Words, Corpus and Back to Words: From Language to Discourse

Abstract

The aim of this issue of is to bring together investigation into the lexicon in a variety of languages, in a diversity of manifestations – both at the word level and beyond the word level – and from a variety of perspectives, including not only those which focus on how the vocabulary is internally organized, but also those which deal with the role that lexical units and lexical relations play in the organization of other language levels, particularly in the organization of the discourse. These issues are approached from a variety of perspectives that include not only developments in several disciplines of theoretical and descriptive linguistics, particularly in lexicology, phraseology, word formation, discourse analysis, but also in diverse applied disciplines such as translation, foreign language teaching, English for specific purposes and critical discourse analysis. One of the criteria employed in the compilation of the volume was also the coverage of linguistic diversity. In total, six different languages are investigated in the studies selected in this volume: English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian. Without claiming exhaustiveness, we consider that the variety of contributions presented here offers an insight into the vigour of current corpus research into phenomena related to the lexicon. Admittedly, the full range of topics, approaches and methodologies developed in this area of research could not fit in a single volume, but a careful selection of studies representing a variety of interesting advances can be representative of significant developments taking place in the field.