Let $m\le n$ be two positive integers. We say that a permutation
$\pi\in\S_n$ \emph{contains} a permutation $\sigma\in\S_m$
\emph{as a subword} if there exist $m$ \emph{consecutive} elements
$\pi_{l+1},\ldots,\pi_{l+m}$ such that
$\reduction(\pi_{l+1},\ldots,\pi_{l+m})=\sigma$, where
$\reduction$ is the reduction consisting in relabeling the
elements with $\{1,\ldots,m\}$ keeping the same order
relationships they had in $\pi$. In this paper we study the
distribution of the number of occurrences of $\sigma$ as a subword
among all permutations in ${\cal S}_n$. We solve the problem in
several cases depending on the shape of $\sigma$ by obtaining the
corresponding bivariate exponential generating functions as
solutions of certain linear differential equations with polynomial
coefficients.
