Leide Daiane de Almeida Oliveira
Mestranda em inglês
Estudos Linguísticos e Literários (UFSC)
ABSTRACT: The objective of this study is to verify the
effectiveness of corpus linguistics in the analysis of literary texts. The
corpus linguistics is a field of linguistics with great potential, including
research in literary studies. The basic assumption is that through the use of
written texts, also known as corpus, linguistic studies of different types can
be performed. In this article, the selected literary texts are two tales of
James Joyce's Dubliners: “Araby” and “Eveline”. Regarding the corpus analysis
software, AntConc was selected for this research because of its convenience: it
is not a complex tool and it seems to be accurate in relation to the results in
view of the type analysis.
Keywords:
Literature. James Joyce. Corpus linguistics. EnteConc.
RESUMO:
O
objetivo deste estudo é verificar a eficácia da linguística de corpus na análise
de textos literários. A linguística de corpus é um campo da linguística com
grande potencialidade em pesquisas em estudos literários. A suposição básica
nesta área é que, através da utilização de textos escritos, também conhecidos
como corpus, pesquisas linguísticas de diferentes tipos podem ser realizadas.
Neste artigo, os textos literários selecionados são dois contos de Dublinenses de
James Joyce: “Araby” e “Eveline”. Em relação ao software de análise de corpus,
AntConc foi selecionada para essa investigação devido às suas conveniências:
não é uma ferramenta complexa e parece ser precisa nos resultados, tendo em
vista o tipo de análise proposta.
Palavras-chave:
Literatura. James Joyce. Linguística
de corpus. EnteConc.
This investigation will be focusing on how some
literary features can be perceived through word frequencies. The main literary
feature that is observed is the construction of the atmosphere. Roughly
speaking, atmosphere could be defined as the feeling that is constructed
through a particular literary narrative. The reader gets in touch with the
atmosphere or mood mainly through the choices of words made by the writer,
especially by the choice of adjectives.
In “Araby” and “Eveline” the atmosphere is a very
important element because it leads the reader to get in touch with one of the
major themes in the whole book which is Paralysis. If the atmosphere had not
been well developed through each short story, maybe the different themes would
not be so clear to the reader. The construction of the atmosphere in both short
stories are made through the use of appropriated adjectives and the linguistic
tools is able to locate them in the text, give the number of occurrences and
the context in which each word appears.
2. CORPUS LINGUISTICS: A BRIEF OVERVIEW
Although most of time it is hard to come up with a
good and all-encompassing definition concerning some broad topics as it is the
case of corpus linguistics, it is possible to have a better understanding of it
through the definition given by Tony McEnery & Andrew Hardie in their book
named Corpus Linguistics: Method, Theory
and Practice. They define corpus linguistics as “dealing with some set of
machine-readable text which is deemed and appropriate basis on which to study a
specific set of research questions” (1). Another definition is brought by Nadja
Nesselhaulf in her article entitled Corpus Linguistics: A Practical
Introduction. She says that:
Corpus linguistics is a method of carrying out
linguistic analyses. As it can be used for the investigation of many kinds of
linguistic questions and as it has been shown to have the potential to yield
highly interesting, fundamental, and often surprising new insights about
language, it has become one of the most wide-spread methods of linguistic investigation
in recent years. (2)
Bearing this definition in mind and considering the
great number of possibilities in the field of Corpus linguistics, it is also
important to have some understanding about the software tools to deal with
machine-readable texts. There are many software tools available nowadays,
nevertheless it is important to be careful and check if the chosen program is
working properly. Laurence Anthony on his research entitled “A critical look at
software tools in corpus linguistics” discusses
about the problems that might occur. One
of the main problem is conflicting results when, for example, the corpus is
processed in more than one tool in an attempt to test the veracity of the
result. This problem, as he points out is due to a different way to count words
but some adjustments can be easily made in the selected tool.
The selected tool to this investigation is AntConc,
version 3.2.4. This freeware concordance program was developed by Laurence
Anthony, director of the Centre for English Language Education at Waseda
University. This is a widely known program with many
guides available on the web. Once it has been downloaded, the next step is to
select the file to be analyzed and the other steps are self-explanatory in the
sense that it is possible to test what each category of analysis can do with
the text. The available options are concordance, concordance plot, file view,
clusters, collocates, word list and keyword list. To this investigation,
concordance and keyword list were the only necessary categories. Concordance is
the section of the program that gives the location of the selected word in the
context in which it appears in the text, and the keyword list lists all the
words of the text, giving the number of occurrences of each word.
3. METHOD
The investigation was carried out in two steps. The
first was to see how the keywords were used to create the atmosphere in both
short stories. The second was to analyze words indirectly connected to the
atmosphere of the short stories, with the connection being perceived by the
analysis of its context of occurrence. The following sub-sections will bring a
more detailed explanation about the data and how they were analyzed.
3.1. DATA
The data is composed by two short stories that belong
to a collection of fifteen other short stories by James Joyce. As the short
stories follow a certain pattern in relation to the order in which they appear
in the book, the chosen ones were respectively “Araby” and “Eveline”, the third
and the fourth.
“Araby” has an apparently simple plot; it tells the
story of a young boy that falls in love with the sister of one of his friends
that happen to be his neighbor. He goes through all the symptoms of a person
who is in love but has never had the guts to talk to the girl. The day he
finally gets to talk to her, they talk about a bazar that would take place in
the city, she could not go but he promised her he would bring her a gift if he
went. The accomplishment of that promise became the most important thing for
the boy. He asked his aunt and uncle for permission and for the money, they
allow him to go but his uncle forgets about it and gets home very late. Even
being late the boy is hopeful he can still find some stalls open and get the
girl a gift. When he gets to the bazar it is almost completely dark and all
that is left for the boy is a tremendous frustration.
In Eveline the main character is a nineteen-old woman
that has a very simple life, she works in a shop and also takes care of her
house. Her mother and older brother are dead and her father is a drunken
aggressive man that usually treats her and her younger siblings in a bad way.
At a certain point she meets a sailor named Frank and she has the opportunity
to leave to Argentina with him. Nonetheless either because she is afraid to
leave and face a new life or because she has promised her mother she would take
care of the house and her younger siblings, she gives up leaving to Argentina
with Frank and has to face one more loss in her life.
There are many other important elements that are
sprinkled thought the short stories such as political issues, religious
references, some sort of paralysis that follow most of the short stories in
Dubliners and that are metaphorically perceived through the behavior of Eveline
and from the boy in “Araby”, They both face situations in which they do not
have much to do about. The atmosphere contributes to the understanding of their
situations and their feelings. Without the elements brought with the careful
construction of the atmosphere, their behavior and the way the reader feels
about them would be different. Without an appropriated atmosphere the short
stories could sound as ordinary situations that could happen to anyone,
nevertheless, both “Eveline” and “Araby” are so well arranged in terms of
atmosphere that it is hard to remember the short story without associating to
that feeling created by the appropriated choice of words by the writer.
3.2.
PROCEDURES
Both literary texts- “Araby” and “Eveline”- will be
processed through AntConc, version 3.2.4. As the focus of the investigation is
to verify if it is possible to perceive the atmosphere created in both texts
and once the atmosphere is mainly created by the use of adjectives, the
functional words such as “the”, “a”, “with” and so on will be ignored.
Therefore the first content words will be analyzed and it’s relation to the
construction of the atmosphere.
4. RESULTS
AND DISCUSSION
The main results were that it was possible to verify
that through the use of corpus linguistics, a literary analysis could be
successfully carried out. In this particular investigation the atmosphere of
two short stories could be verified through the use of a linguistic tool. To be
more specific about how it was possible to perceive how the atmosphere was
created in each short story, this section is divided into two subtopics, one
about the atmosphere in Araby and the other one about Eveline.
4.1 ARABY
Taking the functional words aside it is perceived
through AntConc that the first adjective that is ranked
is the word “dark”. It appears directly seven times in the five-pages
short story. The tool allows a deeper analysis and by clicking on the word
dark, the context in which it appears in the short story is shown as it can be
seen below:
The occurrence of the word dark is, of course followed
by other words that together reinforce the gloomy atmosphere that is created.
AntConc is also very helpful to show the word in the context in which it
appears. It is worth taking a glimpse on the word dark in the context it occurs
so that it can be seen that it doesn’t refer to the color of the hear or eyes
of a particular character, for example. It has otherwise, everything to do with
the creation of a melancholic mood to the narrative as can be seen in the
following excerpts: “through the dark
muddy lanes behind the houses”, “the back doors of the dark dripping gardens
where odours arose from the ashpits”, “to the dark odorous stables”, “It was a
dark rainy evening”, “I looked over at the dark house where she lived,” “the
dark entrance to the stall”, The upper part of the hall was now completely dark”. Joyce’s creation of the atmosphere is greatly
formed by the use of the work dark but the use of the word light also occurs
many times and its context deserves investigation.
The second more frequent adjective is the word light.
It appears four times in the short story. But at least in one of its
occurrences it has the same meaning of dark because he says that “the light was
out.” The other three times the word light arises is usually related to the
girl the boy is in love with. The fact that the word light is usually related
to the girl is metaphorical in the sense that besides her, everything else was
dull for the boy: school, his own house, the streets, playing with his friends
and everything else that was not related to the girl he was in love with. It
can be seen below how the occurrence of light takes place:
After the adjectives “dark” and “light” the next one
that is shown in the word list of AntConc is blind, the context in which it
appears also indicates that it has a close relation to the creation of the
atmosphere. Nevertheless, the tool reveals that one of the occurrences of blind
in the text is in fact a noun. The other two moments that the word appears is in
the following manner: “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street”,
“an uninhabited house of two stores stood at the blind end.” The occurrence of
the word blind might suggest a more complex idea than a simple description of
the street, it also collaborate to the mood of the narrative. The next
adjective is brown, and it seems to be stronger than blind in the creation on
the gloomy atmosphere. It appears this way: “gazed at one another with brown
imperturbable faces.” “I kept her brown figure always in my eye”, “seeing
nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination”. All the uses of
brown are helpful to build the dark atmosphere in Araby. The following adjectives listed are bad,
cold, confused, lightened and useless, all of them occur only twice in the
whole short story. The rest of the adjective don’t seem to have much relevance
to the present investigation.
4.2 EVELINE
Following the same method applied to Araby-
disregarding the functional words and focusing on the use of adjectives- it is
perceived through the linguistic tool that the first adjective that appears in
the ranking is the word “hard”. It appears five times in the short story and
it’s important to take a look at the context of its occurrences. “Of course she had to work hard, both in the
house and at business.” “he wasn't going to give her his hard-earned money to
throw about the streets”, “She had hard work to keep the house together”, “It was hard work -- a hard life -- but now that she was about to leave”. It’s remarkable
how the choices of adjectives are able to produce specific mood to the
narrative. In Eveline the reader gets
in touch with a harsh reality in which the young woman is inserted. The
repetition of the word hard helps the reader to perceive the atmosphere that is
built through the story. See below the occurrence of the word hard at AntConc:
The next adjective that appears in the ranking is the
word “dead”. It appears four times in the following context: “She and her
brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead.” “Tizzie Dunn was
dead, too.” “Latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to
her only for her dead mother's sake.” “Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in
the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the
country.” All the passages in which the word “dead” arises, the feeling of
isolation is built in the sense that, the good people that really cared about
her are all gone, she hasn’t got many people to count on. The word “dead” helps
to create an atmosphere of paralysis, her life seems to drag through the daily
routine, there is no excitement or adventure, and everything seems a little
“dead”. See below the occurrence of “dead” in the tool:
The following adjectives that appear in the short story
are the word “little” and “long”. These two words appear four times in the
short story. Although these two words have a large number of repetitions in the
shot story, they do not seem to be very important in the creation of the
atmosphere. The next adjectives are: “black”, “brown”, “distant”, “new” and
“old”, all of them occur twice. The other adjectives just appear once and due
to the nature of this specific investigation, only adjectives with four or more
than four occurrences are worth being analyzed.
In Eveline “hard” and “dead” are the adjectives that
occur more often. These two words are central to the construction of the
atmosphere. Through their constant repetition, the writer leads the reader to
specific moods. The other adjectives that can be found in the short story as
cited above don’t seem to have a great influence in the construction of the
atmosphere.
5. FINAL REMARKS
This investigation was able to indicate that through
the use of a linguistic tool, in this case, AntConc, it is possible do carry
out literary analysis through corpus linguistics. In the present investigation
two short stories by James Joyce were processed through a linguistic tool named
AntConc. The investigation was able to provide a satisfactory result in the
sense that it was demonstrated that through a linguistic tool a literary
analysis can be pursued.
The perception of the atmosphere in both literary
texts was interestingly perceived through the approach of corpus linguistics.
In “Araby” and “Eveline” the frequency in which the same adjectives occurred in
each short story was significant to the construction and perception of the
atmosphere. In the case of “Araby”, the words “dark” and “light” were
highlighted, being dark the most important one to give the tone of the narrative.
And in the case of light by showing that the context can invert the meaning of
a word. In Eveline, two other adjectives were chief to the perception the
atmosphere, “hard” and “dead.”
The importance of the results of this investigation is
related mainly to the fact that researches can be carried out with the
collaboration of Linguistics and Literature, besides that, the results of the
present investigation seem to be quite reliable. Another important aspect that
deserves emphasis is time optimization, once it would be time consuming to go
through long texts to find out specific words. With a tool such as AntConc it
can be done with a click.
5.1. LIMITATIONS
The limitation of this kind of research could be seen
from two points of view, one would be concerning time constrains because the
data is easy to be processed through the linguistic tool but it might take a
long time to go through the analysis of the results obtained. The other
limitation would be in relation to the reliability of the tool as it has been
briefly discussed before. Nevertheless, those minimal limitations do not
compare to the huge number of possibilities that such kind of research can
provide.
6. REFERENCES
ANTHONY, Laurence. (2013). A critical look at software tools in corpus
linguistics. Linguistic Research
30(2), 141-161. Retrieved from: http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/research/20130827_linguistic_research_paper/linguistic_research_paper_final.pdf
MCENERY, Tony & HARDIE,
Andrew. Corpus Linguistics: Method,
Theory and Practice. Cambridge, 2011.
NESSELHAULF, Nadja. (2011). Corpus linguistics: A practical
introduction. Retrieved from: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/fileadmin/eng-ling/fs/Chapter_9/Index.html?9References.html
JOYCE,
James. Dubliners. An electronic
classics series publication.
