Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics have a great deal in common in terms of their basic approaches to language enquiry, particularly in terms of providing representative samples from a population and analyzing quantitative information in order to study its variety. Therefore it's surprising that these areas aren't utilized in concert more often. This book covers the range of ways in which corpora can be gainfully employed in sociolinguistic enquiry, critically discussing corpus analytical procedures such as frequencies, collocations, dispersions, keywords, key keywords, and concordances. Aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociolinguistics, or corpus linguists who wish to use corpora to study social phenomena, this volume examines how corpora can be used to investigate synchronic variation and diachronic change by referring to a number of classic corpus-based studies as well as the author's original research.