Review of McEnery & Brezina (2022): Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics

Abstract

Fundamental Principles of Corpus Linguistics (McEnery & Brezina, 2022) makes a valuable contribution to the fields of linguistics and applied linguistics, by offering an in-depth, philosophical perspective on corpus linguistics as a field and methodology. As indicated in the Preface (McEnery & Brezina, 2022, p. xi), the book was written with a view to building on the authors ' previous work, namely, McEnery &Hardie (2011) andBrezina (2018), by focusing on the foundational concepts that underpin corpus linguistics as a methodology. To do so, the book draws on the work of Karl Popper (e.g., Popper, 1976Popper, , 2002 and interrogates the position of corpus linguistics as a (social) science, offering a line of reasoning that can be adopted by readers who wish to build and analyse corpora, based on notions of logic and common sense approaches. McEnery & Brezina (2022) develop their ways of thinking and their approach to corpus linguistic analysis by reflecting on the epistemological perspectives embodied by researchers who make use of this now well-espoused, transdisciplinary methodology. As such, the book is designed as a complimentary resource, not replacing or reiterating the views shared in their earlier works, but, instead, offering a further perspective to equip readers with conceptual approaches to undertaking corpus building and corpus linguistic analyses e.g., falsification, common sense approaches, repeatability, replication, etc.The iterative development of the 48 fundamental principles of corpus linguistics throughout the book's eight chapters is one of its stronger contributions. McEnery & Brezina's (2022) approach to developing these principles takes readers on a journey from broad statements on corpus linguistics to more nuanced perspectives, meaning that even those less familiar with corpus linguistic analytical approaches can be scaffolded into more complex thinking on the topic. Moreover, as 15 of these principles are redeveloped within the text, the iterative approach to developing the principles is itself a meta-demonstration of the processes of falsification, reflection, and revision that the authors suggest as key to effective corpus building and analysis. To demonstrate the contributions of this book, in what follows, I offer a