Data, Description, Discourse celebrates the career of John Sinclair, Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Birmingham. John Sinclair, editor-in-chief of the highly acclaimed Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, has made important contributions to fields as various as discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, lexical studies, and English Language Teaching.

Data, Description, Discourse contains ten papers, each written by an internationally renowned linguist. These papers show how computers can be used to reveal features of the language and how English relates to education and society. They also show the close relationship of grammar and vocabulary, and grammar and discourse.

Data, Description, Discourse offers linguists and teachers of English fresh insights into the language they study. It demonstrates clearly how important it is to base description on adequate data and to place that description within an appropriate framework. This unique collection represents the best of current international research, in honour of someone who has always stimulated and encouraged new ways of looking at language.