Language, People, Numbers

Abstract

The Contributors to this volume offer a broad range of novel insights about data-based or data-driven approaches to the study of both structure and function of language, reflecting the increasing shift towards corpus-based methods of analysis in a wide range of areas in linguistics. Corpora can be used as models of human linguistic experience, and the contributors demonstrate that there is ample scope for integrating such models into the descriptions of discourse, grammar and meaning. Continually improving technological development facilitates the design of larger and more comprehensive corpora documenting language use in a multitude of genres, styles and modes, even starting to include visual aspects. Software to investigate these data also becomes increasingly powerful and more refined. The sixteen original articles in this volume cover substantial ground on both the theoretical as well as applied levels. Having such data and software resources at their disposal, the contributing researchers rethink the long discussed interplay between language system and use from various angles, considering socio-cultural and cognitive involvement and representation, with synchronic as well as diachronic perspectives in view. These theories and quantitative / qualitative methods are applied to a range of topics from language acquisition and teaching to literature and politics. All of the authors in this volume reveal the profound and leading impact that Mike Stubb’s work has continued to contribute to the field of corpus-based description of language structure, use and function.