From reviews of the first edition:

'A timely state-of-the-art overview of the whole subject... the author's stance is broad the work is eminently readable and coheres as a whole extremely well an extremely wide range of research and literature is covered. This is certainly recommended for anyone who has occasion to wonder about words and their meanings. EFL Gazette

'Vocabulary is and deserves to be a widely-read and widely-used textbook in undergraduate courses on Semantics, Lexicology, and Corpus-Linguistics, and on diploma and postgraduate TESOL courses such as Teaching Vocabulary. Andrew Goatly, Lingnan University, Hong Kong

How do we teach and learn vocabulary? How do words work in literary texts? How are words treated in dictionaries? In this book, Ronald Carter provides the necessary basis for the further study of modern English vocabulary with particular reference to linguistic descriptive frameworks and educational contexts. Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives includes an introductory account of linguistic approaches to the analysis of the modern lexicon in English and discusses key topics such as vocabulary and language teaching, dictionaries and lexicography and the literary, stylistic study of vocabulary.

This Routledge Linguistics Classic includes a substantial new introductory chapter situating the book in the current digital age, covering changes and developments in related fields from lexicography and corpus linguistics to vocabulary testing and assessment as well as additional new references.

Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives has been widely praised since first publication for the breadth, depth and clarity of its approach and is a key text for postgraduate students and researchers studying vocabulary studies within the fields of English Language, Applied Linguistics and Education.

Ronald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the University of Nottingham, UK, and has written and edited more than 30 books, including most recently Language and Creativity (2004). He is the author and editor of 12 books with Routledge, and has edited and co-edited five Routledge series.