Text and Corpus Analysis: Computer Assisted Studies of Language and Culture

This book provides detailed studies in one of the fastest growing areas of linguistics – corpus analysis – and shows how computers can be used to reveal culturally significant patterns of language use. It contains copious authentic examples for millions of words of corpus data and from many types of naturally occurring texts: school books, courtroom language, speeches by politicians and other public figures, sexist language. Lexical collocations, modality, transitivity, causativity and agency are analyzed to provide many clear examples of how such patterns convey attitudes, presuppositions and points of view. A major chapter demonstrates methods of analyzing key words in British culture. Stubbs gives his work a systematic theoretical basis in an authoritative explanation of the principles of British text analysis from the 1930s to the 1990s, especially in work by J. R. Firth, M. A. K. Halliday and J. McH. Sinclair. This tradition of social linguistics shows how important it is to base linguistic descriptions on adequate attested data. The book is designed to introduce students to basic methods of corpus analysis, semantics and pragmatics, language and ideology, critical linguistics and stylistics. Some knowledge of introductory linguistics is assumed: the book is suitable from second year courses upwards. The main audience will be undergraduate and postgraduate students in courses on corpus linguistics, text and discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics, language and ideology, critical linguistics, and stylistics.

List of Figures, Concordances and Tables. Acknowledgements. Data Conventions and Terminology. Notes on Corpus Data and Software. Part I: Concepts and History: . 1. Texts and Text Types. 2. British Traditions in Text Analysis: Firth, Halliday and Sinclair. 3. Institutional Linguistics: Firth, Hill and Giddens. Part II: Text and Corpus Analysis: . 4. Baden–Powell: A Comparative Analysis of Two Short Texts. 5. Judging the Facts: An Analysis of One Text in its Institutional Context. 6. Human and Inhuman Geography: A Comparative Analysis of Two Long Texts and a Corpus. 7. Keywords, Collocations and Culture: The Analysis of Word Meanings across Corpora. 8. Towards a Modal Grammar of English: A Matter of Prolonged Fieldwork. 9. The Classic Questions. Notes. References. Name Index. Subject Index.

Michael Stubbs is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Trier in Germany. He is well known for his work on spoken and written discourse. His previous books include Language and Literacy and Discourse Analysis .

"The book excels at illustrating how students and scholars might tackle the analysis of cultural, sociological, and political values in text, using techniques of grammatical analysis and computational linguistics." Ed Finegan, University of Southern California "It will have a major impact in encouraging a rethinking of relationships between areas of language study (especially critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics)... I would recommend it on the Grammar, Genre and Social Context course I teach." Norman Fairclough, Lancaster "It is early and opportune, showing what has been accomplished in the past two decades and taking the study of texts a step further." Florian Coulmas, Tokyo "If he can pull it off, it will be rather exciting. I would guess that people in Britain and Europe will be happy to use the book with advanced undergraduates." Peter Trudgill, Lausanne "The book excels at illustrating how students and scholars might tackle the analysis of cultural sociological, and political values in texts." Ed Finegan, University of Southern California "What Stubbs offers is a series of thoughtful studies on different kinds of texts, along with an insightful exploration of liguistic topics such as presupposition, modality, lexical semantics, and what he refers to as Institutional Linguistics.....I found it to be highly stimulating, with analyses that are very thought–provoking and rich enough to engender many further studies of the cultural ecology of texts." Michael Barlow, Rice University