Analysing Representation: A Corpus and Discourse Textbook guides readers through the process of researching how people and phenomena are represented in discourse and introduces them to key tools they can use from corpus linguistics and (critical) discourse analysis.

Frazer Heritage is a lecturer in Linguistics at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. His research focuses on corpus approaches to the representation of gender and sexuality across different forms of media, particularly within videogames and online communities. He is the author of the 2021 monograph Language, Gender and Videogames: Using Corpora to Analyse the Representation of Gender in Fantasy Videogames and the 2023 monograph Incels and Ideologies: Exploring How Incels Use Language to Construct Gender and Race.

Charlotte Taylor is Professor of Discourse and Persuasion at University of Sussex, UK. She has extensive experience in investigating representation using corpus and discourse methods, and her publications include Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review (with Anna Marchi) and Patterns and Meanings in Discourse (with Alan Partington and Alison Duguid). Her areas of interest include migration discourses, rhetorics of nostalgia and metaphor as a persuasive tool.

1. Introduction

Charlotte Taylor and Frazer Heritage

2. Concordance lines: what are they and how can they be used to explore representation?

Matthew Gillings and Gerlinde Mautner

3. Collocates: what are they and how can they be used to explore representation?

Charlotte-Rose Kennedy, Gavin Brookes, and Anna Cherniaeva

4. Frequency and keyness: what are they and how can they be used to explore representation?

Pascual Perez-Paredes

5. Choosing and building corpora to investigate representation

Robbie Love and Lucia Busso

6. Annotation and mark up for representation analysis

Barbara De Cock, Philippe Hambye and Andrea Pizarro Pedraza

7. Investigating social actors with corpora

Laura Coffey-Glover

8. Investigating social actions (transitivity) with corpora

Sally Hunt

9. Investigating metaphor and representation with corpora

Mario Bisiada

10. Investigating indexicality and representation with corpora

Michael Handford and Zaina Al-Shahrani

11. Investigating discourse keywords with corpora

Melani Schröter

12. Comparing representations across corpora and discourses

Rachelle Vessey

13. Investigating representation in digital discourses

Luke C. Collins and Ekaterina Ignatova

14. Evaluating corpus and discourse work

Anna Marchi

Online Resources

Appendix 1: How to write up your representation research

Frazer Heritage and Charlotte Taylor

Appendix 2: FAQs in investigating representation using corpus and discourse methods

Charlotte Taylor and Frazer Heritage