Prof. Anthony Mark McEnery
Chair Professor
- HHB923
- +852 2766 4595
- anthony.mcenery@polyu.edu.hk
ORCID ID
SCOPUS ID
Google Scholar
Research GateBiography
Tony McEnery is Chair Professor in the Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Adjunct Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, Advisory Professor at Shanghai International Studies University and emeritus Professor at Lancaster University. He has published widely on corpus linguistics and is the author of Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory and Practice (with Andrew Hardie, Cambridge University Press, 2011). His latest books are Learner Language, Discourse and Interaction: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Spoken English (with Isobelle Clarke and Gavin Brookes) and was published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the Global China Academy and the Royal Society of Arts in the UK.
Research Overview
I undertake research using corpus linguistics in a range of areas across theoretical and applied linguistics. As well as undertaking 'blue skies' research, I have also done applied work with a range of partner organizations in the public sector (e.g. in the UK, the Department of Culture Media and Sport, the Environment Agency and the Home Office) and the private sector (e.g. with British Telecom, IBM, Nokia and Research in Motion). I have worked on projects in a wide range of languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English (American and British varieties), French, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. I have also constructed many corpora including the CRATER, EMILLE, the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese, the British National Corpus 2014 corpora. My latest corpus, the LANA Corpus of Spoken American English (LANA-CASE) is the world’s largest publicly available corpus of casual, spontaneous, spoken American English conversations.
Education and Academic Qualifications
BA (Hons) Linguistics (Lancaster, 1983–1986, full time); M.Sc. (Distinction) Information Technology (Leicester Polytechnic, 1987–1988, full time, SERC funded); Ph.D., Computational Pragmatics (Lancaster, 1989–1995, part time); DLitt, Linguistics (Lancaster, 2012)
Academic and Professional Experience
2020 - 2025 Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, UK Academy of Social Sciences
2019 - 2025 Member of the Council, and Trustee, UK Academy of Social Sciences
2021 - 2024 Changjiang Professor (Chair) Xi’an Jiaotong University
2017 - 2018 Interim Chief Executive, Economic and Social Science Research Council, UK
2017 - 2018 Chief Accounting Officer, Economic and Social Research Council, UK
2017 - 2018 Deputy Chair of Council, Economic and Social Research Council, UK
2016 - 2018 Director of Research, Economic and Social Science Research Council, UK
2013 - 2016 Director, ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science
2008 – 2014: Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Lancaster University
2005 – 2008: Director of Research, Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK
2001– 2013: Professor of English Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University
2000 – 2005: Head of Department, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
Teaching Areas
- Corpus linguistics
- Discourse analysis
- General linguistics
- Applied linguistics
Research Interests
Research Output
- McEnery T., Clarke, I. and Brookes, G. (2025) Learner Language, Discourse and Interaction, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Semino, E., Baker, P., Brookes, G., Collins, L. and McEnery, T. (2025) Applying Corpus Linguistics to Illness and Healthcare, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- McEnery, T. and Brezina, V. (2022) Fundamental Concepts in Corpus Linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Baker, P., Vessey, R. and McEnery, T. (2021) The Language of Violent Jihad, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (Paperback edition 2024)
- Brookes, G., Curry, N., McEnery, A. and Putland, E. (2025) Historical medical Discourse: Corpus Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge, London.
- Curry, N., McEnery, T., Brookes, G. (2025) 'A question of alignment – AI, GenAI and applied linguistics.' Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, pp 315-336.
- Curry, N., McEnery, T. (2025) 'Corpus linguistics for language teaching and learning: A research agenda.' Language Teaching: Surveys and Studies 58 (2), pp 232-251.
- Hanks, E., McEnery, T., Egbert, J., Larsson, T., Biber, D., Reppen, R., Baker, P., Brezina, V. Brookes, G. Clarke, I. and Bottini, R. (2024) ‘Building a spoken corpus of American English conversation: challenges and innovations in corpus compilation’, in Research in Corpus Linguistics 12 (2), pp 24-44.
- McEnery, T. and Brookes, G. (2024) ‘Corpus Linguistics and the social sciences’, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 20 (3), pp 591-613.
- Baker, H. and McEnery, T. (2024). ‘Family, politics and media: Gladstone during the Midlothian campaign, 1879-1880’, Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 25 (2), pp 329-353.
- McEnery, T., Brookes, G., Hanks. E., Gerigk, K. and Egbert, J. (2023) ‘Swearing, discourse and function in conversational British English’, Journal of Pragmatics, 213, pp 36-48.
- Clarke, I., Brookes, G. and McEnery, T. (2022). ‘Keywords through time: A study of representations of Islam in the British press’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 27(4), pp 399-427.
- Brookes, G., McEnery, T., McGlashan, M., Smith, G. and Wilkinson, M. (2022). ‘Narrative evaluation in patient feedback: A study of online comments about UK healthcare services’. Narrative Inquiry, 32 (1), pp 9-35.
- Dayrell, C., Svensson, C., Hannaford, J., McEnery, T., Barker, L., Baker, H. and Tanguy, M. (2022) ‘Representation of Drought Events in the United Kingdom: Contrasting 200 years of News Texts and Rainfall Records’, Frontiers in Environmental Science 10, paper published online at https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fenvs.2022.760147
- Egbert, J., Wizner, S., Keller, D., Biber, D., McEnery, T. and Baker, P. (2021) ‘Identifying and describing functional discourse units in the BNC Spoken 2014’, Text and Talk, 41 (5-6), pp 715-737.
- Brezina, V., Hawtin, A. and McEnery, T. (2021). ‘The Written British National Corpus 2014 – design and comparability’, Text and Talk, 41 (5-6), pp 595-615.
- Clarke, I., McEnery, T. and Brookes, G. (2021). ‘Multiple Correspondence Analysis, Newspaper Discourse and Subregister: A Case Study of Discourses of Islam in the British Press’. Register Studies, 3 (1), pp 144-171.
- Brookes, G. and McEnery, T. (2020) ‘Correlation, collocation and cohesion: A corpus-based critical analysis of violent jihadist discourse’, Discourse and Society 31 (4), pp 351-373.
- Brookes, G., Curry, N., McEnery, A. and Putland, E. (2025) Corpora and the Study of Historical Medical Discourse, in G. Brookes, N. Curry, A. McEnery and E.Putland (eds) Historical Medical Discourse: Corpus Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge, London, pp. 2-8.
- Hanks, E., Curry, N., Sharp, E., Brookes, G. and McEnery, A. (2025) ‘Expressivity and corpus linguistics’ in D. Gutzmann and K. Turgay (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Expressivity, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 426-446.
- Xiao, R., Brookes, G. and McEnery, T. (2025) ‘Grammar and corpora’, in C. Chapelle (ed.) The Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics, Hoboken: John Wiley (https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1411.pub2).
- Curry, N., Mark, G., Lee, H., McEnery, T., Burton, G., Clark, T., Shin, D. (2025) 'Applying corpus research indirectly to language teaching materials and assessment development.' In Brookes, G., Curry, N., Love, R. (ed.) Applications of corpus linguistics: established and emergent contexts. Cambridge University Press, pp 105-129. In Brookes, G., Curry, N., Love, R. (ed.) Applications of corpus linguistics: established and emergent contexts. Cambridge University Press, pp 105-129.
- Baker, P. and McEnery, T. (2025) ‘Using CADS research to critique representations of Muslims in the UK press’. In Brookes, G., Curry, N., Love, R. (ed.) Applications of corpus linguistics: established and emergent contexts. Cambridge University Press, pp 178-195.
- Baker, H. and McEnery, T. (2025) ‘Transformation and the dynamics of memory: Gladstone and the Phoeniz Park murders’, in C. Claridge (ed.) News With an Attitude: Ideological perspectives in the historical press, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 82-107.
- Hanks, E., Curry, N., Sharp, E., Brookes, G., McEnery, T. (2025) 'Expressivity and corpus linguistics.' In Gutzmann, D., Turgay, K. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Expressivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 423-444.
- Curry, N., McEnery, T. (2025) 'The past, present, and future of corpus and translation studies.' In D. Li, D. and J. Corbett (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Corpus Translation Studies. Routledge, London, pp. 1-8.
- Baker, H. and McEnery, T. (2024). 'Transformations and the dynamics of memory: Gladstone and the Phoenix Park Murders', in C. Clardige (ed) News with an Attitude: Ideological perspectives in the historical press. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 82-107.
- Pérez-Paredes, P. and McEnery, T. (2024). ‘Representing “Muslims” in Jihadist Magazines: An Analysis of the NUTCRACKER Corpus Topics‘, in K. J. Patterson, & E. Hidalgo-Tenorio (Eds.), Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Discourses of Extremism, Routledge, London, pp. 170-191.
- Brookes, G. and McEnery, T. (in press) ‘Corpus linguistics and ethics‘, in P. Costa, A. Ahmad and C. Cinaglia (eds.) Ethical Issue in Applied Linguistics Scholarship, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp 28-44.
- Brookes, G., Clarke, I. and McEnery, T. (2023) ‘Representation of religion in news media discourse‘ in S. Pihlaja and H. Ringrow (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion, London: Routledge, pp 180-193.
- Brookes, G., McEnery, T. And Clarke, I. (2023) ‘The representation of Islamism in the UK press’, in S. Al-Azami and M. Versi (ed.) Media Language on Islam and Muslims, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp 57-81.
- McEnery, T. and Hardie, A. (2023) ‘Neo Firthian corpus linguistics to 2000’, in L.Waugh, M. Monville-Burston and J. Joseph (eds.) The Cambridge History of Linguistics, pp 515-518.
- McEnery, T. and Brookes, G. (2002) ‘Building a written corpus: what are the basics?’, in A. O’Keefe and M. McCarthy (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, London: Routledge, pp 35-47.
- McEnery, T. & Brookes, G. (2022) ‘Register, Belief and Violence: A multi-dimensional approach’ in C. Posch, G. Rampl & K. Irschara (eds.) Wort - Satz - Korpus. Beiträge zur Korpuslinguistik. Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, pp 87-117.
- McEnery, T. and Baker, H. (2022) ‘A Geography of Names: A genre analysis of nationality-driven names for venereal disease in the seventeenth century’, in T. Hiltunen and I. Taavitsainen (eds) Corpus Pragmatic Studies on the History of Medical Discourse, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 23-48.
- McEnery, T., Baker, H. and Brezina, V. (2021) ‘Slavery and Britain in the 19th century’, in A. Čermáková, T. Egan, H. Hasselgård and S. Rørvik (eds) Time in Languages, Languages in Time, John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp 9-38.
- McEnery, T., Baker, H. and Dayrell, C. (2021) ‘Analysing the impacts of 19th century drought: A corpus-based study’, in M. Fuster-Márquez, José Santaemillia, C. Gregori-Signes and P. Rodríguez-Abruñerias (eds) Exploring Discourses and Ideology Through Corpora, Peter Lang, Berlin, pp 47-70.
- Brezina, V. and McEnery, T. (2021) ‘Introduction to corpus linguistics’, in N. Tracey-Ventura and M. Paquot (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Corpora, Routledge, London, pp 11-22.
- Baker, H., McEnery, T. and Brezina, V. (2021) ‘Discourses of seventeenth century banking’, in J. Hardy and E. Friginal (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis, Routledge, London, pp 445-461.
- Brookes, G. and McEnery, T. (2020) ‘Corpus Linguistics’ in S. Adolphs and D. Knight (eds) The Routledge Handbook of the Digital Humanities, Routledge, London, pp 378-404.
Others
I regularly deliver keynote and plenary addresses at conferences world-wide. Since 2015 alone, I have delivered such talks at conferences in Alicante, Beijing, Bologna, Bogota, Bremen, Helsinki, Joensu, Kobe, Regensburg, Seoul and Xi’an.
I have held competitive research grants continuously since 1996. I have been awarded over the equivalent of over 116 million Hong Kong dollars in grant income to date.
Esteem Measures
- I was awarded the Odzmacsewie Universyteti Lodzkiego (Jubilee Medal) in Poland in 1999 for an outstanding contribution to the intellectual life of the University of Łódź.
- When at Lancaster University in the UK, my research centre was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2015. The citation referred to our “reputation for excellence and innovation in the computer-based analysis of language, English and other major languages, and has developed that work in new directions such as speech recognition and analysis of emotional states and attitudes in social media”.
- I am on the editorial board of Łódź Studies in Language (1998–) published by Peter Lang.
- I am on the editorial board of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (2010-).
- Visiting Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong University
- 2023-Visiting Professor, Zhejiang Gongshan University
- 2015 - 2020International Advisor, China Multilingual and Multimodal Corpora and Big Data Centre, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Beijing University of Foreign Studies
- 2010 - 2012Visiting Professor, University of Limerick
- 2003 Visiting Professor, Beijing Foreign Studies University
- 1999 Visiting Professor, Chemnitz University, Germany (3 months)
- 1997 Visiting Professor, Tohoku State University, Japan (3 months)
- 1991 Visiting Lecturer, Aberystwyth University (1 year)
- 1990 Visiting Lecturer, Liverpool University (1 year)
- I co-edit the Routledge series Advances in Corpus Linguistics (2000–) with Jesse Egbert.
- I am general editor of the journal Corpora, published by Edinburgh University Press (2005- ).
- I was founding co-editor, with Paul Rayson, of the Routledge Frequency Dictionaries series (2000–2006).
- I am a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (from 2013).
- I was made founding UK chair and lifetime fellow of the Global China Academy in 2021.
- In 2016 I was made a fellow of Trinity College London.
- I am also a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (from 2008).
