Text, Discourse and Corpora: Theory and Analysis

Empirical linguists admit their work is so tightly focused it is often fascinating to only a few. However, as editor Hoey (English, U. of Liverpool) and his colleagues prove here, empirical linguists can also prove their observations can be used as a foundation for a broad range of intellectual exploration. Their observations apply to everything from social critique to the extension of methodology. Using text corpora as their base, contributors of these eight essays examine lexical priming and literary creativity; grammatical creativity from a corpus perspective; parole-linguistics and the diachronic dimension of discourse; concepts of natural and human rights, work and property in the discourse of Catholic social doctrine; texts, corpora and models of language; the use of "world" in multi-word sentences in English; identification of local textual functions of the term "sustainable development"; and using corpus stylistics to bridge the gap between linguistic and literary studies. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Hoey is Baines Professor of English language at the University of Liverpool, UK. Michaela Mahlberg is Associate Professor in English Language and Applied Linguistics at the The University of Nottingham, UK. John Sinclair (1933-2007) was President of the Tuscan Word Centre, Italy and held the title Professor Emeritus of Modern English Language, University of Birmingham, UK Michael Stubbs is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Trier, Germany.Wolfgang Teubert is Professor of Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.