This is corpus linguistics with a text linguistic focus. The volume concerns lexical inequality, the fact that some words and phrases share the quality of being key – and thereby reflect or promote important themes – in some textual contexts, while others do not. The patterning of words which differ in their centrality to text meaning is of increasing interest to corpus linguistics.
This new text is a comprehensive introduction to the fast-growing field of corpus linguistics, and provides a systematic overview of pre-electronic and electronic corpora of all kinds.
Corpus and Context - Investigating Pragmatic Functions in Spoken Discourse
"Corpus and Context" explores the relationship between corpus linguistics and pragmatics by discussing possible frameworks for analysing utterance function on the basis of spoken corpora. The book articulates the challenges and opportunities associated with a change of focus in corpus research, from lexical to functional units, from concordance lines to extended stretches of discourse, and from the purely textual to multi-modal analysis of spoken corpus data.
Grammar of Spoken English Discourse - The Intonation of Increments
This book develops David Brazil's pioneering work on the grammar of spoken discourse, testing theory against a corpus. David Brazil's work on the grammar of spoken discourse ended at A Grammar Of Speech (1995) due to his untimely death. Gerard O'Grady picks up the baton in this book and tests the description of used language against a conversational corpus.
Discourse Markers in Native And Non-native English Discourse
While discourse markers have been examined in some detail, little is known about their usage by non-native speakers. This book provides valuable insights into the functions of four discourse markers (so, well, you know and like) in native and non-native English discourse, adding to both discourse marker literature and to studies in the pragmatics of learner language. It presents a thorough analysis on the basis of a substantial parallel corpus of spoken language. In this corpus, American students who are native speakers of English and German non-native speakers of English retell and discuss a silent movie.
