This book provides a unique analysis and description of the linguistic challenges faced by school students as they move from primary to secondary school, a major transition, which some students struggle with emotionally and academically. The study: * draws on a bespoke corpus of 2.5 million words of written materials and transcribed classroom recordings, provided by the project's partner schools; * combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to the corpus data to explore linguistic variation across school levels, registers and subjects; * describes the procedures of corpus compilation and analysis of written and spoken academic language, showing how modern corpus tools can be applied to this far-reaching social and educational issue; * uncovers differences and similarities between the academic language that school children are exposed to at primary and secondary school, contrasting this against the backdrop of the non-academic language that they encounter outside school. This book is important reading for advanced students and researchers in corpus linguistics, applied linguistics and teacher education. It carries implications for policymakers and schools looking to support students at this critical point in their schooling.

This volume combines diverse research scenarios to present a solid framework for analysis of figurative language. Figurative Language, Genre and Register brings together discourse analysis and corpus linguistics in a cutting-edge study of figurative language in spoken and written discourse. The authors explore a diverse range of communities from chronic pain sufferers to nursery staff to present a detailed framework for the analysis of figurative language. The reader is shown how figurative language is used between members of these communities to construct their own 'world view', and how this can change with a shift in perspective. Figurative language is shown to be pervasive and inescapable, but it is also suggested that it varies significantly across genres.