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Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse
John Sinclair is one of the major figures in applied linguistics and his work is essential study for students.
This accessible book collects in one volume Sinclair's key papers on written discourse structure, lexis patterns, phraseology, corpus analysis, lexicography and linguistic theory from the 1990s. All the papers have been edited and updated for this book. The clear and accessible introduction helps students to navigate his key themes and arguments, making the volume an ideal companion for those coming to Sinclair's more recent writings for the first time.
This accessible book collects in one volume Sinclair's key papers on written discourse structure, lexis patterns, phraseology, corpus analysis, lexicography and linguistic theory from the 1990s. All the papers have been edited and updated for this book. The clear and accessible introduction helps students to navigate his key themes and arguments, making the volume an ideal companion for those coming to Sinclair's more recent writings for the first time.
- GenresLinguisticsLanguage
222 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
John McHardy Sinclair
40 books8 followersJohn McHardy Sinclair (June 14, 1933 – March 13, 2007), Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham University, 1965 to 2000. He pioneered work in corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, lexicography, and language teaching.
John Sinclair was a first-generation modern corpus linguist and the founder of the COBUILD project. This project's aim was to build corpus-driven lexicons for foreign learners of English. He became chief adviser of Collins' Cobuild English Language Dictionary, whose first edition was published in 1987.
He was well-known for having unconventional ideas which helped to advance the young field of corpus linguistics. At his valedictory lecture in 2000 he stated that none of his many published articles passed successfully through peer review, and that even an article he had been invited to write for a journal was peer reviewed by mistake and rejected.
Notable works include Towards the Analysis of Discourse, which he published together with Malcolm Coulthard in 1975, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, (Oxford University Press, 1991), Reading Concordances, 2003, Trust the Text, 2004, and Linear Unit Grammar, 2006.
After early retirement from his post as Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham, Sinclair founded the Tuscan Word Centre with his second wife Elena Tognini-Bonelli. This institution provides training courses in corpus linguistics.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Sinclair was a first-generation modern corpus linguist and the founder of the COBUILD project. This project's aim was to build corpus-driven lexicons for foreign learners of English. He became chief adviser of Collins' Cobuild English Language Dictionary, whose first edition was published in 1987.
He was well-known for having unconventional ideas which helped to advance the young field of corpus linguistics. At his valedictory lecture in 2000 he stated that none of his many published articles passed successfully through peer review, and that even an article he had been invited to write for a journal was peer reviewed by mistake and rejected.
Notable works include Towards the Analysis of Discourse, which he published together with Malcolm Coulthard in 1975, Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, (Oxford University Press, 1991), Reading Concordances, 2003, Trust the Text, 2004, and Linear Unit Grammar, 2006.
After early retirement from his post as Professor of Modern English Language at Birmingham, Sinclair founded the Tuscan Word Centre with his second wife Elena Tognini-Bonelli. This institution provides training courses in corpus linguistics.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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April 28, 2008
'Trust the Text' is a collection of papers by the late John McHardy Sinclair, collected and edited by Ron Carter. It represents a large proportion of his later work, although it is by no means his last word on the subject of words and meaning (see Linear Unit Grammar by Sinclair and Mauranen). This collection of articles looks at language like no other linguist (could). Some might say that Sinclair, by having such a singular vision, must be on the wrong track. Some said that as he started the COBUILD project, which single-handedly revolutionised dictionary-making, and has forced us to re-examine some of the 'facts' about langauge that we used to be so sure of. The title article describes his view of Encapsulation. Put simply, Sinclair's encapsulation says that at any point in a text the text is encapsulated in the current sentence; each sentence includes all of the ideas up to and including that point in the text. What may seem like a fairly simple, if odd, idea when applied to text analysis suddenly takes on great meaning. This book is teeming with these deceptively simple ideas. Sinclair, however, is as renowned for his work on corpus-building as on discourse analysis, and this books also provides plenty of examples of his precise corpus analysis.
Why not 5 stars? Although I knew that I already had some of these papers, and that some were from fairly obscure sources originally, I would have liked a wider range of papers, especially later work from his Tuscan Word Centre. This collection was published before Sinclair's untimely death and shows that after more than 40 years of breaking new ground in linguistic theory, he was still ready to carve his own way through the study of language. We wait to see the fruits of his labour, but judging by past experience, there will be plenty of fertile ground where younger linguists need only to follow in his wake.
Why not 5 stars? Although I knew that I already had some of these papers, and that some were from fairly obscure sources originally, I would have liked a wider range of papers, especially later work from his Tuscan Word Centre. This collection was published before Sinclair's untimely death and shows that after more than 40 years of breaking new ground in linguistic theory, he was still ready to carve his own way through the study of language. We wait to see the fruits of his labour, but judging by past experience, there will be plenty of fertile ground where younger linguists need only to follow in his wake.
Displaying 1 of 1 review