Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes

Corpus linguistics has become one of the most widely used methodologies across the different linguistic subdisciplines; especially the study of world-wide varieties of English uses corpus-based investigations as one of the chief methodologies. This volume comprises descriptions of the many new corpus initiatives both within and outside Africa that aim to compile various corpora of African Englishes. Moreover, it contains cutting-edge corpus-based research on African Englishes and the use of corpora in pedagogic contexts within African institutions. This volume thus serves both as a practical introduction to corpus compilation (Part I of the book), corpus-based research (Part II) and the application of corpora in language teaching (Part III), and is intended both for those researchers not yet familiar with corpus linguistics and as a reference work for all international researchers investigating the linguistic properties of African Englishes.

Claudia Lange, TU Dresden, in English World-Wide 42:1, pp. 111-115 (2021):
This volume serves a double purpose: to showcase corpora of African Englishes and the work based on them, and to encourage more, and then especially African, researchers to try their hand at corpus linguistics (CL). [...] the present volume fulfills its double purpose admirably. The ardent corpus linguist and the experienced World Englishes scholar will welcome the opportunity to get an overview of the art in corpus linguistic projects devoted to African Englishes, together with an update on the position of English within African linguistic ecologies. The reluctant and yet-to-be-convinced corpus linguist, on the other hand, will appreciate the low-threshold approach to the topic adopted in the volume, an might even be persuaded to incorporate CL in their teaching and/or research. The editors of the volume brought together scholars from well-known, highly productive corpus linguistic hotspots and scholars from the - as yet - corpus linguistic diaspora, united in putting African Englishes firmly on the linguistic map. The present volume testifies to the productivity of such an endeavor.