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Corpus Stylistics Theory and Practice
Dan McIntyre and
Brian Walker
Edinburgh:
University Press, 2019 Paperback.
xviii+356 p. ISBN 978-1474413213. £24.99
Reviewed by Laure Gardelle Université
Grenoble Alpes
This volume is intended as a practical guide to corpus stylistics – how
to build and annotate a corpus, how to use existing corpora (such as the BNC
and its BYU interface) and major software packages (such as Antconc or Wmatrix).
It provides theoretical and methodological discussions, as well as many case studies,
step-by-step guidelines and screenshots. Corpus stylistics is a recent research
area (the collocation probably first appeared in print as recently as 2004),
and not all stylisticians are convinced of the assets of a corpus approach. The
aim is to show that new insights can be gained; in particular, intuitive claims
about style can be tested. The authors also seek to show that corpus stylistics
is a ‘distinctive analytical practice’ from corpus linguistics [21], and that
the two can mutually benefit each other. Because corpus stylistics is recent, existing definitions differ,
ranging from a subfield to a methodology. To the authors, stylistics, ‘the
linguistic study of style in language’, seeks to identify the linguistic
properties of a given text-type (literary language most of the time, but other
types as well); and corpus stylistics is ‘the application of theories, models
and frameworks from stylistics in corpus analysis’ [15-16]. The book is divided into ten chapters. The first five focus on theoretical
and methodological issues; chapters 6 to 9 then provide practical examples,
including uses for L2 classroom activities; chapter 10 then rounds up the
arguments, making a case for corpus stylistics as a useful development. Here is
an overview of the topics broached in the volume, based on what the present
reviewer sees as the most salient contributions. A first technique for corpus analysis in stylistics is corpus-informed
stylistics, that is, the use of linguistic corpora to establish a norm, from
which the interpretation of a text may be carried out (chapter 2). One example
is the study of collocational behaviour, which is responsible for expected
schemas of meaning. It is illustrated by the study of with intent in the phrase ‘strolling with intent’ in a novel by John
Le Carré. A search for ‘with intent’ in the BNC reveals that most uses are
associated with law breaking; this high-frequency collocate, it is argued, influences
the way the reader interprets strolling
in the Le Carré quote. The present reviewer would suggest that this does not
inform on style so much as on
semantics and connotations for language users – the kind of information
lexicographers derive from corpus analysis. Still, such research is useful to
refine interpretation in context. Another instance of corpus use is semantic
prosody: knowing about the collocates of a word may point to unprototypical
combinations (such as utterly
combined with a positive adjective), to provide evidence of irony or other
stylistic effects. The authors lay out such important distinctions as
‘frequency’ vs. ‘collocational
strength’, or ‘semantic prosody’ vs. ‘semantic
preference’. They conclude convincingly that although corpus stylistics cannot
bring all the answers, it does provide ‘a means of seeing patterns in data that
would not be observable through purely qualitative analysis’ [63]. Corpus-based stylistics may also rely on specifically annotated corpora
(chapter 3). The authors provide advice on how to design a balanced corpus and get
a truly random sample using Excel; they also consider ethical issues and
copyright. The discussion is very well-informed. Then hands-on advice is given
to produce machine-readable text, split or merge data files, annotate the
corpus automatically or manually. Again, the help boxes and case studies are
very helpful. Chapter 4 considers research questions and reliability of research
findings, with the key notion of falsifiability. The chapter provides advice
based on how to make generalisations about the style of an author, or
characterise the style of a given text (keyness studies). As noted by the
authors, a single text is not properly a ‘corpus’, but corpus-inspired methods
give useful insights. The chapter also considers corpus-based and corpus-driven
analyses, the role of intuition and hypotheses, and the issue of objectivity.
Chapter 5 addresses the notion of statistical significance of raw figures, and
proposes an overview of a number of core statistical tests. All the concepts,
such as degree of freedom, are defined in accessible terms, which helps the
reader make sense of what the calculations mean. The assets and limitations of
the various tests are very well spelt out, and illustrated by a number of case
studies. Chapters 6 to 9 are devoted to full case studies, detailing all the steps
from the aim of the study to research questions and how corpus analysis can
help. The studies include real-world projects, from language consultancy for
political organisations to assessment of the impact of intralingual subtitling
(for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers) on characterisation – in order to
improve users’ experience of TV drama. This volume is a must-read for beginners in corpus stylistics. It
combines theoretical and methodological discussion with very practical advice. The step-by-step instructions, with screenshots, are
very helpful, and the many case studies do prove that corpus stylistics is both
possible and useful. Just as in linguistics, a corpus-based approach does not
mean that qualitative analyses are rejected; rather, as the authors are
committed to showing, corpora provide tools for new insights.
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