Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- 1. Why use a computer? -- 2. First capture your data -- 3. Examining the catch: the use of frequency lists -- 4. Studying the environment: using concordances -- 5. The sociology of words: collocation analysis -- 6. Putting them in their place: tagging, parsing and so on -- 7. The leading edge: applications of natural language processing -- 8. Case studies -- Glossary -- Appendix 1. Programming languages for language programming -- Appendix 2. awk: a very brief introduction -- Appendix 3. Detailed programming examples -- Appendix 4. Suggestions for the exercises -- References -- Index