Corpus linguistics uses large electronic databases of language to examine hypotheses about language use. This book presents a comprehensive survey of the ways in which corpus linguistics is being used by researchers. It aims to provide a snapshot of the field of corpus linguistics.

1. Introduction, Paul Baker; 2. Metaphor, Alice Deignan; 3. Corpora and Critical Discourse Analysis, Gerlinde Mautner; 4. Corpus stylistics and the Pickwickian watering-pot, Michaela Mahlberg; 5. The metalanguage of impoliteness: Using Sketch Engine to explore the Oxford English Corpus, Jonathan Culpeper; 6. Issues in the design and development of software tools for corpus studies: The case for collaboration, Laurence Anthony; 7. Compatibility between corpus annotation efforts and its effect on computational linguistics, Adam Meyers; 8. Spoken corpus analysis: Multimodal approaches to language description, Irina Dahlmann & Svenja Adolphs; 9. Fixed collocational patterns in isolexical and isotextual versions of a corpus, David Oakey; 10. Corpus linguistics and language variation, Michael P. Oakes; 11. Integrating learner corpus analysis into a probabilistic model of second language acquisition, Yukio Tono; 12. English language teaching and corpus linguistics: Lessons from the American National Corpus, Randi Reppen; 13. The impact of corpora of dictionaries, Patrick Hanks; 14. Using corpora in translation studies: The state of the art, Richard Xiao & Ming Yue; 15. Corpus linguistics and the languages of South Asia: Some current research directions, Andrew Hardie; 16. The web as corpus versus traditional corpora: Their relative utility for linguists and language learners, Robert Lew; 17. Building and analyzing corpora of computer-mediated communication, Brian King; Bibliography; Index.

The Contemporary Studies in Linguistics series presents state-of-the-art accounts of current research in all areas of linguistics. Written by internationally renowned linguists, the volumes provide a selection of the best scholarship in each area. Each of the chapters appears on the basis of its importance to the field, but also with regards to its wider significance either in terms of methodology, practical application or conclusions. The result is a stimulating contemporary snapshot of the field and a vibrant reader for each of the areas covered the in series.