English. Arguing that purity of speech and power have come to be connected via a series of moral panics about bad language, the book contends that these moral panics, over time, have generated the differences observable in bad language usage in present day English. A fascinating, comprehensive insight into an increasingly popular area, this book provides an explanation, and not simply a description, of how modern attitudes to bad language have come about.

This book provides an up-to-date survey of current issues and approaches in corpus linguistics in the form of twenty-two recent research articles. The articles cover a wide range of topics illustrating the diversity of research that is characteristic of corpus linguistics today. Central themes are the relationship between theory, intuition and corpus data and the role of corpora in linguistic research. The majority of the articles are empirical studies of specific aspects of English, ranging from lexis and grammar to discourse and pragmatics. Other areas explored are language variation, language change and development, language learning, cross-linguistic comparisons of English and other languages, and the development of linguistic software tools. The contributors to the volume include some of the leading figures in the field such as M.A.K. Halliday, John Sinclair, Geoffrey Leech and Michael Hoey. The theoretical and methodological issues addressed in the volume demonstrate clearly the steady advance of an expanding discipline inspired by an empirical, usage-based approach to the study of language. The volume is essential reading for researchers and students interested in the use of computer corpora in linguistic research.

Corpora are used widely in linguistics, but not always wisely. This book attempts to frame corpus linguistics systematically as a variant of the observational method. The first part introduces the reader to the general methodological discussions surrounding corpus data as well as the practice of doing corpus linguistics, including issues such as the scientific research cycle, research design, extraction of corpus data and statistical evaluation. The second part consists of a number of case studies from the main areas of corpus linguistics (lexical associations, morphology, grammar, text and metaphor), surveying the range of issues studied in corpus linguistics while at the same time showing how they fit into the methodology outlined in the first part.