ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the characteristic features of corpus analysis and also explains how it is combined effectively with other types of language analysis. Corpus linguistics is concerned with understanding people's language in various contexts and incorporates computational tools to identify recurring patterns in ‘natural’ or authentic language use. McEnery and Hardie observed that corpus linguistics is not a monolithic, consensually agreed set of methods and procedures for the exploration of language and what they proposed to call 'corpus methods in linguistics' offers a critical resource that is implemented across and beyond the field of linguistics. Corpus linguistics has supported explorations of metaphor and irony. The fruitful combination of corpus linguistics and stylistics has given rise to 'corpus stylistics', a discipline that gives particular emphasis to the relationship between linguistics description and literary appreciation. In most cases, these are specialised corpora that have been collected opportunistically, for a specific research purpose and so incorporate a particular type of digital communication.
