Keyness in Texts

Front Cover
Marina Bondi, Mike Scott
John Benjamins Publishing, Jan 1, 2010 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 251 pages
This is corpus linguistics with a text linguistic focus. The volume concerns lexical inequality, the fact that some words and phrases share the quality of being key---and thereby reflect or promote important themes in some textual contexts, while others do not. The patterning of words which differ in their centrality to text meaning is of increasing interest to corpus linguistics. At the same time software resources are yielding increasingly more detailed ways of identifying and studying the linkages between key words and phrases in text databases. This volume brings together work from some of the leading researchers in this field. It presents thirteen studies organized in three sections, the first containing a series of studies exploring the nature of keyness itself, then a set of five studies looking at keyness in specific discourse contexts, and then three studies with an educational focus.

"Edited by two central figures in the development of keyword analysis, and with contributions from leading specialists in the field, this unique collection brings together a wide range of insights into how keyword analysis can contribute both to linguistic and cultural analysis and to language education. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone with an interest in these areas"---Christopher Tribble, King's College, London

"This is a fascinating volume addressing both methodological and theoretical questions in the study of keywords. It pushes forward the exploration of the nature of keyness and the interpretation of keywords in their textual contexts. An inspiring contribution to a central area of corpus linguistics." ---Michaela Mahlberg, University of Nottingham
 

Contents

An introduction
1
I Exploring keyness
19
Three concepts of keywords
21
Problems in investigating keyness or clearing the undergrowth and marking out trails
43
Closedclass keywords and corpusdriven discourse analysis
59
Keywords or key words?
79
Web Semantics vs the Semantic Web?
93
II Keyness in specialised discourse
111
Key words and key phrases in a corpus of travel writing
147
Keywords as a clue to disciplinary epistemology
169
Metaphorical keyness in specialised corpora
185
III Critical and educational perspectives
205
A contrastive analysis of keywords in newspaper articles on the Kyoto Protocol
207
Keywords in Korean national consciousness
219
General spoken language and school language
235
Index
249

Identifying aboutgrams in engineering texts
113
Keywords and phrases in political speeches
127
The series Studies in Corpus Linguistics
253
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