This chapter introduces phonotactics, which includes syllable structure and stress assignment. These features work together to create the overall aesthetic feel of a language, which is, perhaps, the most noticeable and salient feature of a spoken language. By the end of the chapter, you will make decisions about how the sounds of your language will come together to form syllables and how stress is assigned within words.

Chapter 3 considers different approaches to data collection. Three case studies are included. The first study involves a purpose-built corpus of news articles about obesity. We focus on theoretical considerations attending to corpus design, as well as practical challenges involved in processing texts provided by repositories such as LexisNexis to make them amenable to corpus analysis. The second study focuses on how corpus linguists might work with existing datasets, in this case, transcripts collected by research collaborators conducting ethnographic research in Australian Emergency Departments. We discuss the ways in which data collected for the purposes of different kinds of analysis is likely to require some pre-processing before it becomes suitable for corpus-based analysis. The third study is concerned with the creation of a corpus of anti-vaccination literature from Victorian England. We discuss the challenges involved in sourcing historical material from existing databases, selecting a principled set of potential texts for inclusion, and using optical character recognition (OCR) software to convert the texts into a format that is appropriate for corpus tools.

Chapter 1 introduces the context and aims of the book, and provides a brief introduction to corpus linguistics for readers unfamiliar with it. It finishes by providing a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book.

Chapter 11 introduces the concept of legitimation in discourse and considers how it might function, and be studied, in the context of health(care) communication. First, we look at how contributors to the online parenting forum Mumsnet use labels denoting attitudes towards vaccinations. We point out how labels that involve opposition to vaccinations, such as ‘anti-vaxxer’ tend to collocate with negation, and then consider how people justify negating the applicability of the label to themselves. This reveals a range of different concerns around vaccinations. We then draw on a study of patient feedback in which we examined how patients legitimate their perspectives and the evaluations they gave in their feedback. For example, this included patients representing themselves as experienced users of healthcare services. Additionally, some patients used aspects of their identities to position themselves as requiring attention, while others used techniques such as employing second person pronouns to imply that their experiences could be generalised to other patients.

Chapter 7 considers how language change over short timespans can be examined using corpus-assisted methods. We present three case studies. The first study involves a corpus of patient feedback relating to cancer care, collected for four consecutive years. A technique called the coefficient of variation was used to identify lexical items that had increased or decreased over time. The second study considered UK newspaper articles about obesity. To examine changing themes over time, we employed a combination of keyness and concordance analyses to identify which themes in the corpus were becoming more or less popular over time. Additionally, the analysis considered time in a different way, by using the concept of the annual news cycle. To this end, the corpus was divided into 12 parts, consisting of articles published according to a particular month, and the same type of analysis was applied to each part. The third case study involves an analysis of a corpus of forum posts about anxiety. Time was considered in terms of the age of the poster and in terms of the number of contributions that a poster had made to the forum, and differences were found depending on both approaches to time.

This chapter provides an overview of digital communication’s transformative impact on human interaction. It begins with Web 2.0, enabling users to upload and engage with content, fostering a participatory culture that creates and shapes knowledge and authority. This phenomenon has significantly changed how we communicate, interact, and seek information. For instance, people often turn to Google for answers to various queries, from recipes to medical conditions. Researchers studying digital health social networks (DHSNs) agree that the Internet has transformed the experience of illness. Web 2.0 has introduced new sources of expertise, where user-generated content challenges traditional, static, and institutional expertise. These new sources often shape our initial and sometimes sole impression of issues, influencing our perception of reality and engagement with knowledge. In this digital landscape, participants compete for attention, legitimacy, and influence with peers and institutional entities.

Additionally, online platforms have provided minority groups with representation, visibility, and public debate opportunities, promoting awareness and inclusion. This digital revolution has undoubtedly reshaped fundamental aspects of human communication and the nature of information sources.