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The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics second
edition O'Keeffe Anne (Ed) Digital Instant Download
Author(s): O'Keeffe Anne (Ed); McCarthy Michael (Ed)
ISBN(s): 9780429632648, 0429632649
File Details: PDF, 9.07 MB
Year: 2022
Language: english
 The Routledge Handbook
of Corpus Linguistics

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics 2e provides an updated overview of a

dynamic and rapidly growing area with a widely applied methodology. Over a decade on
from the first edition of the Handbook, this collection of 47 chapters from experts in key
areas offers a comprehensive introduction to both the development and use of corpora
as well as their ever-evolving applications to other areas, such as digital humanities,
sociolinguistics, stylistics, translation studies, materials design, language teaching and
teacher development, media discourse, discourse analysis, forensic linguistics, second
language acquisition and testing.
The new edition updates all core chapters and includes new chapters on corpus
linguistics and statistics, digital humanities, translation, phonetics and phonology, second
language acquisition, social media and theoretical perspectives. Chapters provide annotated
further reading lists and step-by-step guides as well as detailed overviews across a wide
range of themes. The Handbook also includes a wealth of case studies that draw on some of
the many new corpora and corpus tools that have emerged in the last decade.
Organised across four themes, moving from the basic start-up topics such as corpus
building and design to analysis, application and reflection, this second edition remains a
crucial point of reference for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars in
applied linguistics.

Anne O’Keeffe is senior lecturer at MIC, University of Limerick, Ireland. Her publications
include the titles From Corpus to Classroom (2007), English Grammar Today (2011),
Introducing Pragmatics in Use (2nd edition 2020) and, as co-editor, The Routledge Handbook
of Corpus Linguistics (1st edition 2010). With Geraldine Mark, she was co-Principal
Investigator of the English Grammar Profile. She is co-editor, with Michael J. McCarthy, of
two book series: The Routledge Corpus Linguistics Guides and The Routledge Applied Corpus
Linguistics.

Michael J. McCarthy is emeritus professor of applied linguistics, University of

Nottingham. He is (co)author/(co)editor of 57 books, including Touchstone, Viewpoint,
The Cambridge Grammar of English, English Grammar Today, From Corpus to
Classroom, Innovations and Challenge in Grammar and titles in the English Vocabulary in
Use series. He is author/co-author of 120 academic papers. He was co-founder of the
CANCODE and CANBEC spoken English corpora projects. His recent research has
focused on spoken grammar. He has taught in the UK, Europe and Asia and has been
involved in language teaching and applied linguistics for 56 years.
Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics

Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics provide comprehensive overviews of the key

topics in applied linguistics. All entries for the handbooks are specially commissioned and
written by leading scholars in the field. Clear, accessible and carefully edited Routledge
Handbooks in Applied Linguistics are the ideal resource for both advanced undergraduates
and postgraduate students.

The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis

Edited by Eric Friginal and Jack A. Hardy
The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes
Second Edition
Edited by Andy Kirkpatrick
The Routledge Handbook of Language, Gender and Sexuality
Edited by Jo Angouri and Judith Baxter
The Routledge Handbook of Plurilingual Language Education
Edited by Enrica Piccardo, Aline Germain-Rutherford and Geoff Lawrence
The Routledge Handbook of the Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching
Edited by Tammy Gregersen and Sarah Mercer
The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing
Second Edition
Edited by Glenn Fulcher and Luke Harding
The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics
Second Edition
Edited by Anne O’Keeffe and Michael J. McCarthy

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/RHAL

The Routledge Handbook
of Corpus Linguistics
Second edition

Edited by Anne O’Keeffe and Michael J. McCarthy

Cover image credit: © Getty Images
Second edition published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 selection and editorial matter, Anne O’Keeffe and Michael J. McCarthy;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Anne O’Keeffe and Michael J. McCarthy to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
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storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2010
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: O’Keeffe, Anne, editor. | McCarthy, Michael, 1947-editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics / edited by Anne O’Keeffe,
Michael J. McCarthy.
Other titles: Handbook of corpus linguistics
Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge handbooks in applied linguistics | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021030156 | ISBN 9780367076382 (hardback) | ISBN
9781032145921 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367076399 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Corpora (Linguistics)‐‐Handbooks, manuals, etc. | Discourse
analysis‐‐Handbooks, manuals, etc.
Classification: LCC P128.C68 R68 2021 | DDC 410.1/88‐‐dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030156

ISBN: 978-0-367-07638-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-14592-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-07639-9 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780367076399

Typeset in Times New Roman

by MPS Limited, Dehradun
For Ron Carter, whose insight, humour and friendship we will forever miss.
 Contents

List of illustrations xii

List of contributors xvi
Acknowledgements xxviii

1 ‘Of what is past, or passing, or to come’: corpus linguistics,

changes and challenges 1
Anne O’Keeffe and Michael J. McCarthy

PART I
Building and designing a corpus: the basics 11

2 Building a corpus: what are key considerations? 13

Randi Reppen

3 Building a spoken corpus: what are the basics? 21

Dawn Knight and Svenja Adolphs

4 Building a written corpus: what are the basics? 35

Tony McEnery and Gavin Brookes

5 Building small specialised corpora 48

Almut Koester

6 Building a corpus to represent a variety of a language 62

Brian Clancy

7 Building a specialised audiovisual corpus 75

Paul Thompson

8 What corpora are available? 89

Martin Weisser

vii
Contents

9 What can corpus software do? 103

Laurence Anthony

10 What are the basics of analysing a corpus? 126

Christian Jones

11 How can a corpus be used to explore patterns? 140

Susan Hunston

12 What can corpus software reveal about language development? 155

Xiaofei Lu

13 How to use statistics in quantitative corpus analysis 168

Stefan Th. Gries

PART II
Using a corpus to investigate language 183

14 What can a corpus tell us about lexis? 185

David Oakey

15 What can a corpus tell us about multi-word units? 204

Chris Greaves and Martin Warren

16 What can a corpus tell us about grammar? 221

Susan Conrad

17 What can a corpus tell us about registers and genres? 235

Bethany Gray

18 What can a corpus tell us about discourse? 250

Gerlinde Mautner

19 What can a corpus tell us about pragmatics? 263

Christoph Rühlemann

20 What can a corpus tell us about phonetic and phonological

variation? 281
Alexandra Vella and Sarah Grech

viii
 Contents

PART III
Corpora, language pedagogy and language acquisition 297

21 What can a corpus tell us about language teaching? 299

Winnie Cheng and Phoenix Lam

22 What can corpora tell us about language learning? 313

Pascual Pérez-Paredes and Geraldine Mark

23 What can corpus linguistics tell us about second language

acquisition? 328
Ute Römer and Jamie Garner

24 What can a corpus tell us about vocabulary teaching materials? 341

Martha Jones and Philip Durrant

25 What can a corpus tell us about grammar teaching materials? 358

Graham Burton

26 Corpus-informed course design 371

Jeanne McCarten

27 Using corpora to write dictionaries 387

Geraint Rees

28 What can corpora tell us about English for Academic Purposes? 405
Oliver Ballance and Averil Coxhead

29 What is data-driven learning? 416

Angela Chambers

30 Using data-driven learning in language teaching 430

Gaëtanelle Gilquin and Sylviane Granger

31 Using corpora for writing instruction 443

Lynne Flowerdew

32 How can corpora be used in teacher education? 456

Fiona Farr

33 How can teachers use a corpus for their own research? 469
Elaine Vaughan

ix
Contents

PART IV
Corpora and applied research 483

34 How to use corpora for translation 485

Silvia Bernardini

35 Using corpus linguistics to explore the language of poetry: a

stylometric approach to Yeats’ poems 499
Dan McIntyre and Brian Walker

36 Using corpus linguistics to explore literary speech representation:

non-standard language in fiction 517
Carolina P. Amador-Moreno and Ana Maria Terrazas-Calero

37 Exploring narrative fiction: corpora and digital humanities

projects 532
Michaela Mahlberg and Viola Wiegand

38 Corpora and the language of films: exploring dialogue in English

and Italian 547
Maria Pavesi

39 How to use corpus linguistics in sociolinguistics: a case study of

modal verb use, age and change over time 562
Paul Baker and Frazer Heritage

40 Corpus linguistics in the study of news media 576

Anna Marchi

41 How to use corpus linguistics in forensic linguistics 589

Mathew Gillings

42 Corpus linguistics in the study of political discourse: recent

directions 602
Charlotte Taylor

43 Corpus linguistics and health communication: using corpora to

examine the representation of health and illness 615
Gavin Brookes, Sarah Atkins and Kevin Harvey

44 Corpus linguistics and intercultural communication: avoiding the

essentialist trap 629
Michael Handford

x
 Contents

45 Corpora in language testing: developments, challenges and

opportunities 643
Sara T. Cushing

46 Corpus linguistics and the study of social media: a case study

using multi-dimensional analysis 656
Tony Berber Sardinha

47 Posthumanism and corpus linguistics 675

Kieran O’Halloran

Index 693

xi
 Illustrations

Figures
3.1 An example of transcribed speech, taken from the NMMC 30
3.2 A column-based transcript 30
3.3 Time-based tracks in ELAN 31
7.1 The ELAN programme interface (showing a sample from the ACLEW
project, https://psyarxiv.com/bf63y/): video, annotations with
timestamps and waveforms 82
7.2 Screenshot of Glossa interface, showing results of a search on the
Norwegian Big Brother corpus 85
9.1 Screenshot of AntConc displaying frequency values for all the words in
the ICNALE corpus 109
9.2 Screenshot of AntConc showing a standard frequency-based keyword
list for the Japanese component of the ICNALE written corpus 110
9.3 (a and b) Screenshots of AntConc displaying clusters in the ICNALE
corpus 112
9.4 (a and b) Screenshots of AntConc displaying n-grams in the ICNALE
corpus 114
9.5 Screenshot of AntConc displaying the collocates of smoking in the
ICNALE corpus 115
9.6 Screenshot of AntConc displaying the concordance for the search term
smoking in the ICNALE corpus 116
9.7 (a and b) Screenshots of AntConc displaying concordance plots for the
phrase banning smoking in the ICNALE corpus 117
9.8 (a and b) TagAnt POS tagging texts and AntConc displaying a wordlist
for the ICNALE corpus tagged by part of speech 119
9.9 Screenshot of ProtAnt after ranking texts of the ICNALE corpus by
their use of academic words 120
13.1 Dendrogram of the data discussed in Divjak and Gries (2006) 179
14.1 Different ways of graphically presenting a word frequency list for The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 189
14.2 Concordance lines for remote in COCA 192
14.3 Sample concordance lines for want in COCA sorted one, two and
three words to the right of the search word 193
14.4 Adjectives modified by severely in COCA and English Web 2020 on
Sketch Engine 197

xii
 Illustrations

14.5 Verbs for which diversity is the object in COCA and English Web 2020
on Sketch Engine 198
14.6 Concordance lines for crescendo as the object of reach in COCA 200
15.1 Sample concordance lines for “expenditure/reduce” 210
15.2 Sample concordance lines for the collocational framework the.....
of the 212
15.3 Sample concordance lines for the meaning shift unit “play/role” 213
15.4 Sample concordance lines for the organisational framework I think....
because 215
16.1 Conditions associated with omission of that in that-clauses 228
17.1 Distribution of RA types in six disciplines along Dimension 2
“Contextualized Narrative Description” vs. “Procedural
Description” (adapted from Gray 2015) 242
19.1 Number of distinct word types in 7- to 12-word turns in BNC-C 270
19.2 Distribution of inserts, function words and content words in a sample
of 1,000 turns from 7- to 12-word turns in the BNC-C 272
19.3 Finger-bunch gesture depicting the word “location” 276
20.1 The composition of the spoken component of the BNC 284
22.1 Developmental profiling techniques used in Vyatkina (2013) 319
24.1 Configurations list of two-word concgrams 351
24.2 Phrases including flow and rate 352
24.3 Phrases including rate and flow 353
26.1 Collocates of see in BAWE and Spoken BNC (2014) 373
26.2 Frequency of days of the week in the Spoken BNC (2014) 376
27.1 Concordance lines for “perpetrate” in the BNC 1994 shown in Sketch
Engine 390
27.2 Approximate text proportions in the BNC 1994 394
27.3 Partial word sketch for the verb “fire” in the BNC 1994 using Sketch
Engine 400
27.4 Word sketch difference for “table” across two BNC 1994 sub-corpora
using Sketch Engine 401
33.1 Some contexts of professional interaction 477
35.1 Cluster analysis of Yeats’ poetry in 13 volumes based on nMFW = 100 502
35.2 Cluster analysis of Yeats’ poetry in 13 volumes based on nMFW
= 1,000 503
35.3 PCA of 13 volumes of Yeats’ poetry nMFW = 100 504
35.4 PCA of 13 volumes of Yeats’ poetry nMFW = 1000 505
35.5 PCA of 13 volumes of Yeats’ poetry nMFW = 200 with loadings 507
35.6 Bootstrap consensus tree of Yeats’ poetry in 13 volumes based on
nMFW = 100 to 1,000 in increments of 50 509
36.1 Colligation patterns across the books per 100 tokens 524
36.2 Raw token count illustrating prosodic representation of NISo 526
37.1 10 Concordances lines of Daisy in David Copperfield 537
37.2 Distribution plots for Daisy, Doady and Davy in David Copperfield
(retrieved with CLiC) 538
37.3 The top 20 -ing forms in DNov long suspensions (retrieved with CLiC) 540
39.1 Diachronic change in may as a modal verb across comparable age groups 568

xiii
Illustrations

39.2 Diachronic changes in how frequently decade of birth cohorts used the
modal verb may 568
39.3 Percentages of the functions of may in three groups 570
46.1 Means for platform dim. 1 (R2 = 0.2%; F = 36.4; p <0.0001) 665
46.2 Means for user group dim. 1 (R2 = 13.04%; F = 3198.53; p <0.0001) 665
46.3 Means for user dim. 1 (R2 = 26.4%; F = 70.03; p <0.0001) 666
46.4 Means for platform dim. 2 (R2 = 0.98%; F = 211.84; p <0.0001) 669
46.5 Means for user group dim. 2 (R2 = 2.35%; F = 514.873; p <0.0001) 669
46.6 Means for user dim. 2 (R2 = 14.36%; F = 32.8; p <0.0001) 670
47.1 Augmented reality for analysing data with IBM immersive insights 677
47.2 Diffraction patterns 678
47.3 Key semantic domains for chapter 18 Ulysses – generated by WMatrix 682
47.4 Screenshot of FDA text on FDA website 686
47.5 Dominant conceptual framings across FDA text 687
47.6 Key semantic domains for PETA “animal testing” corpus 688

Tables
5.1 Total number of occurrences of modals of obligation in each macro-
genre (per thousand word) 57
8.1 The composition of the Brown Corpus 94
10.1 The frequency of I mean per million words in informal TV shows
across time using the TV corpus 128
10.2 Sample frequency lists 129
10.3 Positive keywords in USTC (B2) compared with LINDSEI as a
reference corpus 131
10.4 Four-word n-grams in the CLiC Dickens corpus 133
10.5 Four-word n-grams from USTC at the B2 level 135
10.6 The priming of divorced in academic and fictional texts 137
11.1 Rewriting with the pattern v-link ADJ about n 150
13.1 A co-occurrence table based on the frequencies of co-occurrence (and
assuming a corpus size of 100,000 constructions, however defined) 172
14.1 Excerpts from word frequency lists for The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes in Sketch Engine 188
14.2 Sample from the word frequency list for the Corpus of Contemporary
American English (COCA) 190
14.3 Excerpt from the word sketch for remote based on the English Web
2015 corpus in Sketch Engine 195
20.1 General corpora and their spoken component 285
20.2 Corpora with a spoken component and transcripts 286
20.3 Corpora with a spoken component, transcripts and audio (in some
cases time-aligned) 287
22.1 Corpus design elements and considerations 316
22.2 A sample of learner corpora and their research purposes and content 317
22.3 Development of past simple form and functions across proficiency levels 321
22.4 Extracts from the English Grammar Profile of past simple development 321

xiv
 Illustrations

24.1 List of the most frequent keywords in the science and engineering
corpus according to log likelihood (LL) values 349
24.2 List of 50 keywords selected from the science and engineering corpus
considered to be useful or very useful 350
26.1 Examples of chunks as expressions with unitary meaning from the
Spoken BNC (2014) 379
31.1 Concordance lines for “delimiting the case under consideration”
(adapted from Weber 2001: 17) 447
34.1 The top 20 collocates of contamination and contaminazione in two web
corpora of French and Italian [with English glosses in square brackets] 491
34.2 Statistical significance and effect size values for the comparison of the
frequencies of the two patterns in original and translated English 493
35.1 The Yeats Corpus of Poetry 505
35.2 The Early Yeats Corpus: volumes included and totals 509
35.3 The Late Yeats Corpus: volumes included and totals 510
35.4 Keywords in the Early Yeats Corpus 510
35.5 Keywords in the Late Yeats Corpus 511
36.1 The RO’CK corpus texts 522
36.2 Raw token count per book 523
36.3 Raw distribution of tokens by gender and book 527
37.1 Top 20 forms ending with ing in DNov long suspensions (bold – in top
20 of all three corpora; italics – only in top 20 of that corpus; * –
keywords in DNov long suspensions vs. 19C and ChiLit combined) 541
38.1 Bilingual concordances for a four-word cluster from the PCFD
(Freddi 2011: 152–5; back translations in brackets) 553
38.2 Bilingual concordances for second person pronouns from the PCFD 553
38.3 Bilingual concordances for Italian adversative ma “but” from
the PCFD 557
38.4 Concordances for mate and man from the PCFD 558
39.1 Age cohorts and how old members of those cohorts would have been
in the BNC1994 and BNC2014 566
39.2 Common phraseological units containing may for different age groups 571
43.1 Sexual health keywords in AHEC, ranked by log-likelihood score 619
43.2 VIOLENCE metaphorical collocates of dementia (MI ≥ 3), ranked by
collocation frequency (brackets) 623
44.1 Example CLIC steps 636
44.2 Checklist for conducting CLIC 638
44.3 JAICEE “different cultural” concordances 639
46.1 Corpus used in the study: breakdown by platform 661
46.2 Corpus used in the study: breakdown by user group 661
46.3 Interval and ordinal scale example 662
46.4 Factor pattern for dimension 1 664
46.5 Factor pattern for dimension 2 668
47.1 Frequencies for words under the key semantic domain
SMOKING_and_NON-MEDICAL_DRUGS 688

xv
 Contributors

Svenja Adolphs is a professor of English language and linguistics at the University of

Nottingham, UK. Her research interests are in multimodal spoken corpus linguistics,
corpus-based pragmatics and discourse analysis. Along with Dawn Knight, Adolphs
recently edited The Routledge Handbook of English Language and Digital Humanities (2020).

Carolina P. Amador-Moreno is a professor of English linguistics at the University of

Bergen. Her research interests centre on the English spoken in Ireland and include
stylistics, discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics. She is
the author, among others, of Orality in Written Texts: Using Historical Corpora to
Investigate Irish English (1700–1900), Routledge (2019); An Introduction to Irish English,
Equinox (2010); the co-edited volumes Irish Identities: Sociolinguistic Perspectives,
Mouton de Gruyter (2020); Voice and Discourse in the Irish Context, Palgrave-
Macmillan (2017); Pragmatic Markers in Irish English (2015), John Benjamins; and
Fictionalising Orality, a special issue of the journal Sociolinguistic Studies (2011).

Laurence Anthony is a professor of applied linguistics at the Faculty of Science and

Engineering, Waseda University, Japan, where he is also the Director of the Center for
English Language Education (CELESE). He has a BSc degree (mathematical physics)
from the University of Manchester, UK, and MA (TESL/TEFL) and PhD (applied
linguistics) degrees from the University of Birmingham, UK. His main research interests
are in corpus linguistics, educational technology and English for specific purposes (ESP).
He received the National Prize of the Japan Association for English Corpus Studies
(JAECS) in 2012 for his work in corpus software design.

Sarah Atkins is a research fellow at the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Aston
University, where she leads on a number of external projects and partnerships. She also
holds a visiting research fellowship at the Centre for Sustainable Working Life,
Birkbeck, University of London. She has conducted research in a range of profess-
ional settings, most notably in health care, with an emphasis on applying findings to
practice. Her work on communication skills training in medical education, which
combines corpus linguistic and micro-analytic approaches to spoken interaction, has
resulted in a range of policy applications and award-winning workshops for health care
professionals.

Paul Baker is a professor of English language at Lancaster University. He has written

20 books on various aspects of language, identity, discourse and corpus linguistics.

xvi
 Contributors

These include Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics and Using Corpora to Analyse
Gender. He is commissioning editor of the journal Corpora and a fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts. His latest book, Fabulosa: The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay
Language, was a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year in 2019.

Oliver Ballance is a lecture in Applied Linguistics and English for Academic Purposes in
the School of Humanities, Media and Creative Communication at Massey University,
New Zealand. Oliver teaches courses on EAP and curriculum design and supervises
postgraduate research projects. His own research interests are focused upon the interface
between corpus linguistics and language for specific purposes.

Silvia Bernardini is a professor of English linguistics at the Department of Interpreting

and Translation of the University of Bologna, Italy, where she teaches translation from
English into Italian and corpus linguistics. She has published widely on corpus use in
translator education and for translation practice and research. Her research interests
include the investigation of the points of contact between translation and interpreting
and translation and non-native writing, seen as instances of bilingual language use.

Gavin Brookes is research fellow in the Department of Linguistics and English Language
at Lancaster University. He is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics (John Benjamins) and Co-Editor of the Corpus and Discourse book series
(Bloomsbury). Gavin has published widely on corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse
studies and health communication, and is the author of Corpus, Discourse and Mental
Health (with Daniel Hunt, Bloomsbury, 2020) and Obesity in the News: Language and
Representation in the Press (with Paul Baker, Routledge, 2021).

Graham Burton is a researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Education, Free University
of Bozen-Bolzano and has written coursebooks and other teaching materials for a
number of publishers. His PhD focused on how the consensus on pedagogical grammar
for ELT evolved, how it is sustained and how it compares to empirical data on learner
language.

Angela Chambers is a professor emerita of applied languages at the University of

Limerick. She has taught in universities in France, the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Her research interests focus on the use of corpora in language learning. She has
published extensively in this area, including articles in journals such as Language
Learning & Technology, ReCALL, the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, the
Revue Française de Linguistique Appliquée and Language Teaching. In 2007 she was guest
editor for a special issue of ReCALL on corpora in language learning. She currently
teaches academic writing at the postgraduate and postdoctoral level.

Winnie Cheng is former professor and former Director of the Research Centre for
Professional Communication in English (RCPCE) of the Department of English at The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research interests include corpus linguistics,
conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, discourse intonation, EAP, ESP,
intercultural communication, pragmatics and writing across the curriculum.

xvii
Contributors

Brian Clancy is currently a lecturer in applied linguistics at Mary Immaculate College,

Ireland. His research work focusses on the blend of a corpus linguistic methodology
with the discourse analytic approaches of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. His primary
methodological interests relate to the use of corpora in the study of language varieties
and the construction and analysis of small corpora. His published work explores
language use in intimate settings, such as between family and close friends, and the
language variety Irish English. He is the author of Investigating Intimate Discourse:
Exploring the Spoken Interaction of Families, Couples and Close Friends (Routledge,
2016) and co-authored Introducing Pragmatics in Use (Routledge, 2011 and 2020).

Susan Conrad is a professor of applied linguistics at Portland State University, Portland,

Oregon, USA. She has used corpus linguistics to study English grammar in a variety of
contexts, from general conversation to engineering. Her publications include the
Grammar of Spoken and Written English, The Cambridge Introduction to Applied
Linguistics, Real Grammar and Register, Genre, and Style. She coordinates the Civil
Engineering Writing Project, in which corpus linguists and engineers collaborate to
improve students' writing skills. Her teaching experiences in southern Africa, South
Korea and the United States convinced her corpus techniques were useful long before
they were well known.

Averil Coxhead is a professor at Te Herenga Waka/Victoria University of Wellington,

Aotearoa/New Zealand where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in
applied linguistics and TESOL. Averil is the author of Vocabulary and English for
Specific Purposes Research (Routledge, 2018) and co-author of English for Vocational
Purposes (Routledge, 2020) and a textbook series with Professor Paul Nation entitled
Reading for the Academic World (Seed Learning, 2018). Her current research includes
technical multiword units in trades education, vocabulary in hip hop (with Friederike
Tegge) and wordlists in trades such as carpentry and plumbing in English and their
translation into Tongan with Falakiko Tu’amoheloa.

Sara T. Cushing is a professor of applied linguistics at Georgia State University. She

received her PhD in applied linguistics from UCLA. She has published research in the
areas of assessment, second language writing and teacher education. She has been
invited to speak and conduct workshops on second language writing assessment
throughout the world, most recently in Vietnam, Colombia, Thailand and Norway.
Her current research focuses on assessing integrated skills, the use of automated scoring
for second language writing and applications of corpus linguistics to assessment.

Philip Durrant is an associate professor in language education at the University of Exeter.

He has been a language teacher and researcher for over 20 years, working at schools and
universities in the UK and Turkey. He has published widely on corpus linguistics,
vocabulary learning and academic writing.

Fiona Farr is an associate professor of applied linguistics and TESOL at the University of
Limerick. She is the Director of CALS (Centre for Applied Language Studies) and
Research Director in MLAL. Her research interests include teacher education
and professional development, applied corpus linguistics; and language learning and

xviii
 Contributors

technology. She is the author of Teaching Practice Feedback: An Investigation of Spoken

and Written Modes (2011), Practice in TESOL (2015) and Social Interaction in Language
Teacher Education (2019, with Farrell and Riordan). She is the co-editor of the EUP
Textbooks in TESOL series and of the Routledge Handbook of Language Learning and
Technology (2016).

Lynne Flowerdew is currently a visiting research fellow in the Department of Applied

Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London. Her main research
and teaching interests include corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, EAP/ESP and
disciplinary writing. She has published widely in these areas in international journals and
prestigious edited collections and has also authored and co-edited several books.

Jamie Garner is a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Florida,

where she also serves as the coordinator of the undergraduate Linguistics and under-
graduate Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) programs. Her current
research interests include learner corpus research, phraseology and second language
acquisition. Her research has been published in the International Journal of Learner
Corpus Research, System, The Modern Language Journal, System and International
Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching.

Mathew Gillings is an assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and

Business. He completed his PhD at the ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social
Science at Lancaster University, where he explored verbal cues to deception through the
use of corpus-based methods. His research interests are in various aspects of corpus
linguistics, but most recently he has applied the method to the study of deception,
politeness and Shakespeare’s language.

Gaëtanelle Gilquin is a professor of English language and linguistics at the University of

Louvain. She is the coordinator of LINDSEI (Louvain International Database of Spoken
English Interlanguage) and PROCEED (PROcess Corpus of English in EDucation) and
one of the editors of the Cambridge Handbook of Learner Corpus Research. Her research
interests include the use of native and learner corpora for the description and teaching of
language, the analysis of the writing process through screencasting and keylogging and the
comparison of learner Englishes and world Englishes.

Sylviane Granger is an emerita professor of English language and linguistics at the

University of Louvain. In 1990 she launched the first large-scale learner corpus project, the
International Corpus of Learner English, and since then has played a key role in defining
the different facets of the field of learner corpus research. Her current research interests
focus on the analysis of phraseology in native and learner language and its integration into
reference and instructional materials. One of her latest publications is Perspectives on the
L2 Phrasicon: The View from Learner Corpora (2021).

Bethany Gray is an associate professor of English (Applied Linguistics and Technology

program) at Iowa State University. Her research investigates phraseological, gramm-
atical and lexico-grammatical variation across registers of English, with a particular
focus on disciplinary variation in academic writing and the development of grammatical
complexity in novice and L2 writers. She is a co-founding editor of Register Studies

xix
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1922

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VAN

ROON ***
THE VAN ROON
 By
J. C. SNAITH

THE VAN ROON

THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN
THE ADVENTUROUS LADY
THE UNDEFEATED
THE SAILOR
THE TIME SPIRIT
THE COMING
ANNE FEVERSHAM

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Publishers New York
 THE VAN ROON
BY

J. C. SNAITH

AUTHOR OF “THE SAILOR,” “THE UNDEFEATED,”

“THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN,” ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXII
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Copyright, 1922, by the Curtis Publishing Co.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE VAN ROON
 I
North of the Strand, east of the National Gallery, a narrow street
winds a devious course towards Long Acre. To the casual eye it
is no more than a mean and dingy thoroughfare without charm or
interest, but for the connoisseur it has its legend. Here Swinburne
came upon his famous copy of “The Faerie Queene”; here more than
one collection has been enriched by a Crome, a Morland, a choice
miniature, a first proof or some rare unsuspected article of bigotry
and virtue.
On the right, going from Charing Cross, halfway up the street, a
shop, outwardly inconspicuous, bears on its front in plain gilt letters
the name S. Gedge, Antiques.
A regard for the mot juste could omit the final letter. S. Gedge
Antique was nearer the fact. To look at, the proprietor of the business
was an antique of the most genuine kind, whose age, before he was
dressed for the day, might have been anything. When, however, he
had “tidied himself up” to sit at the receipt of a custom, a process
involving a shave, the putting on of collar and dickey, prehistoric
frock coat, new perhaps for the Prince Consort’s funeral, and a pair
of jemimas that also were “of the period,” his years, in spite of a
yellow parchment countenance of an incredible cunning, could at
conservative estimate be reckoned as seventy.
On a certain morning of September, the years of the proprietor of
S. Gedge Antiques, whatever they might be, sat heavily upon him.
Tall, sombre, gaunt, a cross between a hop-pole and a moulting
vulture, his tattered dressing gown and chessboard slippers lent a
touch of fantasy to his look of eld, while the collar and dickey of
commerce still adorned the back kitchen dresser.
Philosophers say that to find a reason for everything is only a
question of looking. The reason for the undress of S. Gedge
Antiques so late as eleven o’clock in the morning was not far to
seek. His right hand man and sole assistant, who answered to the
name of William, and who was never known or called by any other,
had been away for an annual holiday of one week, which this year
he had spent in Suffolk. He was due back in the course of that day
and his master would raise a pæan on his return. In the absence of
William the indispensable S. Gedge Antiques was like a windjammer
on a lee shore.
There was a further reason for his lost air. He was “at outs” with
Mrs. Runciman, his charwoman, a state of affairs which had long
threatened to become chronic. An old, and in her own opinion, an
undervalued retainer, the suspension of diplomatic relations between
Mrs. Runciman and her employer could always be traced to one
cause. S. Gedge attributed it to the phases of the moon and their
effect on the human female, but the real root of the mischief was
Mrs. Runciman’s demand for “a raise in her celery.” For many years
past the lady had held that her services were worth more than “half a
crown a day and her grub.” The invariable reply of her master was
that he had never paid more to a char all the time he had been in
trade and that if she wanted more she could keep away. This
Thursday morning, according to precedent when matters came to a
head, Mrs. Runciman had taken him at his word. The old man knew,
however, that her absence would only be temporary. A single day off
would vindicate the rights of woman. As sure as the sun rose on the
morrow Mrs. R. would return impenitent but in better fettle for
charring. But as he made a point of telling her, she would play the
trick once too often.
Char-less for the time being, assistant-less also, this morning S.
Gedge was not only looking his age, he was feeling it; but he had
already begun to examine the contents of a large packing case from
Ipswich which Messrs. Carter Paterson had delivered half an hour
ago at the back of the premises by the side entry. Handicapped as S.
Gedge Antiques at the moment was, he could well have deferred
these labours until later in the day. Human curiosity, however, had
claimed him as a victim.
By a side wind he had heard of a sale at a small and rather
inaccessible house in the country where a few things might be going
cheap. As this was to take place in the course of William’s holiday,
the young man had been given a few pounds to invest, provided that
in his opinion “the goods were full value.” By trusting William to carry
out an operation of such delicacy, his master whose name in trade
circles was that of “a very keen buyer” was really paying him the
highest compliment in his power. For the god of S. Gedge Antiques
was money. In the art of “picking things up,” however, William had a
lucky touch. His master could depend as a rule on turning over a few
shillings on each of the young man’s purchases; indeed there were
occasions when the few shillings had been many. The truth was that
William’s flair for a good thing was almost uncanny.
Adroit use of a screwdriver prised the lid off the packing case. A
top layer of shavings was removed. With the air of a dévot the old
man dug out William’s first purchase and held it up to the light of
New Cross Street, or to as much of that dubious commodity as could
filter down the side entry.
Purchase the first proved to be a copy of an engraving by P.
Bartolozzi: the Mrs. Lumley and Her Children of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. An expert eye priced it at once a safe thirty shillings in the
window of the front shop, although William had been told not to
exceed a third of that sum at Loseby Grange, Saxmundham. So far
so good. With a feeling of satisfaction S. Gedge laid the engraving
upon a chair of ornate appearance but doubtful authenticity, and
proceeded to remove more straw from the packing case. Before,
however, he could deal with William’s second purchase, whatever it
might be, he was interrupted.
A voice came from the front shop.
“Uncle Si! Uncle Si! Where are you?”
The voice was feminine. S. Gedge Antiques, crusted bachelor
and confirmed hater of women, felt a sudden pang of dismay.
“Where are you, Uncle Si?”
“Com-ming!” A low roar boomed from the interior of the packing
case. It failed, however, to get beyond the door of the lumber room.
 “That girl of Abe’s” ruminated the old man deep in straw. In the
stress of affairs, he had almost forgotten that the only child of a half
brother many years his junior, was coming to London by the morning
train.
“Uncle Si!”
With a hiss of disgust worthy of an elderly cobra he writhed his
head free of the straw. “Confound her, turning up like this. Why
couldn’t she come this afternoon when the boy’d be home? But
that’s a woman. They’re born as cross as Christmas.”
A third time his name was called.
S. Gedge Antiques, unshaven, beslippered, bespectacled, slowly
emerged from the decent obscurity of the back premises into the
fierce publicity of the front shop. He was greeted by a sight of which
his every instinct profoundly disapproved.
The sight was youthful, smiling, fresh complexioned. In a weak
moment, for which mentally he had been kicking himself round the
shop ever since, he had been so unwise as to offer to adopt this girl
who had lost her father some years ago and had lately buried her
mother. Carter Paterson had delivered her trunk along with the
packing case from Ipswich, a fact he now recalled.
Had S. Gedge had an eye for anything but antiques, he must
have seen at once that his niece was by way of being a decidedly
attractive young woman. She was nineteen, and she wore a neat
well-fitting black dress and a plain black hat in which cunning and
good taste were mingled. Inclined to be tall she was slender and
straight and carried herself well. Her eyes were clear, shrewd and
smiling. In fact they appeared to smile quite considerably at the slow
emergence from the back premises of S. Gedge Antiques.
In the girl’s hand was a pilgrim basket, which she put carefully on
a gate-legged table, marked “£4.19.6, a great bargain” and then very
fearlessly embraced its owner.
“How are you, niece?” gasped the old man who felt that an affront
had been offered to the dignity of the human male.
 “Thank you, Uncle Si, I’m first rate,” said the girl trying for the
sake of good manners not to smile too broadly.
“Had a comfortable journey?”
“Oh, yes, thank you.”
“Didn’t expect you so soon. However, your box has come. By the
way, what’s your name? I’ve forgotten it.”
“June.”
“June, eh? One of these new fangled affairs,” S. Gedge spoke
aggrievedly. “Why not call yourself December and have done with
it?”
“I will if you like,” said June obligingly. “But it seems rather long.
Do you care for De, Cem, or Ber for short?”
“It don’t matter. What’s in a name? I only thought it sounded a bit
sloppy and new fangled.”
The eyes of June continued to regard S. Gedge Antiques with a
demure smile. He did not see the smile. He only saw her and she
was a matter for grave reflection.
 II
Gedge Antiques peered dubiously at his niece. He had a
S. dislike of women and more than any other kind he disliked
young women. But one fact was already clear; he had let himself
in for it. Frowning at this bitter thought he cast his mind back in
search of a reason. Knowing himself so well he was sure that a
reason there must be and a good one for so grave an indiscretion.
Suddenly he remembered the charwoman and his brow cleared a
little.
“Let me have a look at you, niece.” As a hawk might gaze at a
wren he gazed at June through his spectacles. “Tall and strong
seemingly. I hope you’re not afraid of hard work.”
“I’m not afraid of anything, Uncle Si,” said June with calm
precision.
“No answers,” said S. Gedge curtly. “If you intend to stay here
you’ve got to mind your p’s and q’s and you’ve got to earn your
keep.” He sighed and impatiently plucked the spectacles from his
nose. “Thought so,” he snarled. “I’m looking at you with my selling
spectacles. For this job I’ll need my buying ones.”
Delving into the capacious pockets of his dressing gown, the old
man was able to produce a second pair of glasses. He adjusted
them grimly. “Now I can begin to see you. Favour your father
seemingly. And he was never a mucher—wasn’t your father.”
“Dad is dead, Uncle Si.” There was reproof in June’s strong
voice. “And he was a very good man. There was never a better
father than Dad.”
“Must have been a good man. He hardly left you and your mother
the price of his funeral.”
“It wasn’t Dad’s fault that he was unlucky in business.”
 “Unlucky.” S. Gedge Antiques gave a sharp tilt to his “buying”
spectacles. “I don’t believe in luck myself.”
“Don’t you?” said June, with a touch of defiance.
“No answers.” Uncle Si held up a finger of warning. “Your luck is
you’re not afraid of work. If you stop here you’ll have to stir yourself.”
June confessed a modest willingness to do her best.
S. Gedge continued to gaze at her. It was clear that he had
undertaken an immense responsibility. A live sharp girl, nineteen
years of age, one of these modern hussies, with opinions of her own,
was going to alter things. It was no use burking the fact, but a wise
man would have looked it in the face a little sooner.
“The char is taking a day off,” he said, breaking this reverie. “So
I’d better give you a hand with your box. You can then change your
frock and come and tidy up. If you give your mind to your job I
daresay I’ll be able to do without the char altogether. The woman’s a
nuisance, as all women are. But she’s the worst kind of a nuisance,
and I’ve been trying to be quit of her any time this ten years.”
In silence June followed Uncle Si kitchenwards, slowly removing
a pair of black kid gloves as she did so. He helped her to carry a
trunk containing all her worldly possessions up a steep, narrow,
twisty flight of uncarpeted stairs to a tiny attic, divided by a wooden
partition from a larger one, and lit by a grimy window in the roof. It
was provided with a bedstead, a mattress, a chest of drawers, a
washing stand and a crazy looking-glass.
“When the boy comes, he’ll find you a couple o’ blankets, I
daresay. Meantime you can fall to as soon as you like.”
June lost no time in unpacking. She then exchanged her new
mourning for an old dress in which to begin work. As she did so her
depression was terrible. The death of her mother, a month ago, had
meant the loss of everything she valued in the world. There was no
one else, no other thing that mattered. But she had promised that
she would be a brave girl and face life with a stout heart, and she
was going to be as good as her word.
 For that reason she did not allow herself to spend much time over
the changing of her dress. She would have liked to sit on the edge of
the small bed in that dismal room and weep. The future was an
abyss. Her prospects were nil. She had ambition, but she lacked the
kind of education and training that could get her out of the rut; and all
the money she had in the world, something less than twenty pounds,
was in her purse in a roll of notes, together with a few odd shillings
and coppers. Nothing more remained of the sum that had been
realized by the sale of her home, which her mother and she had
striven so hard to keep together. And when this was gone she would
have to live on the charity of her Uncle Si, who was said to be a very
hard man and for whom she had already conceived an odd dislike,
or go out and find something to do.
Such an outlook was grim. But as June put on an old house frock
she shut her lips tight and determined not to think about to-morrow.
Uncle Si had told her to clean out the grate in the back kitchen. She
flattered herself that she could clean out a grate with anybody.
Merely to stop the cruel ache at the back of her brain she would just
think of her task, and nothing else.
In about ten minutes June came down the attic stairs, fully
equipped even to an overall which she had been undecided whether
to pack in her box but had prudently done so.
“Where are the brushes and dust pan, Uncle Si?”
“In the cupboard under the scullery sink.” A growl emerged from
the packing case, followed by a gargoyle head. “And when you are
through with the kitchen grate you can come and clear up this litter,
and then you can cook a few potatoes for dinner—that’s if you know
how.”
“Of course I know how,” said June.
“Your mother seems to have brought you up properly. If you give
your mind to your job and you’re not above soiling your hands I quite
expect we’ll be able to do without the char.”
June, her large eyes fixed on Uncle Si, did not flinch from the
prospect. She went boldly, head high, in the direction of the scullery
sink while S. Gedge Antiques proceeded to burrow deeper and
deeper into the packing case.
Presently he dug out a bowl of Lowestoft china, which he tapped
with a finger nail and held up to the light.
“It’s a good piece,” he reflected. “There’s one thing to be said for
that boy—he don’t often make mistakes. I wonder what he paid for
this. However, I shall know presently,” and S. Gedge placed the bowl
on a chair opposite the engraving “after” P. Bartolozzi.
His researches continued, but there was not much to follow. Still,
that was to be expected. William had only been given twenty pounds
and the bowl alone was a safe fiver. The old man was rather sorry
that William had not been given more to invest. However, there was
a copper coal-scuttle that might be polished up to fetch three
pounds, and a set of fire irons and other odds and ends, not of much
account in themselves, but all going to show that good use had been
made of the money.
“Niece,” called Uncle Si when at last the packing case was
empty, “come and give a hand here.”
With bright and prompt efficiency June helped to clear up the
débris and to haul the packing case into the backyard.
The old man said at the successful conclusion of these
operations:
“Now see what you can do with those potatoes. Boil ’em in their
skins. There’s less waste that way and there’s more flavour.”
“What time is dinner, Uncle Si?”
“One o’clock sharp.”
S. Gedge Antiques, having put on his collar, and discarded his
dressing gown for the frock coat of commerce, shambled forward
into the front shop with the air of a man who has no time to waste
upon trivialities. So far things were all right. The girl seemed willing
and capable and he hoped she would continue to be respectful. The
times were against it, certainly. In the present era of short skirts,
open-work stockings, fancy shoes and bare necks, it was hard, even
for experts like himself, to say what the world was coming to. Girls of
the new generation were terribly independent. They would sauce you
as soon as look at you, and there was no doubt they knew far more
than their grandmothers. In taking under his roof the only child of a
half-brother who had died worth precious little, S. Gedge Antiques
was simply asking for trouble. At the same time there was no need to
deny that June had begun well, and if at eight o’clock the next
morning he was in a position to say, “Mrs. R. you can take another
day off and get yourself a better billet,” he would feel a happier man.
A voice with a ring in it came from the shop threshold. “Uncle Si,
how many potatoes shall I cook?”
“Three middling size. One for me, one for you, one for William if
he comes. And if he don’t come, he can have it cold for his supper.”
“Or I can fry it,” said the voice from the threshold.
“You can fry it?” S. Gedge peered towards the voice over the top
of his “buying” spectacles. “Before we go in for fancy work let us see
what sort of a job you make of a plain bilin’. Pigs mustn’t begin to fly
too early—not in the West Central postal district.”
“I don’t know much about pigs,” said June, calmly, “but I’ll boil a
potato with anyone.”
“And eat one too I expect,” said S. Gedge severely closuring the
incident.
The axiom he had just laid down applied to young female pigs
particularly.
 III
Gedge Antiques, feather duster in hand, began to flick
S. pensively a number of articles of bigotry and virtue. The
occupation amused him. It was not that he had any great regard
for the things he sold, but each was registered in his mind as having
been bought for so much at So-and-So’s sale. A thoroughly
competent man he understood his trade. He had first set up in
business in the year 1879. That was a long time ago, but it was his
proud boast that he had yet to make his first serious mistake. Like
everyone else, he had made mistakes, but it pleased him to think
that he had never been badly “let in.” His simple rule was not to pay
a high price for anything. Sometimes he missed a bargain by not
taking chances, but banking on certainties brought peace of mind
and a steady growth of capital.
Perhaps the worst shot he had ever made was the queer article
to which he now applied the duster. A huge black jar, about six feet
high and so fantastically hideous in design as to suggest the familiar
of a Caribbean witch doctor or the joss of a barbarous king, held a
position of sufficient prominence on the shop floor for his folly to be
ever before him. Years ago he had taken this grinning, wide-
mouthed monster, shaped and featured like Moloch, in exchange for
a bad debt, hoping that in the course of time he would be able to
trade it away. As yet he had not succeeded. Few people apparently
had a use for such an evil-looking thing which took up so much
house room. S. Gedge Antiques was loth to write it off a dead loss,
but he had now come to regard it as “a hoodoo.” He was not a
superstitious man but he declared it brought bad luck. On several
occasions when a chance seemed to arise of parting with it to
advantage, something had happened to the intending purchaser;
indeed it would have called for no great effort of the imagination to
believe that a curse was upon it.
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