This book is about invetigation the way people use language in speech and writing. It introduces the corpus-based approach to linguistics, based on analysis of large databases of real language examples stored stored on computer.

Each chapter focuses on a different area of linguistics, including lexicography. grammar. discourse, register variation, language acquisition, and historical linguistics. the chapters follow the same progression of topics, beginning with the identification of important tesearch questions, the steps followed for corpus-based analysis, and finally the interpretation of the findings. Example analyses are presented to provide conerete descriptions of the research methods and advantages of corpus-based techniques. The methodology boxes provide clear and concise explanations of the issues involved in doing corpus-based research and reading corpus-based studies and there is a useful appendix of resources for corpus-based investigation.

This lucid and comprehensive introduction to the subject will be welcomed by a broad range of readers. from undergraduate students to professional researchers.