American and British English

Is British English becoming more like American English? If so, why, and in what ways? This book compares examples of American and British language data from the 1930s, 1960s, 1990s and 2000s, to track the most important ways that both varieties are changing over time, and compares the extent to which they are following similar paths using a mixture of computer and human analysis. The analysis is carried out across several levels, including spelling differences (such as colour vs color), vocabulary (truck vs lorry), and a range of morphological, grammatical, semantic and pragmatic features. Baker explores the changing aspects of American and British society which help to explain the findings.

• Uses a fully corpus-driven approach, that doesn't rely on testing a set of pre-existing hypotheses
• Showcases a set of methods that can be used in conjunction with one another to carry out a comparative analysis of two sets of diachronic corpora and can be adapted for other corpus studies
• Provides analysis that goes beyond statistical tests and quantitative descriptions to consider context both within and outside the corpus
• Includes eight matched corpora from four decades which allows for better comparisons to be made, rather than a snapshot at a single point in time