This textbook introduces students to the ways in which techniques from corpus linguistics can be used to aid sociolinguistic research. Corpus linguistics shares with variationist sociolinguistics a quantitative approach to the study of variation or differences between populations. It may also complement qualitative traditions of enquiry such as interactional sociolinguistics.

Review

Certainly the greatest achievement of this book is that it brings down barriers between linguistic approaches; the book clearly shows how CL and SL can learn from each other by improving their methods, re-evaluating findings and finally being able to better position themselves within linguistics. The book shows the possibilities and the limits of both approaches and how cooperation can increase these. Another helpful aspect in this book is that makes statistical basics easily accessible, by presenting these in such a simple way (e.g. the chi-square test, 35-36) that is enough to alleviate a lot of the fright for beginners. This, the concise shortness of the book, the richness of examples and samples (I especially like the CL analysis of the book’s chapters 1-6 on pp. 146-147) together with a readable style makes it suitable as a course book for beginners.

— Michael Crombach LINGUIST list

Whilst the volume’s blurb suggests that the book is aimed primarily at students, the scope of reviewed literature and methodological principles Baker provides throughout the text are germane to research at all levels and clearly transcend the corpus based/driven divide.

— Daniel Hunt, University of Nottingham International Journal of Corpus Linguistics

About the Author

Paul Baker is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the Lancaster University