This book describes the most important kinds of texts in English and introduces the methodological techniques used to analyse them. Three analytical approaches are introduced and compared, describing a wide range of texts from the perspectives of register, genre and style. The primary focus of the book is on the analysis of registers. Part 1 introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles. Part 2 provides detailed descriptions of particular text var...

Grammatical Complexity in Academic English uses corpus-based analyses to challenge a number of dominant stereotypes and assumptions within linguistics. Biber and Gray tackle the nature of grammatical complexity, demonstrating that embedded phrasal structures are as important as embedded dependent clauses. The authors also overturn ingrained assumptions about linguistic change, showing that grammatical change occurs in writing as well as speech. This work establishes that academic writing i...

This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study.The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework ...

A fully updated and expanded second edition of this flagship work, which introduces methodological techniques to carry out analyses of text varieties, and provides descriptions of the most important text varieties in English. Part I introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles, while Part II provides more detailed corpus-based descriptions of text varieties in English, including spoken interpersonal varieties, general and professional written var...

While other books focus on special internet registers, like tweets or texting, no previous study describes the full range of everyday registers found on the searchable web. These are the documents that readers encounter every time they do a Google search, from registers like news reports, product reviews, travel blogs, discussion forums, FAQs, etc. Based on analysis of a large, near-random corpus of web documents, this monograph provides comprehensive situational, lexical, and grammatical ...

Studies in Language and LinguisticsGeneral Editors- Geoffrey Leech, Department of Modern English Language, Lancaster University and Jenny Thomas, School of English and Linguistics, University of Wales, BangorBroad-ranging and authoritative, Studies in Language and Linguistics is an occasional seriesincorporating major new work in all areas of linguistics.Variation in English- Multi-Dimensional Studies provides both a comprehensive view into a relativel...

Paradoxically, doing corpus linguistics is both easier and harder than it has ever been before. On the one hand, it is easier because we have access to more existing corpora, more corpus analysis software tools, and more statistical methods than ever before. On the other hand, reliance on these existing corpora and corpus linguistic methods can potentially create layers of distance between the researcher and the language in a corpus, making it a challenge to do linguistics with a corpus. T...

Corpora are ubiquitous in linguistic research, yet to date, there has been no consensus on how to conceptualize corpus representativeness and collect corpus samples. This pioneering book bridges this gap by introducing a conceptual and methodological framework for corpus design and representativeness. Written by experts in the field, it shows how corpora can be designed and built in a way that is both optimally suited to specific research agendas, and adequately representative of the types...

Now in its second edition, this handbook is a comprehensive and up-to-date resource that explores the applications of corpus-based research in linguistics. Since the first edition, corpus linguistics has evolved dramatically, and this edition has been fully updated to reflect these developments, with new chapters on emerging areas such as online language, legal discourse, and lexical complexity in learner language. Bringing together contributions from leading scholars, it critically evalua...

The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics (CHECL) surveys the breadth of corpus-based linguistic research on English, including chapters on collocations, phraseology, grammatical variation, historical change, and the description of registers and dialects. The most innovative aspects of the CHECL are its emphasis on critical discussion, its explicit evaluation of the state of the art in each sub-discipline, and the inclusion of empirical case studies. While each chapter includes ...