A lively hands-on introduction to the use of electronic corpora in the description and analysis of English - revised and updated. After introducing corpora and the rationale and basic methodology of corpus linguistics, the author presents a number of recent case studies providing new insights into vocabulary, collocations, phraseology, metaphor and metonymy, syntactic structures, male and female language, and language change. In a final chapter it is shown how the web and social media can be used as a source for linguistic investigations as well as including a section on creating your own corpus. Each chapter includes new study questions, exercises and updated suggestions for further reading.The second edition of this successful text provides an ideal introduction for university students of English at the intermediate level. Students planning papers, dissertations or theses will find the book a particularly valuable guide.

The second edition of this successful text provides an ideal introduction for university students of English at the intermediate level. Students planning papers, dissertations or theses will find the book a particularly valuable guide. After introducing corpora and the rationale and basic methodology of corpus linguistics, the authors present a number of recent case studies providing new insights into vocabulary, collocations, phraseology, metaphor and metonymy, syntactic structures, male and female language, and language change. A final chapter shows how the web and social media can be used as a source for linguistic investigations and contains information on how to compile your own corpus. Each chapter includes study questions, exercises and updated suggestions for further reading.