Corpus Stylistics in Contemporary English Dramas: Keywords and Semantic Fields of Delusions (original) (raw)
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Corpora, 2019
In this paper, we use a corpus stylistic methodology to investigate whether serious (i.e., ‘literary’) fiction is syntactically more complex than popular (i.e., ‘genre’) fiction. This is on the basis of literary critical claims that the structural complexity of serious fiction is one of the features that distinguishes it from popular literature (which, by contrast, is seen as easier to read). We compare the serious and popular fiction sections of the Lancaster Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation corpus (see Semino and Short, 2004 ) against various samples of the British National Corpus available in Wmatrix ( Rayson, 2009 ), focussing particularly (though not exclusively) on the identification of subordinating conjunctions. We find that, on this measure, there is no basis for claiming that serious fiction is any more complex syntactically than popular fiction. We then investigate the issue in relation to a specific genre of popular fiction, Chick Lit. Here we find that while syn...
'The linguistic characterisation of the major dramatic genres'
Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greek Poetry. Contributions to the History of the Ancient Greek Language, Amsterdam, ISBN 978-90-256-1311-2, 113-147.
Short introduction to the question of the literary language of each one of the major dramatic genres, including the topic of the interrelations at work between them.
Style 57(2): 230-240, 2023
The Pragmatics of Fiction is a pragmatics textbook devoted to the study of fictional texts—understood broadly as the novel, poetry, fictional dialogues in films and TV series, and drama—using pragmatic tools and theories. Locher and Jucker's book addresses "fictional texts as cultural artefacts in their own right" (224) rather than mere artificial depositories of linguistic data for pragmaticists. Rich in theoretical pragmatic approaches, this study explains them based on the examples of, among others, plays, novels, films, comic books, and advertisements, thus following recent scholarly trends of accepting fictional language as a reliable source of data for linguistic investigations and using pragmatics as a methodological tool for analyzing fiction (see Black; Chapman and Clark; Locher and Jucker; Wilson). It draws attention to the fact that fictional communication, much as it mimetically reflects human communication, is special because it involves the "fictional contract" or "a silent agreement between the author and the readers or viewers about the level of veracity that can be expected in a novel, a movie or another piece of fiction" (33). In this way, fictional communication often requires more sophisticated and adapted pragmatic models for its analysis. The book consists of three parts. Part One looks at fiction as a valuable data resource for pragmatic theorizing and explains why there is such a vague boundary between fictional and nonfictional uses of language. Part Two explores the participation structure of literary communication and focuses on the creation of the story worlds in fiction and on fictional characterization, narration, and plot structure. Part Three discusses various functions of dialogue in fiction and the orality features, which differ from the ones in human communication. It also investigates how societal ideologies (impoliteness, gender norms) imbue fictional texts and how fictional texts can produce real emotions in the [End Page 230] audience. I used this textbook with my students of year 3 BA in a stylistics course (specialization: English Studies in Literature and Culture), so this review is our joint effort and an effect of real classroom interaction.
European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies-ISSN 2559-7914
2020
Most of readers’ comprehension of verbal deception descends from social psychology and cognitive perspectives, particularly from political, advertising and forensic discourse. One discoursal domain that has been hitherto largely neglected is literary discourse, particularly crime fiction. To date, this article is the first study that presents some of the many strategies which a psychopathic and non-psychopathic character/first-person narrator use to invite deception in readers and amongst characters from a pragma-stylistic perspective. This study focuses on the deceptive strategies exploited in Flynn’s popular American novel Gone Girl (2012) which is situated within the hybrid sub-genre of crime fiction: psychological thriller/whodunit. The study of the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the couple antagonists, Amy and Nick, is carried out by an eclectic pragmatic approach to expose their deceptive strategies for the fulfilment of their egoistic and/or selfish ends. The research undertaken...
A corpus-based investigation into key words and key patterns in post-war fiction
This study is an exploratory investigation into lexico-grammatical items specific to a large corpus of English-language postwar novels, as compared to corpora of conversation, news and academic English. Its overall aim is threefold: first, to show how the subjective impression of 'literariness' arising from fictional works is at least partly based on the statistically significant use of highly specific words and lexico-grammatical configurations; second, to attempt a broad classification of key words and patterns; third, to illustrate the fiction-specific patterns formed by three key words. Analysis proceeded in three steps. First, a key word analysis was performed. In the second step, all two-to-five word strings contained in the English corpus were generated. In the third step, multi-word strings, collocations and colligations associated with three English key words ('thought' , 'sun' and 'jerk') were analysed. Results indicate that postwar fiction is characterized by the dense use of specific sets of key words and key patterns, such as multi-word strings (must have been), phrase frames (like a + NP, there was a + NP) colliga-tions (PossDet thoughts were on NP), collocations (the strengthening sun) and lexically specific narrative patterns (PossDet thoughts were interrupted when/ as + time clause). The patterns in question are shown to be interconnected through a complex web of analogical creations. Implications are discussed for theories of literature, lexicology and translation.
COMMENTS ON THE SYSTEM OF LEXICAL COHESION IN A SAMPLE OF ENGLISH FICTION
Cohesion is a semantic notion that refers to non-structural text-forming meaning inherent in relations of connectedness which may or may not be linguistically coded. It is the means by which one element is construed by reference to another. As a part of the system of a language, cohesion is evidenced by means of 'reference', 'ellipsis', 'conjunction' and 'lexical cohesion'. The purpose of this study is to explore and explain the occurrence of two types of lexical cohesive devices, i.e. collocation and synonymy evident generally in both fiction and non-fiction genres. The corpus for the analysis was composed of 20000 words from a sample of prose fiction in English from five novels thatspan and represent different eras of English fictional literature. The model for analysis was mostly taken from Halliday (1985) and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). The manner and frequency of occurrence of both collocation and synonymy were investigated and calculated. The results point to synonymy being the prominent cohesive device which manifests itself within a large number of cohesive chains. Another significant finding is the salient presence of chain leaps across unrelated synonymous words, while the presence of chain leaps across collocational and synonymous terms is less prominent, but present nevertheless. The analysis also shows that a noteworthy number of metaphorical expressions which are properties of the novel blur the cohesive lines of this genre by co-occurring and co-existing with cohesion and bringing to the fore the involved textual and discursive bonds that exist between metaphor and cohesion and the need to research this interesting textual phenomenon further. Some stylistic explanations of the textual patterns are offered. The findings of this study carry implications and can be beneficial for language teachers and learners too.
Exploring the Language of Drama From Text to Context
This book is designed to help students to explore the language of dramatic texts through the approach usually known as ‘stylistic analysis’, an approach which is already well-established for the analysis of poetry and prose fiction (see, for example, this book’s companion volumes: Twentieth-century Poetry: From text to context, edited by Peter Verdonk, and Twentieth-century Fiction: From text to context, edited by Peter Verdonk and Jean Jacques Weber). How does the stylistic analysis of drama differ from the stylistic analysis of poetry or prose? Let’s explore this issue through an example.