Machine generated contents note: Foundations: researching texts -- Your materials -- Gathering more materials -- Sizing up the job: questions, scope and focus -- right tools for the job: research methods -- Preparing the ground: reading and note-making skills -- Analysing -- Reporting: writing about texts -- Review your skills -- Commentaries for Part -- Drilling down: how texts are structured -- Graphological and phonological levels -- Definitions -- Language as a semiotic system -- What are the rules? -- Signs and symbols -- Sounds and symbols -- Speech, writing and multimodality -- Review your skills -- Ideas for assignments -- Lexical and semantic level -- Introduction -- Frequent words -- Words and morphemes -- Forming words -- Words and semantic fields -- Words and word families -- Words and multiple meanings -- Connotation and collocation -- Words and metaphors -- Lexical cohesion -- Review your skills -- Ideas for assignments -- Grammatical level -- Introduction -- Grammar and cohesion -- Grammar and representation -- Grammar, speech and language change -- Grammar and politics -- Conversational grammar -- Texting grammar -- Creative grammar -- Review your skills -- Ideas for assignments -- Commentaries for Part II -- Building Up: texts and contexts -- dimensions of texts: place and time -- Textual perspectives and point of view -- Texts as discourses: culture and gender -- Dialogues: genre and intertextuality -- Review your skills -- Ideas for assignments -- Commentaries for Part III.