Journal of Pragmatics 155 (2020) 334e336

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Book review

Corpus Linguistics for Pragmatics, Christoph Rühlemann. Routledge, London/New York (2018). 220 pp., ISBN 978-
1138718746, EUR 98,00 (hardback).

Corpus Linguistics for Pragmatics: A guide for research is one of the latest additions to the Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides
series, co-edited by Mike McCarthy and Anne O'Keeffe, which aims to provide comprehensive and hands-on introductions to
using corpus linguistic methods in key subfields within linguistics (see e.g., Timmis, 2015; Mikhailov and Cooper, 2016;
Szudarski, 2017; Collins, 2019).
In the monograph under review, Rühlemann proposes a corpus-based examination of five core areas of pragmatic
research, i.e. speech acts, deixis, pragmatic markers, evaluation, conversational structure and multimodality, in an attempt to
provide “a practical guide to corpus pragmatics for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as seasoned prag-
maticists unfamiliar with the corpus method” (p. 9). The validity of corpus methods for pragmatic analysis has been previ-
ously explored and discussed in Romero-Trillo (2008, 2017) who argues that corpus pragmatics offers “an invaluable toolkit
for linguistics due to its rigorous methodology and its multi-faceted methodological implications” (2017: 1). Similarly, recent
years have witnessed a widespread increase of interest in the combination of both disciplines (see e.g., Jucker et al., 2009;
Romero-Trillo, 2014, 2015a; 2016; Taavitsainen and Jucker, 2014; Aijmer and Rühlemann, 2015). Yet, what makes this work
interesting and pertinent, specially to students, is its empirical approach to corpus-pragmatic research.
Overall, the book is divided into eight chapters and includes a companion website where data for the practical assignments
can be accessed. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the volume, in which the author sets the scene by drawing on existing
research on corpus linguistics, pragmatics and the synergy between them. In addition, Rühlemann outlines and introduces
the corpus resource that is used to illustrate most of his analyses, that is, the demographically-sampled sub-corpus of the
British National Corpus (BNC), consisting of both the audio files and BNC transcripts of informal conversation. The rationale
behind corpus selection, then, highlights the ultimate goal of this book which is to demonstrate that human communication is
multimodal and, therefore, multimodal corpora are the way forward in corpus pragmatics.
While the introductory chapter discusses relevant theoretical issues, the next six chapters adopt a fourfold structure that
moves from the general introduction of pragmatic concept(s) and the analysis of specific research questions in the area to the
description of practical tasks, “allowing the reader to carry out small corpus-pragmatic research projects” (p.199).
In the particular case of chapter 2, the focus is on speech acts which is one of the most prolific areas of corpus pragmatics
research (see Jucker, 2009; Kohnen, 2015). Taking Adolph's (2008) study as a starting point, the author examines the real-
isations of the speech act expression ‘Why don't you’ in the BNC sub-corpus in order to find out the extent to which corpus-
based methods offer important advantages over non-corpus methods in accomplishing speech act disambiguation. Inter-
estingly, the results not only confirm earlier studies, but also support Rühlemann's theory that “what speech act is being
performed can be resolved empirically, with evidence from the unfolding interaction providing a firm evidential base and
exhibiting how the co-participants orient to the speech act in question” (p. 34). In the following subsections, readers are
invited to carry out an examination of other expressions such as ‘why not þ V speech acts’, ‘oh I don't know’ and ‘Can I’ vs. ‘Can
you’-formatted speech acts on the BNCweb.
The application of corpus methods to deixis studies is explored in chapter 3 which begins with an overview of previous
research on deixis and reference, including a detailed inspection of the more recently recognised deictic fields (social deixis,
discourse deixis and empathetic deixis). The aim of this chapter is “to summarise some of the research into short-term
diachronic change and sketch out its relation to social deixis” (p. 68). In doing so, the author relies on Millar's (2009)
analysis of the modal verb must and Rühlemann and Hilpert's (2017) examination of inserts (e.g. oh, yeah, you know) in
journalistic writing. Based on Leech et al.‘s definition of democratization, the author elaborates on the concepts of power
relations and colloquialization, arguing that the latter is a social-deictic process which “projects a flattened social relationship
between writer and reader, one of reduced superiority or inferiority and greater equality” (Leech et al., 2009: 259). In the next
subsections, readers will be encouraged to look at (i) deictic projection in the use of constructed dialog and (ii) the definite
article the both on the BNCweb.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.08.002
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Chapter 4 focuses on pragmatic markers defined by the author as “one of the mainstays of corpus-pragmatic research” (p.
83). Based on 59 files of the BNC conversational sub-corpus (all of which are available in audio), the purpose of this section is
to address the question of whether vocal/acoustic properties play a significant role in distinguishing functions of multi-
functional items like ‘well’. Thus, Rühlemann's case study seems to suggest that intonation, articulation and duration work in
unison, with duration helping listeners to tell pragmatic ‘well’ from syntactic ‘well’ (p. 99). Such findings are consistent with
Romero-Trillo (2002, 2015b) and Aijmer (2013) and corroborate his initial hypothesis about multimodal interaction and the
efficacy of acoustic properties analyses. The reminder of this chapter is devoted to the description of different practical tasks
where readers will be asked to work with the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), the BNCweb as well as the
companion website.
Chapter 5 delves into the importance of corpus linguistics to understanding evaluation. The focus is on evaluative prosody
which, according to the author, “has only been discovered thanks to corpus-linguistic research” (p. 121). Drawing on data from
BNCweb, Rühlemann demonstrates how corpus methods can be employed to investigate evaluative prosody by discussing the
example of ‘break out’. Here, the author also reflects on the challenging nature of evaluative prosody which “is sensitive to
contextual variation and heavily depends on the correct interpretation of an item's evaluative polarity” (p. 125). In the
practical subsections of this chapter, readers are invited to address a line of inquiry that has not yet been answered
conclusively in the research tradition, that is, the question of whether tails (e.g. like heaven that, isn't it) tend to perform
predominantly a disambiguating function or an affective function. Moreover, other practical tasks include exploring evalu-
ation in storytelling on the companion website and investigating evaluative prosodies of ‘build up’ and ‘good’ and ‘bad’
synonyms on BNCweb.
The usefulness of corpus-linguistic methods for conversational analysis (CA) is further discussed in chapter 6. In line with
previous chapters, the introductory section elucidates “some key notions of, and findings from, CA and CA-related research on
turn, sequence and preference” (p. 137) in order to set the stage for the examination of backchannels in storytelling sequences.
Building on the existing empirical evidence, the author explores the different functions backchannels can have in storytelling,
paying special attention to Stiver's (2013) functional distinction between low-involvement and high-involvement back-
channels. In the following subsections, readers are invited to analyse turn openers in the BNC conversational sub-corpus and
compare the results with those reported by Tao (2003). In order to do so, they are therefore asked to download and work with
Antconc corpus tool. Additionally, further exercises include (i) the inspection of co-constructed expansion through ‘sentence
relatives’, and (ii) the identification and assessment of genuine dispreferreds and overlapped tag questions on the BNCweb.
Chapter 7 is, undoubtedly, the most anticipated section of the present volume. Here, the focus is on the corpus-linguistic
analysis of multimodality, defined by Rühlemann as “the most intriguing new development in corpus linguistics and also
pragmatics” (p. 199). Based on a video recording extracted from the Storytelling Interaction Corpus (Rühlemann and Gee,
2019), the author sets out to explore modality and, specifically, the role gaze plays in guiding story recipients towards the
climax in storytelling interaction in conversation. As argued throughout the book, this case study provides tentative, but
unique insights into human communication, demonstrating that “we communicate not just through words, but multimodally
and cross-modally, using simultaneously multiple bodily resources, to support, contradict or complement verbal messages”
(p. 199). In consonance with latter chapters, the practical sections also include a series of exercises where readers are invited
to examine other features of storytelling such as (i) the role of vocal intensity in climax projection, (ii) mimicry in conversation
and (iii) gazing away.
Chapter 8 rounds off the volume by highlighting the deep interconnection that exists between the five core areas of
pragmatic research described in the book. Substantiating the idea that multimodality is a fundamental condition of human
communication, Rühlemann succeeds in drawing the readers' attention to the effectiveness and benefits of adopting a
corpus-based approach to pragmatic studies. In this regard, the book is a must-read for all scholars interested in studying “the
liaison between the delicacy of pragmatics analysis and the representativeness of corpus linguistics” (Romero-Trillo, 2017: 1).
It certainly represents a significant contribution to the Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides series and comes highly
recommended.

References

Adolph, Svenja, 2008. Corpus and Context. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

Aijmer, Karin, 2013. Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Aijmer, Karin, Rühlemann, Christoph, 2015. Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Collins, Luke Curtis, 2019. Corpus Linguistics for Online Communication: A Guide for Research. Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides. https://doi.org/10.
4324/9780429057090.
Jucker, Andreas H., Schreier, Daniel, Hundt, Marianne, 2009. Corpora: Pragmatics and Discourse. Rodopi, Amsterdam.
Jucker, Andreas H., 2009. Speech act research between armchair, field and laboratory: the case of compliments. J. Pragmat. 41 (8), 1611e1635. https://doi.
org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.02.004.
Kohnen, Thomas, 2015. Speech acts: a diachronic perspective. In: Aijmer, Karin, Rühlemann, Christoph (Eds.), Corpus Pragmatics: A Handbook. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, pp. 52e83.
Leech, Geoffrey, Hundt, Marianne, Mair, Christian, Smith, Nicholas, 2009. Change in Contemporary English. A Grammatical Study. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
Mikhailov, Mikhail, Cooper, Robert, 2016. Corpus Linguistics for Translation and Contrastive Studies: A Guide for Research. Routledge, London and New York.
Millar, Neil, 2009. Modal verbs in TIME: frequency changes 1923-2006. Int. J. Comput. Linguist. 14 (2), 191e220.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2002. The pragmatic fossilization of discourse markers in non-native speakers of English. J. Pragmat. 34, 769e784.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2008. Pragmatics and Corpus Linguistics: a Mutualistic Entente. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin and New York.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2014. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics: New Empirical and Theoretical Paradigms. Springer, Cham.
336 Book review / Journal of Pragmatics 155 (2020) 334e336

Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2015a. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics: Current Approaches to Discourse and Translation Studies. Springer, Cham.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2015b. Prosodic modelling and position analysis of pragmatic markers in English conversation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic
Theory.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2016. Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics: Global Implications for Society and Education in the Networked Age. Springer,
Cham.
Romero-Trillo, Jesús, 2017. Editorial. Corpus Pragmatics 1, 1e2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41701-017-0005-z.
Rühlemann, Christoph, Gee, Matt, 2019. SITCO: toward a Multimodal Corpus of Storytelling Interaction.
Rühlemann, Christoph, Hilpert, M., 2017. Colloquialization in journalistic writing: investigating inserts in TIME magazine with a focus on well. J. Hist.
Pragmat. 18 (1), 102e135. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.18.1.05ruh.
Stiver, Tanya, 2013. Sequence organization. In: Sidnell, Jack, Stivers, Tanya (Eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Wiley Blackwell, Malden, MA and
Oxford, pp. 191e209.
Szudarski, Pawel, 2017. Corpus Linguistics for Vocabulary: A Guide for Research. Routledge, London and New York.
Taavitsainen, Irma, Jucker, Andrea H., 2014. Diachronic Corpus Pragmatics. Pragmatics and beyond New Series. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Tao, Hongyin, 2003. Turn initiators in spoken English: a corpus-based approach to interaction and grammar. In: Leistyna, Pepi, Meyer, Charles F. (Eds.),
Corpus Analysis: Language Structure and Language Use. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp. 187e207.
Timmis, Ivor, 2015. Corpus Linguistics for ELT: Research and Practice. Routledge, London and New York.

Nancy E. Avila-Ledesma is a lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the Department of English Studies, University of
 noma de Madrid.
Extremadura. She holds a Ph.D. in English Linguistics and M.Sc. in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Auto
Her research interests center on Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, Emotions, Migration Studies, Gender and Ethnicity.

Nancy E. Avila-Ledesma
ceres, Spain
University of Extremadura, Office 132, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Avda. Universidad s/n, 10003, Ca
E-mail address: navila@unex.es (N.E. Avila-Ledesma)
URL: http://unex.academia.edu/NancyEAvilaLedesma

Available online 21 August 2019