This book impressively proves: (historical) corpus linguistics and historical science can no longer work in splendid isolation. I am fascinated by this informed, critical and data-driven investigation of prostitution in multifaceted public discourses of eventful 17th-century Britain, with its intelligent, respectful and mutually beneficial integration of the respective methods, tools, concepts and knowledge from both disciplines. This book will serve as a model of interdisciplinary research where, for example, quantification and learned statistical testing of linguistic findings on semantic and lexical change are seen as indispensable, but never sufficient to replace contextualisation. Reinhart Koselleck would have loved to read how his concept of the history of ideas is enhanced by modern, state-of-the-art of interdisciplinary studies of big historical language data like EEBO really looked at on the inside.

Beatrix Busse, Professor of English Linguistics, Heidelberg University, Germany

This fascinating book provides a welcome guide to the use of big data (EEBO) for interdisciplinary study. It applies corpus linguistic methods for historical pragmatic and sociolinguistic research questions on attitudes and culture. It successfully combines the quantitative approach with qualitative contextual assessment, something that until recently seemed almost impossible.

Irma Taavitsainen, Professor emerita, University of Helsinki, Finland