Corpus Linguistics and 17th-Century Prostitution

Professor Anthony McEnery is a corpus linguist working at the University of Lancaster, UKHelen Baker is Part-time Newby Research Fellow, County South, Lancaster University, UK

• 1. Corpus Linguistics and HistoryPart I: Historical Context2. Prostitution in England3. Attitudes to Prostitution in the Seventeenth CenturyPart II: Corpus Investigation4. Representation5. Society6. WordsPart III: Synthesis7. The Corpus Insight8. The Utility of Corpus Data in History and the HumanitiesBibliographyIndex

This book impressively proves: (historical) corpus linguistics and historical science can no longer work in splendid isolation. I am fascinated by this informed, critical and data-driven investigation of prostitution in multifaceted public discourses of eventful 17th-century Britain, with its intelligent, respectful and mutually beneficial integration of the respective methods, tools, concepts and knowledge from both disciplines. This book will serve as a model of interdisciplinary research where, for example, quantification and learned statistical testing of linguistic findings on semantic and lexical change are seen as indispensable, but never sufficient to replace contextualisation. Reinhart Koselleck would have loved to read how his concept of the history of ideas is enhanced by modern, state-of-the-art of interdisciplinary studies of big historical language data like EEBO really looked at on the inside.