Corpus Stylistics

Dan McIntyre is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Huddersfield. Brian Walker is a Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield.

This volume is a must-read for beginners in corpus stylistics. It combines theoretical and methodological discussion with very practical advice. The step-by-step instructions, with screenshots, are very helpful, and the many case studies do prove that corpus stylistics is both possible and useful. Just as in linguistics, a corpus-based approach does not mean that qualitative analyses are rejected; rather, as the authors are committed to showing, corpora provide tools for new insights.

• Acknowledgements; Tables; Figures; Boxes Chapter 1: Combining corpus linguistics and stylistics 1. Introduction 2. What is a corpus? 3. A brief history of corpus linguistics 4. The emergence of corpus stylistics and problems with its definition 5. Style and stylistics 6. Corpus stylistics versus cognitive stylistics 7. Aims of the book 8. Structure of the bookChapter 2: Using corpora to support qualitative stylistic analysis1. Introduction 2. Strolling with intent: an exercise in corpus informed stylistics 3. Collocation and semantic prosody 4. Case study: irony in ‘Aftermyth of war’ 5. ConclusionChapter 3: Constructing and annotating corpora 1. Introduction 2. Designing a corpus: representativeness and sampling 3. Building a corpus: collecting and storing data 4. Adding metadata to a corpus: mark-up and annotation 5. Summary: suggested steps to building a corpus 6. Case study: investigating the 2000AD comic strip ‘Judge Dredd’ 7. ConclusionChapter 4: Testing hypotheses and answering research questions1. Introduction 2. Corpora in stylistics 3. The concept of corpus-based and corpus-driven linguistics 4. The value of intuition 5. Hypotheses 6. Objectives and research questions 7. How big was Dickens’s vocabulary? 8. Objectivity in stylistics 9. Case study: Hemingway’s authorial style 10. ConclusionChapter 5: Making sense of significance 1. Introduction 2. Vocabulary size 3. Keyness 4. Collocation 5. Case study: salience and foregrounding in David Peace’s 1974 6. ConclusionChapter 6: Cognition, character and corpus stylistics 1. Introduction 2. A cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation 3. Constraints on subtitles 4. Case study: Case study: subtitling and characterisation in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 5. ConclusionChapter 7: Pedagogical corpus stylistics1. Introduction 2. Stylistics in the L2/FL classroom 3. Using corpora in the classroom 4. Developing corpus activities 5. Case study: from internal deviation to external norms via Adrian Henri’s ‘Tonight at Noon’ 6. ConclusionChapter 8: Historical corpus stylistics1. Introduction 2. Studying style diachronically and synchronically 3. Choosing appropriate corpora and tools 4. Case study: discourse presentation in Early Modern English 5. Case study: Frequencies and functions of modal auxiliary verbs in Early Modern English journalism 6. ConclusionChapter 9: Real-world applications for corpus stylistics 1. Introduction 2. The impact of applied stylistics 3. Language Unlocked 4. Wmatrix 5. Case study: corpora and the self-presentational style of the UK Green Party 6. Implications of the research 7. ConclusionChapter 10: The scope of corpus stylistics 1. Introduction 2. The problem of definition 3. Corpus linguistics and stylistics: a symbiotic relationship 4. ConclusionAppendix 1: Corpora for corpus stylistics; Appendix 2: Software for corpus stylistics; References