This volume provides a state-of-the-art overview of the intersecting fields of corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, and genre-based studies of language usage. Papers in this collection are devoted to presenting relevant methods pertinent to corpus-based studies of the connection between genre and language change, linguistic changes that occur in particular genres, and specific diachronic phenomena that are influenced by genre factors to greater and lesser degrees. Data are drawn from a number of languages, and the scope of the studies presented here is both short- and long-term, covering cases of recent change as well as more long-term alterations.

A comprehensive and accessible introduction to statistics in corpus linguistics, covering multiple techniques of quantitative language analysis and data visualisation.

This book showcases eleven studies dealing with corpora and the changing society. The contributors in this volume use a variety of corpus methods to address the two patterns of change.

English historical linguistics is a subfield of linguistics which has developed theories and methods for exploring the history of the English language. This Handbook provides an account of state-of-the-art research on this history. It offers an in-depth survey of materials, methods, and language-theoretical models used to study the long diachrony of English. The frameworks covered include corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, historical pragmatics and manuscript studies, among others. The chapters, by leading experts, examine the interplay of language theory and empirical data throughout, critically assessing the work in the field. Of particular importance are the diverse data sources which have become increasingly available in electronic form, allowing the discipline to develop in new directions. The Handbook offers access to the rich and many-faceted spectrum of work in English historical linguistics, past and present, and will be useful for researchers and students interested in hands-on research on the history of English.

Syntactic Change in Late Modern English presents a stability paradox to linguists; despite the many social changes that took place between 1700 and 1900, the language appeared to be structurally stable during this period. This book resolves this paradox by presenting a new, idiolect-centred perspective on language change, and shows how this framework is applicable to change in any language. It then demonstrates how an idiolect-centred framework can be reconciled with corpus-linguistic methodology through four original case studies. These concern colloquialization (the process by which oral features spread to writing) and densification (the process by which meaning is condensed into shorter linguistic units), two types of change that characterize Modern English. The case studies also shed light on the role of genre and gender in language change and contribute to the discussion of how to operationalize frequency in corpus linguistics. This study will be essential reading for researchers in historical linguistics, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics.

Encompasses a wide range of approaches from classical rhetoric to cognitive neuroscience Comprises 33 chapters, each providing an introduction to the subject, an overview of its history, an instructive example of how to conduct a stylistic analysis, a section with recommendations for practice and a discussion of possible future developments in the area for readers to follow up on Includes four newly commissioned chapters in the emerging fields of cognitive grammar, forensic linguistics, the stylistics of children’s literature and a corpus stylistic study of mental health issues

Corpus linguistics continues to be a vibrant methodology applied across highly diverse fields of research in the language sciences. With the current steep rise in corpus sizes, computational power, statistical literacy and multi-purpose software tools, and inspired by neighbouring disciplines, approaches have diversified to an extent that calls for an intensification of the accompanying critical debate. Bringing together a team of leading experts, this book follows a unique design, comparing advanced methods and approaches current in corpus linguistics, to stimulate reflective evaluation and discussion. Each chapter explores the strengths and weaknesses of different datasets and techniques, presenting a case study and allowing readers to gauge methodological options in practice. Contributions also provide suggestions for further reading, and data and analysis scripts are included in an online appendix. This is an important and timely volume, and will be essential reading for any linguist interested in corpus-linguistic approaches to variation and change.