Patrick Hanks’ Theory of Norms and Exploitations (henceforth TNE) is a corpus-driven lexicocentric theory of language which helps us understand how words go together and how people use words to make meanings. It focuses on the identification of normal, central and stereotypical usage and introduces criteria for distinguishing between normal patterns of collocations, these typical phraseological patterns being seen as the main carriers of meaning, and creative uses of those patterns (when people start exploiting the rule-governed norms). ‘Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations’ is a fascinating detailed account of that lexicocentric model, in which Hanks brilliantly revisits the entire field of lexical semantics to come up with a lexically-based, corpus-driven, bottom-up theory of language. Since meanings are associated with words in context, TNE uses the notion of lexical set and semantic types. For instance, a group of words such as gun, pistol, revolver, rifle constitutes a lexical set in relation to the verb fire, which is united by a common semantic type (firearms). Such a lexical set may be used to perform word sense disambiguation and activate a contrast with other senses of the verb fire (as in [[Human]fire[Human]], meaning ‘to dismiss someone from employment’).