This is a text-based study of fixed expressions, or idioms. Moon's central argument is that fixed expressions can only be fully understood if they are considered in the context of the texts in which they occur. She examines several thousand fixed expressions and how they are being used in current English. She argues that examination of the corpus raises questions about many received ideas on fixed expressions and idioms, and suggests that new, use-centered, models are required.

• 1: Introduction and Background


• 2: Collocation and Chunking


• 3: Corpus and Computer


• 4: Frequencies and FEIs


• 5: Lexical and Grammatical Form


• 6: Variation


• 7: Ambiguity, Polysemy, and Metaphor


• 8: Discoursal Functions of FEIs


• 9: Evaluation and Interactional Perspectives


• 10: Cohesion and FEIs


• 11: Afterword