This edited collection is about the application of English grammar and specialises in 'functional' and'corpus' approaches, approaches which are increasingly recognised as providing significant insights into English language in action. It aims to stimulate interest and understanding of grammar as an applied tool not just for grammarians or language learners, but for all those interested in how language is organized to shape our view of events in the world.

As the chapters in this book show, functional and corpus approaches allow us to make observations that would not be amenable through more traditional forms of grammatical analysis. They also illustrate how researchers can fruitfully bring together corpus and functional approaches to reveal how grammar and lexis create and transmit values, identities and ideologies. Research in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has a long tradition of drawing on functional grammar but has only relatively recently begun to draw on corpus linguistics. As such, the book is unusual in presenting work on CDA which draws on corpus linguistics. But not only that, it is also unique in presenting work in CDA which brings together the methodologies of corpus linguistics and functional grammar, demonstrating their combined potential for illuminating ideological perspectives, particularly in media texts.

Given this focus and given the increasing value of empirical data, the book will be of interest to those in a range of disciplines including the humanities and media and cultural studies.

Chapters comprise both newly commissioned and previously published works that illustrate the two methodological approaches to grammatical analysis and how they can be applied to deepen our understanding of language.

About the Author

Caroline Coffin, Ann Hewings and Kieran O'Halloran are all lecturers in the Centre for Language and
Communications at the Open University, UK

Reviews

This edited volume...brings together in a novel way two approaches ton English grammar, namely the systematic functional approach and the corpus linguistic one, both of them becoming increasingly relevant to the empirical description of language use and the study of how language transmits values, identities, and ideology....

...Highly readable and clearly organized into self-contained secions, it provides an up-to-date theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of the English language as it is used today...
http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2778.html

The thirteen-page glossary lists terms related to the analysis of language use and provides brief, clear definitions of key concepts. This is an excellent reference source for both students and academics.

Helen Basturkmen, TESOLANZ Journal

Book Information
ISBN 9780340885147
Author Caroline Coffin
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Hodder Education
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 520g