Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence

Description

The history of the English language is a vast and diverse area of research. In this volume, a team of leading historians of English come together to analyse 'real' language, drawing on corpus data to shed new light on long-established issues and debates in the field. Combining synchronic and diachronic analysis, the chapters address the major issues in corpus linguistics - methodological, theoretical and applied - and place special focus on the use of electronic resources in the research of English and the wider field of digital humanities. Topics covered include polemical articles on the optimal use of corpus linguistic methods, macro-level patterns of text and discourse organisation, and micro-features such as interjections and hesitators. Covering Englishes from the past and present, this book is designed specifically for graduate students and researchers working in fields of corpus linguistics, the history of the English language, and historical linguistics.

Irma Taavitsainen is Professor Emerita of English Philology at the University of Helsinki. Merja Kytoe is Professor of English Language at Uppsala Universitet, Sweden. Claudia Claridge is Professor of English Linguistics at Universitat Duisburg-Essen. Jeremy Smith is Professor of English Philology at the University of Glasgow.

'This book is a treasure trove. Readers interested in varieties of English or their historical development, in corpus methodologies, their application, or theorised interpretations, will all find something of value here.' Susan Hunston, University of Birmingham 'This edited collection breaks new ground in harnessing the methodology of corpus linguistics to historical language studies. There is a coherent theoretical focus to a wide-ranging set of topics, from the changing function of hesitation markers to the unfolding impact of religious prose on written English. The many insights are bound to inform, frame and stimulate further research in data-driven, diachronic linguistics.' John Corbett, University of Macau