María José López-Couso, Belén Méndez-Naya, Paloma Núñez-Pertejo and Ignacio Palacios-Martínez (eds.). Corpus linguistics on the move. Exploring and understanding English through corpora. Leiden: Brill/Rodopi. 2016. 368 pp. ISBN13 9-789-004-308077.

Abstract

The collection of studies in Corpus linguistics on the move: Exploring and understanding English through corpora represents a selection of the papers presented at the 34th ICAME conference in Santiago de Compostela in May 2013. The volume includes a wide number of topics, divided into four general themes: 1) Issues in corpus compilation, 2) Investigating register variation through corpora, 3) Corpora and grammar: examining grammatical variation in space and 4) Corpus insights into the pragmatics of spoken English. As the editors María José López-Couso, Belén Méndez-Naya, Paloma Núñez-Pertejo and Ignacio Palacios-Martínez state in their introduction to the volume, there is a great deal of overlap between the sections, but the division still feels natural and provides some guidance to readers interested in specific topics. From a global perspective, a strength of the volume is that despite the wide range of topics covered in the four sections, the chapters share a solid descriptive purpose, bringing a sense of unity to the volume.