Corpus Linguistics and Literature

http://www.pala.ac.uk/resources/sigs/corpus-style/liverpool2009.html

Participants are invited to register for the pre-conference colloquium Corpus Linguistics and Literature as part of the Corpus Linguistics 2009 conference at the University of Liverpool (register at the conference website: http://www.liv.ac.uk/english/CL2009/).

Workshop organizers: Bettina Fischer-Starcke (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration) and Martin Wynne (Oxford Text Archive, University of Oxford).

Date of the colloquium: 20 July 2009
Dates of the main conference: 21 to 23 July 2009

Eight papers will be presented in the colloquium. The presentations will demonstrate that it is increasingly becoming possible to test empirically claims about the language of literature, to search for and provide evidence from texts, and to establish the norms of literary and non-literary style.

Doug Biber (University of Arizona), Using corpus-based analysis to study fictional style: A multi-dimensional analysis of variation among and within novels
Multi-dimensional analysis has been widely used to identify the linguistic parameters of variation among spoken and written registers. The present study applies this analytical framework to analyze the patterns of linguistic variation in a large corpus (over 5 million words) of fictional prose in English
Bettina Fischer-Starcke (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration), The Phraseology of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice has been extensively discussed in literary critical studies. Nevertheless, using corpus linguistic techniques in its analysis yields new and more detailed insight into the text’s meanings than have been discussed in the literary critical literature. This demonstrates the large potential of corpus stylistic studies for the analysis of literary texts.
Jane Johnson (University of Bologna), A corpus-assisted analysis of salient stylistic features in nineteenth-century Italian novels and their English translations
An analysis of multi-word expressions in a corpus of novels by the Nobel prize winner for literature, Grazia Deledda, addressing issues such as how far multiword items can provide an indication of authorial style, how translations of the novels compare with the originals as regards the style of each novel, and how a corpus-assisted analysis of literary texts may be exploited to provide an instrument for translators and trainee translators.
Andrew Kehoe & Matt Gee (Birmingham City University), A wiki tool for the collaborative study of literary texts
Introducing a new ‘wiki’ tool for the collaborative analysis and annotation of literary texts, building upon the WebCorp Linguist’s Search Engine, and which supports the collaborative close reading and analysis of texts, by allowing researchers, teachers and students to attach comments to individual words or phrases within these texts or to whole texts. These comments take the form of analyses or interpretations, and can generate intra- and inter-textual links, thus relating cutting-edge technological innovations to a time-honoured critical and interpretative tradition.
Lesley Moss (University College, London), Henry James Beyond the Numbers: Applying corpus analysis to the text
Investigating the syntactic differences between Henry James’s early novel, Washington Square, and a late novel, The Golden Bowl, with the aim of linking syntactic complexity and parenthesis to particular literary functions.
Kieran O'Halloran (Open University), The discourse of reading groups: argument and collaboration

This paper will make a contribution to understanding the discourse of reading groups, shining light on the kind of argumentation used in evaluation and interpretation of novels read in a variety of groups, examining patterns of co-occurrence between lexico-grammatical collocation and discoursal function in argumentation. Such patterns of co-occurrence illuminate relationships between time, space and experience for reading group members.

Carmen Aguilera Carnerero & Encarni Hidalgo Tenorio (University of Granada), Shakespeare’s linguistic subversion: a corpus-based study of modality and transitivity in Hamlet

An analysis of modality can be relevant to understand characterisation in theatre, and debunk some traditionally accepted depictions of such a fictional creature like Hamlet. This is our starting point for the project we present here, in which by means of a corpus-based approach we will scrutinise how ideology, power and status are represented in this Shakespearian masterpiece. We strongly believe corpus-based studies shed light on canonical assumptions and help to refute most of them.

Martin Wynne (University of Oxford), Corpus stylistics: a survey of methods and resources

This presentation will introduce various methods relating to corpus stylistics, briefly reviewing what methods of analysis in corpus linguistics are likely to help to shed light on the language of literature. There will also be some consideration of the resources available, and a discussion of some of the barriers. In each case the methods will be introduced with a discussion of the types of research question that it may be useful to address, with an example, and there will be a consideration of the requirements in terms of resources, tools and expertise.

References

Fischer-Starcke, Bettina (forthcoming), Corpus Linguistics and Literature. Corpus Stylistic Analyses of Literary Works by Jane Austen and her Contemporaries. London: Continuum.
Louw, B. (1993), ‘Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies’, in M. Baker, G. Francis, and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds), Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair. Philadelphia, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 157–176.
O’Halloran, K.A (2007a), ‘The subconscious in James Joyce’s “Eveline”: a corpus stylistic analysis which chews on the “Fish hook”’. Language and Literature, 16, (3), 227–244.
— (2007b), ‘Corpus-assisted literary evaluation’. Corpora, 2, (1), 33–63.
Mahlberg, M. (2007a), ‘Corpus stylistics: bridging the gap between linguistic and literary studies’, in M. Hoey, M. Mahlberg, M. Stubbs and W. Teubert (eds), Text, Discourse and Corpora. Theory and Analysis. London: Continuum, pp. 219–246.
— (2007b), ‘Clusters, key clusters and local textual functions in Dickens’. Corpora, 2, (1), 1–31.
Semino, E. and Short, M. (2004), Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Narratives. London: Routledge.
Starcke, B. (2006), ‘The phraseology of Jane Austen's Persuasion: Phraseological units as carriers of meaning’. ICAME Journal, 30, 87–104.
Stubbs, M. (2005), ‘Conrad in the computer: examples of quantitative stylistic methods’. Language and Literature, 14, (1), 5–24.
Wynne, Martin (2006), ‘Stylistics: Corpus Approaches’, in: Keith Brown, (Editor-in-Chief), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics. Second Edition, volume 12, Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 223-226. http://www.pala.ac.uk/resources/sigs/corpus-style/Corpora_stylistics.pdf