Contrastive Corpus Linguistics - (Corpus and Discourse) (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Marking 30 years of contrastive corpus linguistics, this volume provides a state-of-the-art of the field, charting its development over time and pushing the boundaries of the discipline. By exploring the application of complex multi-genre multilingual data sets and expanding the horizons of contrastive studies, it demonstrates how a juxtaposition of cross-linguistic and register variation can deepen our insight into language variation and use"--

Book Synopsis

Marking 30 years of contrastive corpus linguistics, this volume provides a state-of-the-art of the field, charting its development over time and expanding the boundaries of the discipline.

Focusing on a diversity of methods and approaches to language comparison, it uses both comparable and translation corpora, and explores a broad range of language registers from newspaper reporting and spoken political discourse to film scripts and football match reports. Using English as the pivot language for each chapter, the volume offers contrastive bilingual and trilingual perspectives on a number of languages, including Czech, Finnish, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish, covering a typologically diverse field. By exploring the application of complex multi-genre multilingual data sets and expanding the horizons of contrastive studies, it demonstrates how a juxtaposition of cross-linguistic and register variation can deepen our insight into language variation and use.

The volume is dedicated to two prominent contrastive corpus linguists: Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg, who have decisively shaped the discipline from its very beginnings. The book opens with a chapter by Aijmer, reflecting on the current breadth and future prospects of research in the area while pointing to emergent trends with an insight that only she can offer.

Review Quotes

"Contrastive Corpus Linguistics stands as a tribute to the power of corpus-based methods in unravelling the complexities of language use. The hybrid nature of scholarly discussions makes the volume an essential resource for would-be scholars interested in the intersection of linguistics, translation studies, and discourse analysis ... The volume offers a balanced and multifaceted perspective, both empirically rigorous and theoretically insightful." --LINGUIST List

About the Author

Anna Cermakova is Senior Researcher at the Lancaster University, UK and Charles University, Czech Republic.

Hilde Hasselgård is Professor of English Language at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Markéta Malá is Associate Professor of English Language at Charles University, Czech Republic.

Denisa Sebestová is Lecturer at Charles University, Czech Republic.