3.

1 Compilation of the DIY Book Review Corpus basic information

The aim of this diploma paper is to discuss certain aspects of the language of book
reviews, which is seen by the author of this research as a type of specialized language. Since
this analysis concerns a particular language area a specialized, corpus has been compiled by
the researcher. The corpus is referred to as the Do-It-Yourself Book Review Corpus
(henceforth, the DIY BRC). The table below presents the structure of the DIY BRC.

Table 3.1 The structure of the DIY Book Review Corpus (DIY BRC)
Source Number of Number of Mean sample Proportion of
tokens samples size the corpus (%)
The Guardian 69 815 102 684 61
The Daily Telegraph 36 284 55 660 31
The New York Times 8839 9 982 8
Total 114 938 166 692 100

The DIY BRC totals 114 938 words (tokens) and consists of 166 written samples.
Each language sample constitutes a complete document (book review). The language
instances come from three different sources, so as to make the corpus possibly representative
and balanced. They have been downloaded from the websites of such British and American
quality newspapers as The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The New York Times. It should
be stressed that all language samples are in the form of electronic files and they have been
written by native speakers of British and American English.
The compiling of the corpus took place from 22 nd January to 26th May 2013. The
processing of the linguistic data has been facilitated by a professional lexical analysis
software package referred to as the WordSmith Tools 6.0, which has been specially purchased
for this project by the researcher. The corpus is not either lemmatized or tagged automatically.
There are cases of lemmatization in the further sections of the present chapter, however it has
been done manually by the researcher herself whenever necessary. More details concerning
the structure of the DIY BRC can be found in Table 3.1.

3.2 Frequency of words

3.2.1 General versus specialized vocabulary

 The first phase of the corpus-based analysis conducted in the present chapter has been
generating an overall frequency list. The words occurring in the DIY Book Review Corpus
have been arranged in descending order according to their number of occurrences in this
corpus.
There are two fundamental findings that should be mentioned here. Firstly, function
words (also called grammar words) such as the, of, a, and, to, in, that, was, has or I occupy
the top 39 positions on the overall frequency list. This comes as no surprise because, as is
claimed by world-renowned corpus linguists, top places in general as well as in specialized
corpora are always occupied by such grammar words as pronouns, articles, prepositions,
conjunctions or auxiliary verbs. Secondly, even more importantly, the most frequent non-
function word on the list is the word-form book with 316 occurrences (henceforth, book (F
316)), and the word-forms novel and story are among 7 most popular non-function words in
the DIY Book Review Corpus. The fact that these lexical items, regarded as the most typical
terms of the language area under analysis, occur so frequently in my corpus makes the
argument for classifying the DIY Book Review Corpus and language instances in it as
specialized.
The extract of the overall frequency list, which includes 500 most frequently used
lexical items can be found in Appendix 1. However, since this diploma paper is intended to
examine certain aspects of the language used in book reviews, for further, more in-depth
analysis a shorter frequency list has been extracted from the overall frequency list. The list,
referred to as the frequency list of book review terms, includes words which are thought to
be typical of book review vocabulary.
The frequency list of book review terms is as follows:

Table 3.2
Word or Frequency Word or Frequency Word or phrase Frequency
phrase phrase

Book 397 Narrator 32 Thriller 12

Novel 243 Biography 30 Poetic 11
Story 224 Poetry 28 Audience 11
Reader 131 Hero 28 Adventure 11
Work 126 Editor 27 Romance 10
Review 124 Literature 27 Bestseller 10
Writer 108 Novelist 26 Publication 9
Character 94 Horror 25 Dialogue 9
Writing 88 Style 22 Introduction 9
Page 72 Plot 22 Fictional 8
Author 69 Role 20 Lyrics 8
Poem 66 Volume 20 Storyteller 8
Subject 56 Critic 19 Tragedy 8
Fiction 53 Mystery 18 Autobiography 7
Narrative 52 Artist 18 Drama 7
Tale 49 Action 18 Narration 6
Account 48 Comedy 17 Readable 6
Publish 46 Musical 17 Heroine 6
Reading 46 Myth 17 Actress 5
Literary 44 Actor 17 Bibliography 5
Memoir 44 Genre 14 Saga 5
Letter 42 Episode 14 Epigraph 5
Title 40 Newspaper 14 Non-fiction 5
Poet 38 Diary 14 Novella 3
Scene 36 Biographer 14 Climax 3
Chapter 36 Fantasy 13
Prose 35 Storytelling 12
Essay 35 Protagonist 12

It is worthy of mention that the list illustrated by Table 3.2 has been lemmatized
manually by the researcher. This means that, for instance, the two word-forms book and books
are seen basically as the same word, that is, as the word-forms which belong to one lemma
book. Conclusions drawn from the analysis of the frequency list of book review terms will be
discussed in the following section.

3.2.2 Findings concerning the frequency list of book review terms

It is common knowledge that particular text categories can be characterized by some

typical language. That is, certain words and phrases tend to be used more frequently in one
genre (or within one register) than in others. It seems that this statement is also true of the
genre of book review. Table 3.2 constitutes a collection of 81 specific words encountered in
the DIY BRC. The selection of these words was based on the three criteria, namely, the
number of occurrences in the DIY BRC frequency list, linguistic data acquired from
dictionaries and also on the researchers intuition. The list in Table 3.2 is to show what
vocabulary one should expect when reading a book review.
Looking at Table 3.2 one can draw several conclusions. The list includes mainly
nouns, there are only few instances of other parts of speech such as verbs or adjectives. It is
worthy of mention that, some items (e.g. work, writing, reading) function in the corpus as
more than one part of speech. Lexical items included in the frequency list of book review
terms differ considerably in terms of the number of occurrences in the corpus. There are 7
lemmas with more than 100 occurrences, whereas 19 items appear less than 10 times. Three
terms, book (F 397), novel (F 243) and story (F 224) stand out as being definitely more
frequent than others. The lemma book is the most frequently used lexical item of all. This fact
has led the author of this paper to the conclusion that the lemma book is the central and most
important word of the DIY BRC. The above finding should not be surprising, still the corpus
is comprised of text samples intended to express opinion of nothing but books.
As can be seen from Table 3.2 the term review occupies a very high position on the
frequency list (F 124). This can be easily explained by the fact that, as has been observed by
the researcher, the British newspapers, from which the language instances come, always place
the word review in the title of each review. This lexical item appears only 9 times in the
running text and 113 times in the titles.
The words occurring in Table 3.2 may be divided into several major groups. The first
one includes items used to signify literary genres and forms (e.g. novel, story, review, poem,
narrative, tale, memoir, prose, essay, etc.). The second one is a set of words referring to
persons somehow connected or involved in the writing of a book, that is, reader, writer,
author, editor, character, hero, poet, novelist, etc. The third group is comprised of other
technical or specialized terms characteristic of book reviews such as plot, subject, literary,
scene, chapter, style, action, episode, etc. It has been observed, that the first group is the
largest one (more than 30 items) and its elements generally occur more frequently in the
reviews analyzed. The second set, in turn, has the fewest words, however its elements occupy
more places in the upper part of the list than the items of the third group including some
technical terms.
As regards the words in bold, they have been taken from the glossary in subsection
2.2.1.1. This set of lexical items has been selected by the researcher herself, who based her
selection on her language experience and intuition. Juxtaposition of the terms from the
glossary with the rest of the words coming from actual language instances is intended to
determine to what extent ones intuition may be confirmed by statistical data. So, as it turns
out, the set of words based on intuitive selection (23 items) is far smaller than the one created
according to the frequency of words in the corpus (81 elements), which means that many
crucial terms have been omitted. It is also worthy of mention, quite surprisingly, that many of
the words in bold are characterized by low frequency in the DIY BRC, and one word
(foreword), which has been placed in the glossary in the previous chapter, has turned out to
have zero occurrences in my corpus. The above findings lead to the conclusion, that corpus
based approach seems to be more reliable when discussing a particular language area.
However, the users intuition has also a role to play, as the status of a particular word in a
given register may not always be determined by its frequency. So, the two approaches should
be complementary.
It is worthy of notice that, the frequency list of book review terms includes words such
as writer and author, which can be regarded as synonyms. The frequency list suggests which
of these two words tends to be used more frequently in book reviews. In order to analyze their
contextual similarities and differences concordance analysis needs to be applied. Concordance
analysis of author and writer, as well as of other selected terms characteristic of book
reviews, will be conducted in Section 3.3.

3.3 Concordance analyses of selected terms

3.3.1 The noun reader

The noun reader is mainly used here to signify a person who reads, especially one
who reads a lot or in a particular way (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). There are
two instances constituting an exception, in which it means a special device called electricity
meter reader. Reader occurs more frequently in the singular than in the plural. This lexical
item is one of the most popular specialized terms (ranked 7th in Table 3.2) and can be
regarded as the most important one in the DIY BRC as far as the nouns referring to persons
mentioned in book reviews are concerned. Still books and book reviews are written for the
reader, not for writers or critics. The linguistic data gathered in the DIY BRC and
concordance lines presented below show how the lemma reader has been used by book
review writers.

Table: Concordance lines for reader

the detail of local politics may lose a British reader but this is a story told with vitality
but laid out so crazily that even the mildest reader might feel annoyed at having to flip back
stomach-churning depths of squalor placing the reader right inside the dank confines of the poor

afterwards, and this well-judged finish leaves the reader space to reconsider the mass of Charlie's
Hamid is too deft a craftsman simply to bully the reader Instead he seeks to create a more collusive
yet McDonalds story differs by grounding the reader in reality at the start by using a normal
he eviscerates countless books to furnish the reader with stimulating scientific hypotheses
by imprecision. It works to prevent the reader from engaging with the story. This
ever will be, she begins, addressing the reader of her diary. Together were making magic
unknown
and here's the opportunity for the privileged reader literacy in these circumstances is a privilege
swooning sex amid the lilacs, in which delighted readers sniffed the stench of corruption and
taking liberties / Isn't it, this business?" Readers of Woodward's novels, such as the wonderful

The lemma reader tends to be modified by some adjectives such as devoted, mildest,
ordinary, privileged, unknown, young, delighted or regular. It is also preceded by words
referring to readers nationality, name of a newspaper, name of an author, or other words like
many, every, his, etc. However, it should be emphasized, that review authors in majority of
cases (45 out of 111 instances) refer to this lexical item simply as the reader with no
additional words in between.
It has been observed that reader co-occurs with various verbs, such as persuade,
place, draw, invite, bully, ground, furnish, tell, prevent, play, urge, etc. It can be found in
different phrases (e.g. furnish the reader with [...]hypotheses, ground the reader in reality,
prevent the reader with engaging with the story, leave the reader space to reconsider, the
readers will rarely be bored, the reader is addressed throughout in the first person, give the
reader access to, keep the reader guessing until the very end, etc.). This lexical item also
tends to occur in such patterns as: the reader of [book title], the reader of [author`s name + the
word novel or book].
Concluding, it has been stated that the lemma reader is one of the most important and
central words in the DIY BRC, which is used mainly in one sense. It can be found in many
different expressions, especially with verbs, where it usually functions as the object rather
than the subject. Besides, it is more likely to encounter this lexical item as directly preceded
by the article the than by an adjective or any other modifier.

3.3.2 The noun book

As has been pointed out in section 3.2. the noun book deserves the status of the central
and most important lexical item in the whole corpus. Hence, a more in-depth, concordance
analysis should be applied.
Book is used in the DIY BRC to signify a written work published in printed or
electronic form (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). It occurs definitely more often in
the singular (F 316) than in the plural (F 81). The fragment of concordance lines presented
below show how the book review writers have used the lemma book.
Table: Concordance lines for book
since Richard Buckles ground-breaking 1971 book
In this highly entertaining and absorbing book
this is a slight, anecdotal and badly edited book
ago, I strongly recommended this author's first book
spite this sombre foresight, the mood of Holmes's book
Geoff Dyer, in Zona (2012) his great looping book
it a go. It would be easy to produce this kind of book
when Hitler had just become chancellor, this book
about the government, the authors write. This book
like one anothers. This ought to make self-help books
and while new information has from time to
Henry Hitchings guides us through the story
that rehashes stories from previous memoirs
The Age of Wire and String, not despite but
is mostly joyous, and light-headed enough to
about another great looper, Andrei Tarkovsky
and Plump doesnt take the easy way through
reveals how Nazi Germany was seen through for
articulates why any leaders, whether legitimate
antithetical to ambitious works of fiction

The above concordances as well as the corpus material suggest that the lemma book
tends to be found in an extremely wide range of phrases and patterns, the most frequent of
which are as follows: his/her book, new book, first book, [authors name] + book, book
about, self-help book, or book by [authors name].
It has been observed that book is preceded by a variety of adjectives, such as
fascinating, successful, sympathetic, elegant, plain-looking, good-natured, interesting,
infuriating, impassioned, gripping, sprawling, epic, ground-breaking, recent, etc. (e.g.
fascinating and vividly written book, elegant and resonant book). There are only few instances
of adjectives being used after the noun book (e.g. invaluable, excellent, full, antithetical, or
funny).
The noun book tends to be accompanied by many different verbs. Write is the
commonest word of this type which precedes book. Other verbs, less popular, used after the
noun book are as follows: make, propose, read, edit, refer, finish, recommend, produce,
dismiss, adore, like, etc. (e.g. strongly recommend this book, refer to another book, etc.).
There are a lot of verbs which are used after book, for example reveal, articulate, examine,
remind, show, move, follow, provide, etc.
This lemma can be found in many more different phrases, especially those including
the preposition of, such as: the mood of book is joyous, this kind/sort of book, originality of
the book, book of oddities, etc.
To conclude, the noun book is the most frequent specialized term in the corpus. It
occurs in a wide range of contexts. This lexical item is characterized by a great number of
words with which it co-occurs. However, apart from the patterns enumerated in the third and
fifth paragraph of this subsection, most of the phrases have been encountered once or twice in
the DIY BRC.

3.3.3 The noun novel

The novel, being the second commonest specialized term, is used here to mean a
story long enough to fill a complete book, in which the characters and events are usually
imaginary (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). This lexical item occurs mainly in the
singular (F 203, compared to F 40 for the plural). Concordances below show some examples
of the use of novel.

Table: Concordance lines for novel

to his critics. Although his bestselling debut novel The Kite Runner (2003) and its follow-up
coming-of-age story at the heart of a time-bending novel American-Japanese author Ruth Ozekis third
fairytales over sober realism as with his 1996 novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips prompting critic
London, and when Ms. OBrien showed him her novel written during stolen moments, he read it
first
is to James Smythe's credit, then, that his new novel manages to pay its respects to the convention
ve been published in 1984, but this short, potent novel about death and the movie business has the a
a run-down hotel. Instead of India, though, the novel is set in the fictional Knockton in Wales
between this new Pakistan and the West. The novel is narrated by a Princeton graduate original
to comfortable white norms. In fact, much of the novel is written in flashback, as Ifemelu has her
story of Frank Kermodes priceless collection of novels and poetry being accidentally taken by the
came George Smiley's finest hour, a sequence of novels that elevated the spy thriller to an art
reason Clever Girl doesn't add up. Constructing a novel out of linked, consecutive short stories off

The commonest patterns, apart from clusters like the novel, this novel, or a novel, in
which this noun can be found are debut novel, [year] + novel, first novel, new novel,
[authors name] + novel, his/her novel, novel about, or novel set in. Less frequent patterns
will be discussed in the further paragraphs.
As regards adjectives, the most typical ones used before the noun novel are
entertaining, ambitious, fine, latest, great, time-bending, memorable, bestselling, distinctive,
audacious, previous, touching, overpraised, or earlier. Only few instances of adjectives (e.g.
conventional or worst) occurring after the lemma analyzed have been encountered in the
whole corpus.
The noun novel tends to be preceded by such verbs as produce, write, admire, start,
publish, open, or construct (e.g. produce a novel, open the novel with a note, etc.). It turns out
that far more verbs are used after novel, for instance, tell, describe, live, sound, displays,
explore, excel, end, start (e.g. the novel displays the mastery, the novel ends abruptly, etc.).
There are also here instances of verbs, such as write, narrate, or set, being used in the passive
voice like in the expressions the novel is set in, the novel is narrated by, etc.
Other expressions in which novel can be found are among others those including the
preposition of, for example, a series/collection/sequence of novels, much of the novel, novel of
middle life, and the like.
All things considered, it has been shown in this subsection that the lemma novel, as
one of the most frequent lexical items in the corpus, occurs in a variety of contexts. However,
it must be stressed that despite so many occurrences of this noun, only around 10 patterns are
frequent enough to stand out as being far more common and typical than others. This means
that the selection of modifying words for example is so huge that predicting what vocabulary
a particular review writer will use may be extremely difficult.

3.3.4 The noun plot

Plot, which is defined as the series of events that form the story of a novel, play,
film (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary) has a surprisingly low number of occurrences
in my corpus (F 21 for the singular and F 1 for the plural). Consequently, concordance
analysis conducted here will not show too many instances of the use of this noun.

Table: Concordance lines for plot

ended towards clunky and occasionally plots this latest work shows she has grown more
predictable
title strongly hints, A Delicate Truth, with a plot that again involves partisan or tactical
in 2004, Ravi in 2004. It is a story without a plot but with changing locations in both history a
with Charlie. In the last third of the novel, a plot emerges concerning the young couple, the
The author becomes tangled in a melodramatic plot whose loose ends are too neatly tied and
as a screenplay, which is reflected in the pacy plot that takes the protagonists on a journey from
voice is archly knowing, particularly as the plot hurtles towards its Hollywood ending. "So all

As the above concordances and the corpus material show, the lemma plot can be
modified by such adjectives as melodramatic, pacy, clunky, sensational or predictable. It is
also followed by such verbs as involve, emerge, take or hurtle.
Plot can be found in the corpus in some phrases like a story without a plot, plot is set
in, to become tangled in a melodramatic plot, plot of war, plot convolutions, plot elements,
plot strands, plot twists, or plot-driven fiction.
 Concluding, since the noun plot has been rarely used by the authors of the reviews
collected in the DIY BRC, the above analysis gives merely a partial answer to the question of
how this noun is used in real language instances. On the other hand, this fact may suggest that
there are alternative, perhaps better, ways of referring to plot without using this word.

3.3.5 The noun character

The noun character, unlike other lexical items analyzed by means of concordances in
this chapter, occurs more frequently in the plural (F 51) than in the singular (F 43). Moreover,
it turns out that this noun in the singular is used in the DIY BRC to signify not only a person,
or an animal in a book, play or film/movie (Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary), but also
all the qualities and features that make a person, groups of people, and places different from
others (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). The latter sense refers to nearly 40 per cent
of cases. Since this research focuses on book review vocabulary, the instances used in the
second sense will not be taken into account. Linguistic data gathered in the corpus, as well as
concordances presented below, show how the lemma character has been used.

Table: Concordance lines for character

author of The Tales Of Terror series. The central
transcend it. Luckily Cephas is a fully drawn
props in scenes in which the building is the main
Christmas. He also names the books ugliest character
ad owned. With his customary knack for scenes and
who knows exactly what he's doing. Colfer's
It's not easy making such bombastic and extreme
ends up being undermined by the strength of his
belonged to no one else. Yet the greatest of his
out the trivial and the terrible. It has two main
character Alex, is taken to Amsterdam by his
character on a par with any baby in literature
character But mostly the houses shown live up to
Bing. But the main menace is Charlie Man
characters chiseled with a stonecutters economy
characters are compelling and well drawn, but they
characters sympathetic, and Wurlitzer perhaps to
characters You can't help but root for them in
characters the pathetic fairground puppet
characters separated by time and space Laura

The commonest patterns in which the noun character has been used in the corpus are
as follows: [authors name] + character, his/her characters, or character + [characters
name]. Less frequent phrases are specified in the further paragraphs of this subsection.
Character is preceded by a variety of adjectives, such as central, entertaining, strong,
interesting, knowable, main, same, secondary, ugliest, anarchic, bombastic, extreme, greatest,
minor, powerful, quirky, etc. There are only few cases of adjectives being used after this
lemma, for example, diverse, compelling, sympathetic, vivid, or likeable.
 As has been observed, character has been used in a wide range of phrases including
the preposition of, for example, small/broad cast of characters, portraits of characters,
transformations of characters, lives of characters, strength of characters, etc. Other phrases
in which this lemma has been encountered include: fully drawn character, title character,
connection between reader and character, characters chiseled with, characters separated by
time and space, etc.
Concluding, the noun character differs from other lexical items analyzed in this
chapter, because its plural forms, are more frequent than singular ones. In addition, the
singular forms have two completely different meanings. Moreover, the lemma can be
characterized by the three patterns which are far more frequent than others.

3.3.6 The noun story

The noun story, being the third commonest specialized term in the DIY BRC, is
mainly used here to signify a description of events and people that the writer or speaker has
invented in order to entertain people (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary). The lemma
story is more common in the singular (F 159) than in the plural (F 65). The corpus material as
well as the concordance lines below show some instances of the use of this noun.

Table: Concordance lines for story

sprites; you're powerful at it". He whispers a story the audience never hears. Burnside is powerful
her own. bove All Things relates the gripping story of Mallorys third and final attempt to
consultancy firm in New York; he addresses his story in a kind of dramatic monologue, to an
no honour Nabis is such a moving, human story that you can forgive Hosseini for including
first seen as a child in the 1970s. Laura's story opens with her twin brothers deciding to
other time. In this one he essays a touching love story between the protagonist and a beautiful
McDonald Ian McDonalds Planesrunner tells the story of a teenage boy from Stoke Newington, London
alone: the classic miserabilist Scottish short story would end there. But in Burnside's version
human characters are vivid and likeable, the story is lively and often quite funny. Momentum
up and stitching together anecdotes from the life stories and memoirs of key 80s players. He knows
their own way. Moore's skill is to unfold their stories freighted with unhappiness, in a way that

One of the most important findings concerning the lemma story is the fact that nine
patterns in which this lemma occurs are far more frequent than the other patterns and phrases.
So, the commonest patterns where story is used are the following: His/her story, love story,
short story, life story, tell a/the story, collection of stories, story of, story about, and
[storytellers name] + story. Less common phrases are discussed below.
 The noun story can be characterized by a great number of adjectives which co-occur
with it. Story is modified by such adjectives as human, moving, touching, different,
compelling, gripping, great, full, fascinating, wonderful, universal, personal, predictable,
national, heartbreaking, poignant, or individual. The number of adjectives following the
lemma story in the corpus material is rather low. By this is meant that only such words have
been encountered as lively, funny, interesting.
It has been observed that story can be preceded by verbs like whisper, identify, follow,
understand, relate, end, address, come up with, develop, dramatize, unfold, act out, produce,
or revisit. As far as the verbs which may be used after the lemma story are concerned, they
are as follows: end, unfold, rely on, suggest, involve, appear, assemble, tell, write, or set. It
should be mentioned here that the last four verbs have occurred in the passive voice.
To conclude, story as one of the most frequent specialized terms in the corpus, occurs
in a wide range of contexts. What distinguishes this noun from other lexical items analyzed in
this chapter is a higher number of verbs with which it co-occurs.

3.3.7 Synonyms writer and author

This subsection is aimed at discussing the use of two synonymous lemmas: writer and
author. As has been observed, the two nouns are mainly used in my corpus to signify a
person whose job is writing books, stories, articles, etc. (Oxford Advanced Learners
Dictionary). The lemma writer has more occurrences than the other one. These nouns occur
more frequently in the singular than in the plural writer (singular: F 62, plural: F 46),
whereas author (singular: F 46, plural: 23). On the basis of the linguistic data gathered in the
DIY BRC one may observe some contextual similarities and differences between these lexical
items.

Table: Concordance lines for the lemma writer

model of Bellows Herzog, but lacked the American writers warm capaciousness. Tellingly, Wood admit
ckstories, and throughout there is the sense of a writer who knows exactly what he's doing. Colfer's
fingers of a piano player" whom the aspiring writer greatly admired. Koljevic could quote Shake
in Lagos when they were children. Taiwo, a gifted writer sulky and aloof, is studying to be a lawyer
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, does not say whether the writer took this one back, but it would have been
with rhetorical majesty by one of the great writers of the century, Winston Churchill. After
that terrain into the sublime, "those hapless writers trapped in their web of words sometimes
lyrical that influenced generations of writers to come, including Wallace Stegner, Alice
difficulties may be gauged by the fact that only writers of that caliber even consider trying. But
the elements that make Burgess such a compelling writer The sex, drugs and rock'n'roll are there
Schoolboy, Smiley's People. Few English writers of the late 20th century produced fiction
names they can't pronounce. Eoin Colfer is the writer who joyfully breaks all three of these rules
Table: Concordance lines for the lemma author
ordinary book. In the hands of any halfway decent author this would be an incredible story: a mother
book by its cover: its title and the name of its author carry almost no meaning. For what its
book, mapping the intellectual development of its author setting out the premise of the work and
heart of a time-bending novel American-Japanese author Ruth Ozekis third novel opens with a bad
done by their other halves. Deborah Moggach author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, repeats
influence of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood. author becomes tangled in a melodramatic plot
The whose
new in science fiction tales, of course, but the author does succeed in portraying how a society
Barenboim, Perahia, Ax, Hough and others. The author obsesses about pianos. He frets about which
Ms. OBriens new memoir It depicts the young author cigarette clasped between her middle finger
Yorker featured her in its list of the 20 best authors under the age of 40. So a lot is expected
excited by fondling sentences from his favourite authors (Lawrence, Nabokov, Bellow) just as long

First of all, both lemmas are accompanied by various adjectives. Writer tends to be
preceded by young, aspiring, comic, compelling, contemporary, creative, gifted, lesser,
successful, influential, talented, great, leftish, roguish, prominent, hapless, fellow, etc.(e.g.
aspiring writer, gifted writer), whereas the noun author is used after such adjectives as
decent, young, best, dead, essential, favourite, foreign, postmodernist, etc.) As the above
examples suggest, the number of adjectives with which writer co-occurs is considerably
greater. Interestingly enough, the noun author is more often preceded by adjectives in the
plural than in the singular. It is commonplace in my corpus that the article the comes directly
before author (31 times, compared to merely 12 instances for the noun writer), there is not
any modifier in between. In addition, the lemma writer occurs a lot more frequently (F 10)
than the other one (F 1) in the pattern with adjectives referring to nationality, for example:
American writer or American author. As far as adjectives used after the two lemmas are
concerned, it has been noticed that writer is followed by a greater number of such words (e.g.
exact, lyrical, playful, sulky, aloof, etc.) than author (e.g. great, insightful).
It is characteristic of both lexical items to be accompanied by a wide variety of verbs
in different expressions. For instance, writer tends to be followed by break, see, recall, point
out, call, feel, etc. Author is used before even more verbs or verbal phrases like illuminate,
obsess about sth, show, become tangled, succeed in portraying sth, argue, unfold, sound
assured, etc.
The lemmas analyzed also occur in patterns including the preposition of. Writer may
be preceded by such phrases as a generation of, in the hands of, in the presence of, the sense
of, kind of, etc.(e.g. in the hands of the writer), and followed by: of the century, of that caliber,
of his generation (e.g. writers of that caliber). The lemma author, in turn, tends to be used
after phrases: intellectual development of, the name of its, etc. (e.g. the name of its author). It
has been observed that the pattern of + [book title] is exclusively used with the lemma author,
for instance author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Concluding, writer and author are synonyms which can be found in many different
contexts. The lemma writer, as a more frequent word, occurs in a wider range of patterns.
Besides, as the analysis of the linguistic data in my corpus has shown, there are more
contextual differences than similarities between these two lemmas.