This thesis presents the results of an experiment into the automatic selection of concordance lines from very large corpora. Corpora now exist which are in excess of 100 million words in size, but the increase in size of corpora brings with it certain problems. These problems are discussed in the light of information obtained from professional corpus users and the continuing centrality of the concordance as the main means of interpreting the contents of the corpus is highlighted. A possible means of overcoming the problems associated with the use of large corpora is presented. This solution is based upon software which was designed for the purposes of textual abridgement, this being carried out via an automatic analysis of lexico-cohesive bonds within the text. An analogy is drawn between conventional text and concordances; this analogy is then further explored by processing sets of concordance lines with the modified abridgement software. In order to determine the success of the approach in identifying concordance lines which illustrate key features of the node word, an evaluation exercise is carried out, involving expert corpus users as respondents.