Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English

Hans Lindquist is Emeritus Professor in English at Malmö University. Magnus Levin is Associate Professor in English at Linnaeus University

While it assumes a certain amount of background knowledge in grammar and linguistics, the textbook is accessible and sets a good pace for most readers who have an interest in learning how to use electronic corpora and in establishing what can be discovered through corpus research and analysis. Lindquist's book is organised clearly and uses interesting stepby-step examples to illustrate the benefits and limitations of corpus linguistics. Numerous tables and charts throughout the book make the author's examples meaningful and applicable. Each chapter includes study questions, online corpus exercises and suggestions for further reading. As a result of its hands-on approach and accessible prose, this book will be useful and enjoyable for students who are curious about language and intrigued by the capacity of corpora as a tool to investigate it. It offers informative and exciting step-by-step analyses that demonstrate how to use electronic corpora and what linguists can do with the results. The many graphs and charts not only explain the results of the searches conducted for this book, but also demonstrate to readers how to report the results of the studies they may conduct in future. Students will be excited to follow Lindquist as he describes how to investigate language using electronic corpora, and will be sufficiently well versed in the discussion of corpus data to analyse meaningfully and successfully their own data.y

• Prelims: List of figures; List of tables; To readers; List of abbrevations1: Corpus linguistics2: Counting, calculating and annotating3: Looking for lexis4: Checking colligations and collocations5: Finding phrases6: Metaphor and metonymy7: Grammar8: Male and female9: Language change10: Corpus linguistics in cyberspaceFurther reading