This volume contributes to filling a gap in corpus-based research by investigating the ways in which linguistic features vary across genres/registers cross-linguistically. It brings together insightful chapters by leading scholars in the field, fruitfully exploiting genre- or register-controlled multilingual parallel and comparable corpora to: (i) problematize cross-register variation in a multilingual perspective, (ii) address methodological and theoretical issues raised by register-oriented contrastive and translation studies, (iii) investigate the cross-linguistic and cross-genre variation of specific linguistic features, such as lexical bundles, sentence-initial adverbials and tag questions, (iv) identify cross-cultural and cross-linguistic dissimilarities in expressing a functional category, viz. Appraisal, in the field of opinion mining. The book offers new cutting-edge research that should be of interest to specialists in contrastive linguistics, translation studies and cross-cultural studies. Originally published as a special issue of Languages in Contrast 14:1 (2014).

This book describes the most important kinds of texts in English and introduces the methodological techniques used to analyse them. Three analytical approaches are introduced and compared, describing a wide range of texts from the perspectives of register, genre and style. The primary focus of the book is on the analysis of registers. Part 1 introduces an analytical framework for studying registers, genre conventions, and styles. Part 2 provides detailed descriptions of particular text varieties in English, including spoken interpersonal varieties (conversation, university office hours, service encounters), written varieties (newspapers, academic prose, fiction), and emerging electronic varieties (e-mail, internet forums, text messages). Finally, Part 3 introduces advanced analytical approaches using corpora, and discusses theoretical concerns, such as the place of register studies in linguistics, and practical applications of register analysis. Each chapter ends with three types of activities: reflection and review activities, analysis activities, and larger project ideas.

Contrastive Linguistics is an expanding field, as witnessed by the publication in recent years of an increasing number of monographs, collected volumes and journal articles. The present volume, which comprises an introduction and ten chapters dealing with lexical contrasts between English and other languages, shows advances within the well-established lexical work in the field. Each of the chapters takes lexical items as its starting point and compares English with one or more languages. The languages represented are Spanish, Lithuanian, Swedish, German, Norwegian and Czech. Furthermore, they emphasise the link between lexis and grammar, not only within the same language, but also across languages. Finally, several studies represent one of the more recent developments of contrastive linguistics, namely a growing focus on genre and register comparisons. The book should appeal to both established scholars and advanced students with an interest in lexis, genre, corpus linguistics and/or contrastive linguistics.

This volume will give readers insight into how genres are characterised by the patterns of frequency and distribution of linguistic features across a number of European languages. The material presented in this book will also stimulate further corpus-based contrastive research including more languages, more genres and different types of corpora. This is the first special issue of the Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, a publication that addresses the interface between the two disciplines and offers a platform to scholars who combine both methodologies to present rigorous and interdisciplinary findings about language in real use. Corpus linguistics and Pragmatics have traditionally represented two paths of scientific thought, parallel but often mutually exclusive and excluding. Corpus Linguistics can offer a meticulous methodology based on mathematics and statistics, while Pragmatics is characterized by its effort in the interpretation of intended meaning in real language.

The book provides new findings about the grammar of genres and styles. It combines new methods with different kinds of empirical material, from social reports to live TV sports commentaries or 16th century newspapers, in English, French, Latin and Spanish. The study of non-discrete units suggests new ways of seeing the linguistic variation between genres and styles and the ways in which belonging to a genre predetermines linguistic choices.

This volume comprises a collection of contrastive studies on language and time. Languages represented include Czech, French, German, Mandarin, Norwegian and Swedish, all of which are contrasted with English. While the amount of published research on temporal relations in general is considerable, less work has been carried out on comparing how we talk about time in various languages and how languages change over time. Several methodological challenges are addressed and solutions proposed, such as how to deal with poor quality historical data and how to identify n-grams in typologically different languages for purposes of comparison. The results of the various studies show how multilingual corpora can increase our knowledge of language-specific features as well as linguistic, typological and cultural differences and similarities across languages.

This book examines the nature of the early church from a Petrine perspective, employing an analysis of register to implement a more synthetic study of relevant texts in the New Testament.