This book focusses on computer methodologies as a way of investigating language and character in literary texts. Both theoretical and practical, it surveys investigations into characterization in literary linguistics and personality in social psychology, before carrying out a computational analysis of Virginia Woolf’s experimental novel The Waves. Frequencies of grammatical and semantic categories in the language of the six speaking characters are analyzed using Wmatrix software developed by UCREL at Lancaster University. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by a qualitative analysis into recurring patterns of metaphor. The author concludes that these analyses successfully differentiate all six characters, both synchronically and diachronically, and claims that this methodology is also applicable to the study of personality in non-literary language. The book, written in a clear and accessible style, will be of interest to post-graduate students and academics in linguistics, stylistics, literary studies, psychology and also computational approaches.

This book focusses on computer methodologies as a way of investigating language and character in literary texts. Both theoretical and practical, it surveys investigations into characterization in literary linguistics and personality in social psychology, before carrying out a computational analysis of Virginia Woolf's experimental novel The Waves. Frequencies of grammatical and semantic categories in the language of the six speaking characters are analyzed using Wmatrix software developed by UCREL at Lancaster University. The quantitative analysis is supplemented by a qualitative analysis into recurring patterns of metaphor. The author concludes that these analyses successfully differentiate all six characters, both synchronically and diachronically, and claims that this methodology is also applicable to the study of personality in non-literary language. The book, written in a clear and accessible style, will be of interest to post-graduate students and academics in linguistics, stylistics, literary studies, psychology and also computational approaches.

Corpus Linguistics and The Study of Literature provides a theoretical introduction to corpus stylistics and also demonstrates its application by presenting corpus stylistic analyses of literary texts and corpora. The first part of the book addresses theoretical issues such as the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in corpus linguistic analyses, criteria for the evaluation of results from corpus linguistic analyses and also discusses units of meaning in language. The second part of the book takes this theory and applies it to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen and to two corpora consisting of: Austen's six novels; and texts that are contemporary with Austen. The analyses demonstrate the impact of various features of text on literary meanings and how corpus tools can extract new critical angles. This book will be a key read for upper level undergraduates and postgraduates working in corpus linguistics and in stylistics on linguistics and language studies courses. The editorial board includes: Paul Baker (Lancaster), Frantisek Cermak (Prague), Susan Conrad (Portland), Geoffrey Leech (Lancaster), Dominique Maingueneau (Paris XII), Christian Mair (Freiburg), Alan Partington (Bologna), Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Siena and TWC), Ruth Wodak (Lancaster), and Feng Zhiwei (Beijing). The Corpus and Discourse series consists of two strands. The first, Research in Corpus and Discourse , features innovative contributions to various aspects of corpus linguistics and a wide range of applications, from language technology via the teaching of a second language to a history of mentalities. The second strand, Studies in Corpus and Discourse , is comprised of key texts bridging the gap between social studies and linguistics. Although equally academically rigorous, this strand will be aimed at a wider audience of academics and postgraduate students working in both disciplines.

Introducing Electronic Text Analysis is a practical and much needed introduction to corpora – bodies of linguistic data. Written specifically for students studying this topic for the first time, the book begins with a discussion of the underlying principles of electronic text analysis. It then examines how these corpora enhance our understanding of literary and non-literary works. In the first section the author introduces the concepts of concordance and lexical frequency, concepts which are then applied to a range of areas of language study. Key areas examined are the use of on-line corpora to complement traditional stylistic analysis, and the ways in which methods such as concordance and frequency counts can reveal a particular ideology within a text. Presenting an accessible and thorough understanding of the underlying principles of electronic text analysis, the book contains abundant illustrative examples and a glossary with definitions of main concepts. It will also be supported by a companion website with links to on-line corpora so that students can apply their knowledge to further study. The accompanying website to this book can be found at http://www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415320216

Textual Patterns introduces corpus resources, tools and analytic frameworks of central relevance to language teachers and teacher educators. Specifically it shows how key word analysis, combined with the systematic study of vocabulary and genre, can form the basis for a corpus informed approach to language teaching. The first part of the book gives the reader a strong grounding in the way in which language teachers can use corpus analysis tools (wordlists, concordances, key words) to describe language patterns in general and text patterns in particular. The second section presents a series of case studies which show how a key word / corpus informed approach to language education can work in practice. The case studies include: General language education (i.e. students in national education systems and those following international examination programmes), foreign languages for academic purposes, literature in language education, business and professional communication, and cultural studies in language education.

This book brings together pioneering studies on the world's oldest literature, composed in the extinct language Sumerian and written on clay in the cuneiform (wedge-shaped) script. All the contributions are based on the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a project of the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University whose focus is on the best documented period of Sumerian literature, compositions recorded some 4,000 years ago in southern Iraq. The ETCSL consists of transliterations and translations of nearly 400 compositions and is accessible via the Internet. It is the only linguistically annotated and translated corpus of an ancient Near Eastern language. Each of the main chapters in the book uses the ETCSL to approach a specific question relating to one or more compositions in the corpus, exploiting the possibilities the corpus offers for quantitative research and statistical analysis. In addition to these case studies, the book includes introductions to Sumerian literary language and corpus-linguistic approaches to research, as well as a catalogue of compositions. The material, methods, and results will appeal to those interested in Sumerian, ancient literature, and the analysis of languages using a corpus.

How can you carry out discourse analysis using corpus linguistics? What research questions should I ask? Which methods should you use and when? What is a collocational network or a key cluster? Introducing the major techniques, methods and tools for corpus-assisted analysis of discourse, this book answers these questions and more, showing readers how to best use corpora in their analyses of discourse. Using carefully tailored case studies, each chapter is devoted to a central technique, including frequency, concordancing and keywords, going step by step through the process of applying different analytical procedures. Introducing a wide range of different corpora, from holiday brochures to political debates, the book considers the key debates and latest advances in the field. Fully revised and updated, this new edition includes: - A new chapter on how to conduct research projects in corpus-based discourse analysis - Completely rewritten chapters on collocation and advanced techniques, using a corpus of jihadist propaganda texts and covering topics such as social media and visual analysis - Coverage of major tools, including CQPweb, AntConc, Sketch Engine and #LancsBox - Discussion of newer techniques including the derivation of lockwords and the comparison of multiple data sets for diachronic analysis With exercises, discussion questions and suggested further readings in each chapter, this book is an excellent guide to using corpus linguistics techniques to carry out discourse analysis.