Recent decades have witnessed a digital revolution that has dramatically transformed global communication and society. In the field of English linguistics, technological advancements have revolutionized research by facilitating access to large electronic databases. This collection of papers, contributed by a number of leading scholars, is an up-to-date and welcome addition to the academic discipline of corpus linguistics and in particular, to the field of historical language studies.

In the general introduction, the editors retrace the development of corpus linguistics, presenting both the possibilities and challenges that have emerged from digital-based studies, and outlining the common goals to which they aspire. The book consists of 13 peer-reviewed papers organized into four parts. Each part begins with a brief introduction written by one of the editors.

Part I, entitled ‘Linguistic directions and crossroads: Mapping the routes’, is introduced by Merja Kytö, who describes the first two chapters in general terms as methodology-oriented discussions, and the third chapter as a case study in profiling English modal verb patterns. In Chapter 1, author Charles F. Meyers addresses the long-standing debate in linguistics as to the validity of a hard distinction between ‘corpus-driven’ and ‘corpus-based’ analytical approaches. In Chapter 2, Stefan T. Gries explores the contentious issue of the proper roles played by qualitative and quantitative aspects in corpus data analysis. In Chapter 3, Bas Aarts, Sean Wallis and Jill Bowie undertake a fine-grained analysis of the development of modal verb usage from the 1960s through the early 1990s based on the Diachronic Corpus of Present -Day Spoken English (Reference Aarts and Wallis2006).

In Part II, ‘Changing patterns’, Claudia Claridge introduces three seemingly disparate yet related discussions on the subject of pragmatics. The first chapter, written by Minoji Akimoto, investigates functional changes in the use of the verb desire in relation to wish and hope from the Middle English period to present-day English based on various corpora. In the second chapter, Matti Rissanen charts the rise and fall of the adverbial connective considering (that) by drawing on several historical corpora and grounding her analysis on The Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (Traugott & Dasher, Reference Traugott and Dasher2002). Manfred Markus's chapter concludes Part II by exploring the phonological and semantic features of interjections such as ah, well, and God in English dialects on the basis of Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary Online (Reference Wright, Markus and Onysko2017).

Part III, ‘Pragmatics and discourse’, continues the theme of pragmatics explored in Part II with a specific focus on the emerging field of corpus pragmatics. After a brief introduction by Irma Taavitsainen, Chapter 1 presents Laurel J. Brinton's research on historical evidence of interjectory delocutive verb usage from Middle English as it evolved into Early Modern English. For example, the delocutive verb hush is injected with the meaning ‘to say or utter the word hush.’ Ms. Brinton bases her exposition on an extensive collection of data, including the Middle English Dictionary (1952–2001) and Time Magazine Corpus (Reference Davies2007). In the next chapter, Andres Jucker investigates the functions and communicative tasks performed by the disfluency markers uh and um as published in Corpus of Historical American English (Reference Davies2010). In Chapter 3 of Part III, Thomas Kohnen addresses domain-specific developments in the English language by referencing the Corpus of English Religious Prose (Reference Kohnen, Rütten, Marcoe, Gather and Groeger2015) to explore Christian religious discourse with particular emphasis on the linguistic features of core genres and terms of address.

The fourth and last part, ‘World Englishes’, is introduced by Jeremy Smith who draws our attention to the diversification of Late Modern English around the world. Written by Susan Fitzmaurice, Chapter 1 relies on interview data obtained from 11 Caucasian, English-speaking informants born in Zimbabwe in order to examine the correlation between discourse features and social identity. Next, author Andrea Sand explores recent linguistic developments in relation to informal spoken communication in Singapore by comparing the Corpus of Singapore Weblogs (Reference Sand, Elzer and Hackhausen2009–2012) with the Singaporean section of the International Corpus of English (1990). Raymond Hickey then examines the phonological changes of mergers in light of the numerous variants of the English language worldwide. William A. Kretzschmar, Jr. concludes the book with his in-depth analysis of dynamic and complex systems of American English in terms of their initial emergence and subsequent changes due to various cultural influences.

With a clear commitment to providing an up-to-date account of language developments based on corpus evidence, this book succeeds in its intention by covering a broad range of linguistic topics as they have evolved over a considerable span of time and space. The discussion extends from Old English to its Middle and Early Modern periods with an ample coverage of British and American English, as well as English in Singapore, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. With respect to linguistic features, the investigations range from macro-level patterns such as modal verbs, interjections, and delocutive verbs, to micro-features that include a particular extension of language as, for example, in the verb desire, the adverbial connective considering (that), and the disfluency marker uh. The book also boasts an extensive coverage of corpora used in the course of research sourced from the well-known Brown Corpus and Corpus of Historical American English to the lesser-known works, English Religious Prose and Corpus of Singapore Weblogs.

Taken together, the chapters of this book represent an impressive, well-written, and illuminating survey of the latest achievements in the field of diachronic linguistics. Of particular note are the comprehensive listings of electronic resources and corresponding website addresses which are located before each reference section, and which provide a wealth of useful information for students and researchers alike. Another outstanding feature is the separate index of authors and subjects at the end of the book to facilitate readers’ quick understanding and reference.

With its rich and innovative content, Developments in English: Expanding Electronic Evidence stands as a comprehensive reference for current research being conducted in corpus linguistics and historical English language studies. Although the book's primary audience is graduate students and seasoned researchers, newcomers to relevant fields will also find much value in this collection and may thereby be stimulated to conduct their own parallel research projects using digital resources.