Lesley Jeffries Knihy

Ideal for those who are starting a degree in English Language or Linguistics, this textbook covers all the basic knowledge and tools of analysis students need for studying language.

Presents a comprehensive introduction to the history of English. This book covers the origins of English, the change from Old to Middle English and the influence of other languages on English. It also covers various aspects from phonology and grammar, to the register and discourse. It is suitable for students of English language and linguistics.

An introduction to the study of style in language, offering practical advice on how to stylistically analyse texts.

Exploring a fresh perspective on the meaning of poetry, the author builds upon previously established frameworks to delve into the intricacies of poetic interpretation. This approach emphasizes the interplay between language, form, and the reader's experience, inviting readers to engage more deeply with the text. By analyzing various poems through this lens, the book aims to enrich understanding and appreciation of poetic works, making it a valuable resource for both scholars and poetry enthusiasts.

Building on Raymond Williams' iconic "Keywords" released in 1975, Jeffries and Walker show how some pivotal words significantly increased in use and evolved in meaning during the years of the 'New Labour' project. Focussing on print news media, this book establishes a set of socio-political keywords for the 'Blair Years', and demonstrates how their evolving meanings are indicative of the ideological landscape in Britain at that time, and the extent to which the cultural hegemony of the New Labour project influenced the language of the commentariat. Combining corpus linguistic approaches with critical stylistics the authors conduct an analysis of two newspaper corpora using computational tools. Looking closely at textually-constructed meanings within the data, their investigation of the keywords has a qualitative focus, and sets out a clear methodology for combining corpus approaches with systematic co-textual analysis.

A beginner's guide to the corpus analysis of style in texts