This work provides detailed studies in one of the fastest-growing areas of linguistics - corpus analysis - and shows how computers can be used to reveal culturally significant patterns of language use. It contains copious authentic examples for millions of words of corpus data and from many types of naturally occurring texts: school books, courtroom language, speeches by politicians and other public figures, and sexist language. Lexical collocations, modality, transitivity, causativity and agency are analyzed to provide many examples of how such patterns convey attitudes, presuppositions and points of view. A major chapter demonstrates methods of analyzing key words in British culture.
