Tony McEnery is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University and Changjiang Chair, Xi'an Jiaotong University. He has worked since the late 1980s on studying language using corpus data. He has published widely on a range of languages, topics and methods, with notable publications including Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2011, with Hardie).

Preface; Introduction; 1. The first sketch; 2. What is science?; 3. How to do science?; 4. What is social science and the digital humanities?; 5. Everyday linguistics: form and function; 6. Repetition and replication: laying the groundwork for an empirical study; 7. Replication: carrying out an empirical study; 8. Conclusion; Appendix 1; Appendix 2.