Julie Coleman

Corpus linguistics and seventeenth-century prostitution: computational linguistics and history, by Anthony McEnery and Helen Baker, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, xii + 257 pp., £95.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-4725-0609-2

McEnery and Baker set themselves the task of reviewing the available evidence for prostitution in the seventeenth century using the perspectives of two different disciplines. A historical overview and linguistic analysis were undertaken independently and these are presented as separate chapters, although links back to the historical account are provided in the later parts of the linguistic discussion. The corpus linguistic approach is well explained and a useful consideration is given of the challenges and opportunities posed by the various corpora available. In contrast, the prologue apologizes to social historians of the period for whom the historical account “may simply be a repetition of what they already know” (x). While it usefully frames and introduces the corpus analysis, the historical account does not address questions that the corpus analysis raises. The linguistic analysis, using Early English Books Online as its corpus, focused only on nouns, which closed off from the start the possibility of a linguistic exploration of agency: of who was held to prostitute whom (or what). Satire offers another invaluable source of insight into a period reconsidering its values, but examples were read only literally. For example:

Werner Hüllen. English Dictionaries 800–1700: The Topical Tradition / Werner Hüllen. A History of Roget's Thesaurus: Origins, Development, and Design.

Under section 559. Word, my edition of Rogets Thesaurus includes a sub-paragraph: dictionary, lexicon, wordbook, word-stock, word list, glossary, vocabulary; gradus, thesaurus, wordhoard; compilation, concordance, index. (Roget 1984) The semi-colons between vocabulary and gradus and between wordhoard and compilation are crucial. They indicate a relationship looser than synonymy. They signify that dictionary and thesaurus are not interchangeable.