CALL AND LITERATURE 8

Teaching English Literature and Linguistics Using Corpus Stylistic Methods
Monica Bednarek
University of Technology, Sydney

Abstract
This paper reports on the teaching of an interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar on English linguistics and literature at the University of Augsburg (Germany). The focus of this seminar was 19th century women’s fiction, with three novels discussed from literary and linguistic perspectives: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The paper describes the main corpus stylistic methods that were applied in the analysis of these three novels by the students (inspired by Stubbs’s 2005 outline of corpus linguistic methodologies in the study of literary texts). It is shown how keyword and collocation analyses (Scott 1999) can provide information on key themes of the novels, the construal of characters and socio-cultural attitudes prevalent in 19th century English society. The seminar is also evaluated in terms of its success, in particular with respect to interdisciplinarity and corpus stylistics.
1 Introduction
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a speaker in possession of an intelligent audience is in want of an arresting opening.
(Monica Ali in The Guardian Unlimited, 9 Dec 2004)
This paper describes an interdisciplinary project undertaken at the University of Augsburg (Germany) in the winter term 2005/2006: teaching English literature and linguistics to non-native (i.e. German) students of English. This course was taught by Sibylle Pärsch and the author, and involved about 40 undergraduate university students in their first, second or third year of study (the German Grundstudium). Most students studied English language, linguistics and literature. Three 19th century women’s novels were discussed in this module: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This paper focuses on the linguistic part of the course, in particular the corpus stylistic methods that were applied by the students in their analyses of the chosen texts, though I shall also briefly mention traditional stylistic studies.
The paper begins with some comments on the motivations for teaching this class, and with some background information on the contents of the module before discussing in more detail the corpus stylistic analyses and concluding with an evaluation of the class. The paper also hopes to stimulate teachers in tertiary education to use both interdisciplinary and corpus linguistic methods in teaching non-native students.
2 Motivations
Let me start with some comments on interdisciplinary teaching. Generally speaking, it seems to me that interdisciplinarity is much preached, but much less often practiced, in particular where actual teaching is concerned. Consequently, there are not many guidelines on how to structure and teach such classes successfully. At the same time, there is a natural connection between some disciplines, for example linguistics (as the study of language) and literature (as the study of an art form created through
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 1
language), and many students at (German) universities study both. Linguistics and literature, then, are much more closely related than, say, physics and literature, and presumably easier to combine. This also means, however, that this type of interdisciplinary teaching is much less ‘interdisciplinary’ than others.1 Consequently, teachers of other interdisciplinary combinations (e.g. mathematics and linguistics) might need to come up with more novel and innovative respective teaching techniques than those mentioned in this paper.
Interdisciplinarity thus lends itself to the teaching of linguistics and literature, but what are the motivations for choosing the three 19th century novels? Firstly, from a legal point of view, the copyright for these books has expired, which means that these texts are easily available to download on the internet. This is particularly important when corpus stylistic methods are applied (see below). Secondly, from a feminist point of view, the beginning of the women’s movement can be traced back to England in the 19th century, and Jane Eyre in particular lends itself to a feminist analysis. Thirdly, from a literary point of view, these three novels are all ‘classics’ of 19th century (women’s) fiction and the novel genre. The choice of these three classics was one the one hand influenced by the idea to present female writers whose works demonstrate the continuity and development of the genre as well as feminist issues. However, the three novels also differ from each other to a great extent, and consequently present a wide variety of issues, for instance, the struggle for independence or the quest for more than a ‘common’ life. From both perspectives, the literary as well as the linguistic, the choice of these novels provided the students with the opportunity to compare and maybe favour one novel over the other. On the other hand, the novels also had a big influence on ensuing literary works as well as on popular culture. The latter is particular apparent with respect to Frankenstein (think of the many horror films based on it) and Jane Austen’s novels. When googling Jane Austen, we quickly come up with many hits which demonstrate the popular reception of Jane Austen as well as Pride and Prejudice, for instance:
Dating expert gives love lessons based on Austen
Jane Austen letter on display in time for tea
Bath tires of Austen and turns to radicals
Change your life with Jane Austen
Jane Austen laid bare
Jane Austen: the brand
Darcy goes to Bollywood
Why do we still fall for Mr Darcy?
Pride and Sikh
And when googling the first part of the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice (It is a truth universally acknowledged that), intertextual references also abound on the internet:
It is a truth universally acknowledged that nothing is more likely to strike fear and xenophobia into the heart of an English person than a national treasure being appropriated by an American.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an old wizard in possession of a big secret must be in danger of his life.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the book women feel has most transformed their lives is the one that has assured them for the past two centuries that, yes, they will marry the wealthy, handsome man next door and live happily ever after.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a theatre company in need of a decent living must be in want of a classic novel to adapt
It is a truth universally acknowledged that any article about Pride and Prejudice must start with ‘it is a truth universally acknowledged ...’
1 In making use of stylistic methods, it might also be said that we combine an already somewhat ‘interdisciplinary’ linguistic methodology (stylistics) with the study of literature.
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 2
Additionally, Pride and Prejudice (as well as Frankenstein) has been adapted many times to the screen, with the most famous adaptation perhaps the BBC production with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (released on DVD in 2005). But there are also more recent ones in the ‘noughties’ (e.g. 2004: Bride and Prejudice, 2005: Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen). These bear witness to the ongoing popularity of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, particularly (but not exclusively) in Anglo-American culture.
3 Background information
Table 1 in the appendix shows all the linguistic and literary topics that were discussed in the course of the module (not all of which will be described in detail in this paper). In a first session, the students were introduced to stylistics (including its historical background), with extracts from the (in)famous Fowler-Bateson debate providing much amusement, such as: ‘Would I allow my sister to marry a linguist? It is a good question. And I suppose, if I am honest, I must admit that I would much prefer not to have a linguist in the family’ (Bateson in Fowler and Bateson 1968:176). The students were also given an introduction to corpus linguistic techniques in the computer lab. This involved essentially questions of how and where to download the three novels (constituting the corpora) and the software, and how to use the software. Since Wordsmith (Scott 1999) was installed in the computer lab at our university, this was the software taught to the students, but other software would be similarly usable (some available for free online). The novels were downloaded from http://www.gutenberg.org/, all information other than the text of the novel (e.g. headers) removed, and the text saved in a Wordsmith-compatible format (e.g. plain text). Each novel constituted a corpus that could then be analysed by the students with the help of Wordsmith.2
4 Topics and projects
In most sessions, one or more important concepts were discussed both from a literary and from a linguistic perspective. Focusing on the linguistic perspective only, some of the projects the students undertook included more ‘traditional’ stylistic analyses such as:
• Speech/thought representation (e.g. Leech and Short 1981, Semino and Short 2004)
• Metaphor (e.g. Lakoff and Turner 1989, Lakoff and Johnson 1994, Lenk 2002)
• Characterisation (e.g. Culpeper 2001)
• Stylistic characteristics (e.g. Thornborrow and Wareing 1998, Toolan 1998, 2001, Simpson 2004)
Much stylistic research deals with such analyses, and many studies are available for consultation, so no more shall be said about these here. More interesting (and more rarely discussed in research) are corpus stylistic studies (Stubbs 2005), in particular keyword analyses and studies of collocation. Such corpus methods have one clear advantage over traditional methods, namely that they are based on quantitative data. This is important because, as Stubbs has pointed out, ‘stylistics has long led an uneasy half-life, never fully accepted, for many related reasons, by either linguists or literary critics’ (Stubbs 2005:5) – though, presumably, we have advanced from the days of the fierce debate between linguists and literary critics referenced above. While keyword and corpus analyses were the main corpus linguistic techniques that were applied in this class by the students, and that will be discussed in the following, Hubbard (2002) and Stubbs (2005) give additional suggestions for corpus stylistic research.
2 For recent introductions to corpus linguistics see Tognini-Bonelli (2001), Hunston (2002), Meyer (2002), Stubbs (2002) or Sinclair (2004).
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 3
4.1 Keywords
In corpus linguistic terms, a keyword refers to a word that occurs with unusual frequency in a given text or collection of texts when this is compared with a reference corpus of some kind. Crucially, this means that a keyword can be unusually frequent or infrequent. Keyness is thus defined in terms of statistical ‘unusuality’. How exactly does this work? We need two corpora: the text (or collection of texts) that we are interested in (Scott and Tribble 2006 call this the node-text), and a reference corpus, which provides the standard of comparison. This reference corpus should be larger and an appropriate sample of the language of the node text. This notion of ‘appropriate’ is of course problematic, and it may at times be helpful to compare keywords that result from the use of different reference corpora. For example, if we compare Pride and Prejudice with a reference corpus of all of Jane Austen’s novels this might point to characteristics of Pride and Prejudice. If we use a reference corpus of 19th century fiction, we might additionally get information on Jane Austen in general, and if a reference corpus of 20th century fiction is used, some additional insight into 19th century fiction should be the result. Thus, Scott and Tribble (2006) compare Romeo and Juliet with a reference corpus including a) the tragedies alone, b) the complete works by Shakespeare including poetry, and c) the British National Corpus (100 million words of general British English). They point out that ‘while the choice of reference corpus is important, above a certain size, the procedure throw up a robust core of KWs whichever the reference corpus used’ (Scott and Tribble 2006:64).3
After choosing a reference corpus, we need to produce wordlists of the two corpora (with the help of Wordsmith’s WordList), i.e. lists of all the words and their frequency in the two corpora. Wordsmith’s KeyWords software then compares these two word lists, and identifies keywords with the help of tests of statistical significance (log likelihood or chi-square). A list of keywords might look like table 2:
Table 2 Key words in Romeo and Juliet
KWs of Romeo and Juliet vs. all Shakespeare plays (Scott & Tribble 2006:60):
Ah
death
married
slain
art
early
mercutio
thee
back
friar
montague
thou
banished
Juliet
monument
Thursday
benvolio
juliet’s
night
thy
capulet
kinsman
nurse
torch
capulets
lady
o
tybalt
capulet’s
lawrence
paris
tybalt’s
cell
light
poison
vault
churchyard
lips
romeo
Verona
county
love
romeo’s
watch
dead
mantua
she
wilt
Such keywords can tell the students a number of things about the novels they chose to analyse. Firstly, they can tell them about content, allowing for a discussion of the key themes of a novel. Secondly, they can provide information on the stylistic characteristics of a novel (functioning as ‘style-markers’ (Culpeper 2002:12) or ‘vocabulary fingerprint for a writer’ (Graves 1999)). Thirdly, keywords reference important cultural, historical and social information on the background of the events depicted in the novel. (It is interesting in this respect to note Stubbs’s (2002) research on cultural keywords.) Keywords can thus be content keywords, style keywords or socio-cultural keywords, and can even combine these three aspects.
3 On the problematic issue of the choice of a reference corpus, which, it seems, should be at least five times bigger than the node text see also Scott and Tribble (2006, 63-65).
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 4
In the interdisciplinary seminar, keyword analyses were predominantly used for introducing and summarising the three novels, clarifying and underlining motives, themes and other important aspects (see appendix for all projects involving keywords). For example, a keyword analysis of Frankenstein (with a reference corpus of 19th century fiction compiled by the student herself), throws up keywords such as I, my, me, myself (style markers pointing to the importance of first person narration and dialogue), creature, monster, fiend, wretch, daemon (referencing the gothic elements of the story), mountain, mountains, nature, earth, ice, lake, sun, moon, desert (relating to the importance of nature and the romantic elements of the novel) and science, discovered, knowledge, journey (associated with the key theme of scientific responsibility, and Romanticism as a counter movement to Enlightenment). Some keywords are clearly negative, and make reference to the results of Frankenstein’s quest, his creation, his leaving behind of the ‘monster’, and the resulting actions of the latter: miserable, misery, despair, horror, enemy, death, melancholy, revenge, destroy. The keywords hence show a number of interesting aspects of the book.
Frankenstein also lends itself to a different keyword analysis. The novel is characterised by its distinct embedding, and narrative framing: the story is told by Walton to his sister in a series of letters. In them, he tells her about meeting Frankenstein, who, in turn, tells him his story of creating a being, including a meeting with this being in the Alps and the being’s narration of what happened to him after Frankenstein left. Each of these stories can be turned into a node text and compared with the rest of the novel (figure 1):
Novel = reference corpus
Walton’s letters
Frankenstein’s narration
The monster’s story
Figure 1 Embedding in Frankenstein
The student undertaking this analysis found that Frankenstein’s story is characterised by the keywords Elisabeth, our, Justine (references to the females who are important to him), whereas Walton’s keywords point to his journey to the north pole (ice, sledge, north) on a ship (vessel, cabin, deck, ship, board) where he meets Frankenstein (with traveller, stranger, guest references to himself and the latter). It is also in Walton’s story that we find the conceptualisation of the scientific foray into nature as dangerous (die, danger, peril). Finally, the monster’s story has keywords referring to his life in and with nature (fire, wood, trees, roots, fields, sun, berries), his process of acquiring language (conversation, sounds, understood, uttered, understand, improved, comprehend, language), and references to his suffering as a result of Frankenstein’s actions (sadness, hunger, pain). Again, such an analysis proves useful in discussing key aspects of the novel and its structure. Scott and Tribble (2006) – not published at the time of teaching – give further useful suggestions for using keywords in language education, but for now the discussion will move on to collocation. Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 5
4.2 Collocation
The importance of collocation is well publicised in research on corpus linguistics and language teaching (e.g. Partington 1998), though there are competing definitions of what exactly a collocation is, and what different types there are (see e.g. Klotz 2000 for an overview). In essence, collocation concerns the syntagmatic association of lexical items (often defined statistically as a probabilistic tendency of words to co-occur). One way of (manually) analysing collocations is by looking at concordances – the output of concordancers such as Wordsmith’s Concord, which provide lists of words (the node) in their context. Here, for example, are concordances for pride in Pride and Prejudice:
1 than pride." "Can such abominable pride as his have ever done
2 But his pride, his abominable pride--his shameless avowal
3 not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and insolence.
4 other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things,
5 is actions may be traced to pride; and pride had often been his be
6 designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten
7 then she had expected most pleasure and pride in her company, for s
8 of money, great connections, and pride." "Beyond a doubt,
9to ridicule. " "Such as vanity and pride." "Yes, vanity is
10 was also in the same state of angry pride. Elizabeth had hoped
11 Lucas, "does not offend _me_ so much as pride often does, because t
12 motive. He has also _brotherly_ pride, which, with _some_
13 "Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride--where there is a re
14 They had nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably h
15 and remarks; Mrs. Reynolds, either by pride or attachment, had
16 serving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visite
17 tenants, and relieve the poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride--
18 the poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride--for he is very prou
20 that he is to the less prosperous. His pride never deserts him; bu
21 of those very people against whom his pride had revolted in his o
22 mislead him, _he_ was the cause, his pride and caprice were the
23 cousin could refuse him; and though his pride was hurt, he suffere
24 so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable prid
25 the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that direction, m
26 you _never_ to dance with him." "His pride," said Miss Lucas, "d
27 shire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. You will not find h
28 "and I could easily forgive _ his_ pride, if he had not mortif
29 "I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly
30 principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit.
31 there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under
32 if he had not mortified _mine _." "Pride," observed Mary, who
33 imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that h
34 Such a change in a man of so much pride exciting not only
35 made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, s
36 mother-in-law of Wickham! Every kind of pride must revolt from the
37 to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence; she
38 partly governed by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the w
39 on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her
40 nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and
41 there were stronger impulses even than pride." "Can such abomin
42 manner, and the rest from the pride for her nephew, who
43 almost all his actions may be traced to pride; and pride had often
44 person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our
45 how abominable! I wonder that the very pride of this Mr. Darcy has
46 material weight with Mr. Darcy, whose pride, she was convinced, w
47 everybody says that he is eat up with pride, and I dare say he h
48 have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my hone Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 6
Collocations can tell the students about meaning, patterns and context (see appendix for all projects involving collocations). For instance, as seen from the above list, some instances of pride co-occur in Pride and Prejudice with negative adjectives (abominable, angry, improper, mistaken), nouns (vanity, caprice, conceit, obsequiousness, impertinence, insolence) or verbs (offend, accuse of, eat up with), that is, they have a tendency towards ‘negative’ collocates. This has been referred to in corpus linguistics as negative semantic preference or prosody (e.g. Louw 1993, Partington 2004). Another important collocation (his pride) refers to the main character (Darcy), but also points to the fact that pride was conceptualised as a male characteristics in Jane Austen’s time (in contrast to female vanity). Collocations can reflect key themes, cultural attitudes, or the meaning of words in a novel.
Another example of this is provided by the collocations for words referring to marriage (e.g. husbands, marry, marriage) in Pride and Prejudice, where a key collocation is GET husbands, and where marry collocates (or colligates) with modal verbs of obligation (must, should) as well as verbs of intention (wish, intend, want) – reflecting cultural attitudes at the time and attitudes of characters in the novel (as may be remembered, Elizabeth’s mother, Mrs Bennet, desperately wants her daughters to be married, and this makes for many funny scenes in the book).
Perhaps the most striking example for how useful the analysis of collocation can be in the discussion of literature can be seen by looking at negation in Jane Eyre. Negation is an important resource of interpersonal meaning, and plays a part both in the discourse semantic APPRAISAL (ENGAGEMENT) system (Martin and White 2005:118-120) and in the lexicogrammatical MOOD system (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:135). As has often been pointed out (Watson 1999, Stubbs 2005, Bednarek 2006:49) it is associated with unexpectedness, and hence also notions such as deviation or difference. In fact, negation in Jane Eyre shows us how the female protagonist (Jane Eyre) does not confirm to stereotypes about women in the 19th century (and beyond). Thus, the student analysing negation in her project found the following clusters (visualised in table 3):
Table 3 Clusters with negation in Jane Eyre
N cluster Freq.
1 I could not 109
2 I did not 60
3 I am not 48
4 you are not 34
5 I was not 32
6 I have no 28
7 I had no 25
8 I do not 24
9 I have not 20
10 I would not 20
11 he did not 19
12 I had not 19
13 he could not 18
14 I should not 17
15 I will not 17
16 you will not 17
17 he is not 12
18 he was not 12
19 she was not 12
20 she would not 11
21 she would not 11
N cluster Freq.
22 he would not 10
23 she is not 10
24 I need not 9
25 she could not 9
26 she did not 9
27 I shall not 8
28 you did not 8
29 you have not 8
30 you would not 8
31 he had not 7
32 I know not 7
33 you do not 7
34 I must not 6
35 you could not 6
36 you need not 6
37 you were not 6
38 he has no 5
39 I am no 5
40 I was no 5
41 you shall not 5
As becomes apparent, negation often clusters with modal verbs, BE and HAVE, with the modal verbs frequently being deontic (perhaps pointing to the rules, necessities and coercion that are part of Jane’s life). Compare the following dialogue between Jane and Helen from chapter 6:
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 7
‘But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.’
‘Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you CANNOT BEAR what it is your fate to be required to bear.’
Where Jane exclaims ‘I could not bear’, passive Helen exclaims ‘Yet it would be your duty to bear it’. Jane, in contrast, refuses to do so, is independent, headstrong and resistant. Similarly, I will not (indicating non-volition), shows Jane’s strong character when referring to Jane’s refusal towards St John’s wish to marry her, and Rochester’s desire for her to be his mistress. She does not take the easy way out, since she neither believes in marriage without love (with St John) nor wants to throw in her lot as Rochester’s mistress. Again, Jane is not the passive and unresisting female, who gives in to the wishes of strong male characters. Other occurrences of negation (with HAVE) point to Jane’s status as an orphan who has neither money nor friends nor relations, or as someone who is evaluated by others as having no talents, but who evaluates herself as fearless (I have no fear) – again refuting the female stereotype. In this respect, it is also interesting to look at negated evaluations with BE in general, both self-evaluations (Jane pronouncing ‘I am/was not/no’) and evaluations of Jane by others (‘you are/were not/she is not’):
1 me from?" "From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when
2 "No, Sam, return to the kitchen: I am not in the least afraid." Nor was I; bu
3 sealed my doom, -- and his. But I was not afraid: not in the least. I felt
4 d, "Come over and help us!" But I was no apostle, -- I could not behold the h
5 of a woman in Miss Ingram's. But I was not jealous: or very rarely; -- the nat
6 she. "I am near nineteen: but I am not married. No." I felt a burning g
7 no doubt. But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I
8 formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage. Would it not b
9 nce of an even tenor in life." "I am not ambitious." He started at the wor
10 them in this blunt sentence - "I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say
11 eberg. He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor
12 aughed at him as he said this. "I am not an angel," I asserted; "and I will
13 ear -- and lie down a little." "I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send
14 aken in supposing me a beggar. I am no beggar; any more than yourself or yo
15 n plumage in its desperation." "I am no birdm a
; and no net ensnares me; I a16 incapable of taking any other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or
17 ry: there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable. To speak truth, I had n
18 f the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty
19 mit. I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to ha
1b uzzled, Miss Eyre; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome,
2b lks to us in our own hearts, you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr.
"3b h as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child." I smiled at B
4b to its nature." "Miss Eyre, you are not so unsophisticated as Adele: she de
5b emaciated, pallid wanderer?" "She is not an uneducated person, I should think
6b I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose th
7b here he is?" "I cannot." "You are not a servant hall, of course. Y
at the8b ditch under some stream? And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?"
Here again we find references to Jane’s fearlessness (1, 2, 3), but also to cultural expectations (6, 7, 8), of which Jane is aware (that 19-year-old women should be married). More interesting, perhaps, are references such as I am not an angel, I am not your dear, I am no dear, which refute the 19th century image of the woman as the ‘angel in the house’. Furthermore, a number of negations point to the fact that neither Jane nor Rochester confirm to the beauty standards that we might expect from such a novel’s protagonists (19, 1b, 2b, 3b), with Jane’s intelligence seeming to make up for it (4b, 5b). Summing up, the female protagonist in Jane Eyre is construed as neither passive nor fearful, but rather independent, strong-willed, and courageous, a character who wants to create her own destiny. She refutes stereotypes against women, and does not conform to normal beauty standards that we expect of romantic novels. And it does seem as if negation at least partly reflects this construal.
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 8
Overall, then, collocation analyses were used mainly to discuss key themes of novels, the construal of characters (and of the reader) as well as the socio-cultural background (in particular, the role and status of women).
5 Conclusion and evaluation
Let me conclude this paper by briefly evaluating the seminar. Concerning the students’ projects (which got turned into term papers), it must be said that the best papers were by those students who used corpus stylistic analyses, and who interpreted their results with information from literary research, that is, by those who used a truly interdisciplinary approach. Of the keyword analyses, the best were by those that complemented their analyses with collocation studies, i.e. combined different corpus stylistic methods.
Moving on to the students’ evaluation of the seminar, an informal questionnaire was handed out to them at the end of the term, with the students’ answers summarised in tables 4 and 5:
Table 4 Evaluation of interdisciplinarity
Evaluation of interdisciplinarity (n = 37)
Combining a literary and a linguistic approach was useful (‘gelungen’)
36 students thought this was either true (16) or at least partly true (20).
I think interdisciplinary seminars make sense (‘sind sinnvoll’)
All 37 students thought this was either true (30) or at least partly true (7).
I would recommend this seminar to other students
36 students agreed.
Likes
Dislikes
application of linguistics, usefulness of linguistic methods, different methodologies, connections between linguistics and literature become clearer, different aspects, themes, novels, look beyond own interests
not enough depth, too superficial
Table 5 Evaluation of corpus linguistic methods
Evaluation of corpus linguistic methods (n = 10)
Help for the corpus analyses was sufficient
4 said this is very much true, 6 said this is partly true.
I was comfortable using the software
All ten students agreed.
I liked using corpus linguistic methods for my own analysis
2 enjoyed it very much, 8 enjoyed it.
Likes
Dislikes
independent and own research, finding facts and results themselves, simple, quick, empirical basis for interpretations
too complex, too much time, difficulties in interpreting
It thus seems as if the interdisciplinary and corpus stylistic approach adopted in this seminar was very successful. In particular, it made the students recognise the usefulness of linguistic methods for a rigorous analysis of texts (see ‘likes’). On the other hand, an interdisciplinary approach means that only half the time is available for talking about one subject (e.g. linguistics) than otherwise, which necessarily results in some superficiality (see ‘dislikes’).
Concerning the corpus linguistic methods, most students particularly enjoyed that they could undertake their own research and find out things that no one had investigated before, i.e. that they
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 9
became ‘true’ researchers. While most seemed to find the corpus linguistic methods simple and quick, some thought that they were too complex and took up too much time. Clearly, it is necessary to provide sufficient help to the students to enable them to do corpus research themselves.
Overall, the interdisciplinary approach seems to have worked very well, in particular to allow the students a glimpse into the potentials of systematic linguistic analysis. The corpus stylistic methods were extremely successful in allowing the students to engage with their own research projects and to come up with innovative findings. The main disadvantage lies in the fact that students need to learn how to use the corpus software, which makes an accompanying tutorial very helpful. All in all, the seminar increased the awareness of the students for the usefulness of linguistics: many students expressed the view that they finally saw how linguistics can be applied to text analysis to yield interesting results.4 And from the literary approach offered in the seminar they got help in interpreting these results, to move from the descriptive to the interpretative, i.e. to avoid the trap of coming up only with descriptions rather than interpretations and explanations (a danger that seems to be particularly great where corpus linguistic analyses are concerned).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sibylle Pärsch who co-taught the seminar with me, and commented on a previous version of this paper, and who proved a constant inspiration. I am also very grateful to all the students who participated in this class, especially Kathrin Behr (analysing narrative framing in Frankenstein), Julia Heining (keywords in Frankenstein), Anja Hiltensperger (negation in Jane Eyre), Carola Schneider (collocation in Pride and Prejudice), and Annemarie Voit (the concept of marriage in Pride and Prejudice). I would also like to thank the participants at the Bridging Discourses conference (ASFLA 2007 Annual Congress) at the University of Wollongong, 29 June to 1 July 2007, for their helpful feedback and suggestions.
References
Bednarek, M. (2006) Evaluation in Media Discourse. Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London/New York: Continuum.
Culpeper, J. (2001) Language and Characterisation: People in Plays and Other Texts. Harlow: Pearson Education.
Culpeper, J. (2002) Computers, language and characterisation: an analysis of six characters in Romeo and Juliet. In U. Melander-Marttala, Ostman, C. and Kyto, M. (eds.) Conversation in Life and in Literature: Papers from the ASLA Symposium 11--30. Universitetstryckeriet: Uppsala.
Fowler, R. and Bateson, F.W. (1967) Argument II. Literature and linguistics. Essays in Criticism 17: 322--347.
Fowler, R. and Bateson, F.W. (1968) Argument II (continued): language and literature. Essays in Criticism 18: 164--182.
Graves, D.A. (1999) Computer analysis of word usage in Emma. Persuasions 21: 203--211.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C. (2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.
4 The only previous contact with linguistics that most students had had before taking this class was one introductory lecture to linguistics, covering overviews of key aspects of linguistics (e.g. semantics, pragmatics, syntax, morphology, word formation, structuralism, sociolinguistics).
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 10
Hubbard, E.H. (2002) Conversation, characterisation and corpus linguistics: dialogue in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Literator 23: 67--85.
Hunston, S. (2002) Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Klotz, M. (2000) Grammatik und Lexik: Studien zur Syntagmatik englischer Verben. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.
Leech, G. and Short, M. (1981) Style in Fiction. London: Longman.
Lakoff, G. and Turner, M.. (1989) More than Cool Reason: a Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicaco: University of Chicago Press.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1994) Metaphors we Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lenk, U. (2002) Konzeptuelle Metaphern zur Sprache in literarischen Texten: Möglichkeiten einer interdisziplinären Anglistik. AAA – Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 27: 51--68.
Louw, B. (1993) Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer?. In M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair 157-176. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Martin, J. and White, P. R.R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. Houndmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Meyer, C.F. (2002) English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: CUP.
Partington, A. (1998) Patterns and Meanings. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Partington, A. (2004) “Utterly content in each other’s company”. Semantic prosody and semantic preference. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9: 131--156.
Scott, M. (1999) Wordsmith Tools. Oxford: OUP.
Scott, M. and Tribble, C. (2006) Textual Patterns. Key Words and Corpus Analysis in Language Education. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Semino, E. and Short, M. (2004) Corpus Stylistics. Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London/New York: Routledge.
Simpson, P. (2004) Stylistics. A Resource Book for Students. New York: Routledge.
Sinclair (2004) (ed) How to Use Corpora in Language Teaching. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Stubbs, M. (2002) Words and Phrases. Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stubbs, M. (2005) Conrad in the computer: examples of quantitative stylistic methods. Language and Literature 14: 5--24.
Thornborrow, J. and Wareing, S. (1998) Patterns in Language. An Introduction to Language and Literary Style. London/New York: Routledge.
Tognini-Bonelli, E (2001) Corpus Linguistics At Work. Amsterdam: Benjamins
Toolan, M. (1998) Language in Literature. An Introduction to Stylistics. London: Arnold.
Toolan, M. (22001) Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction. London/New York: Routledge.
Watson, G. (1999) Something will come of nothing: an empirical model of negation for prose literature. Journal of Literary Studies 15: 377--406.
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 11
Appendix
Table 1: Course outline
‘The madwoman in the attic and other monsters’:
linguistic and literary perspectives on 19th century women’s fiction
Introduction
- Corpus linguistic techniques (LING)
- Socio-political background, status of women
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice:
- Biography Jane Austen, point of view, dialogue, free indirect speech
- Speech and thought representation (LING)
- The language of Jane Austen (LING)
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice:
- Social and gender roles
- Marriage, husbands and wives (concordances) (LING)
- Lydia in book and film (LING)
Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice:
- Character development and emancipation
- Pride, prejudice, vanity, prepossession (concordances) (LING)
- Keyword analysis (LING)
Mary Shelley Frankenstein:
- Biography (Mary Shelley, M. Woolstonecraft, W. Godwin, P.B. Shelley)
- History and structure of novel
- Changing perspectives in Frankenstein – a corpus linguistic analysis (LING)
Mary Shelley Frankenstein:
- Gothic and romantic elements
- The modern Prometheus: ‘Faustian desire’, responsibility
- The monster (references) (LING)
Mary Shelley Frankenstein:
- Interpretative analyses: status of woman, references to contemporary society etc
- Keyword analysis of Frankenstein (LING)
Film analyses
- Austen Pride and Prejudice
- Shelley Frankenstein
- Bronte Jane Eyre
Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre:
- Biography: The Brontës
- Introduction: history, narrative strategies
- Keyword analysis of Jane Eyre (LING)
- ‘Gentle and romantic reader’: construal of the reader (LING)
Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre:
- The governess: gender and social roles in early Victorian society
- Nature and religion
- Metaphor in Jane Eyre (LING)
- Negation in Jane Eyre: difference and deviation (LING)
Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre:
- Jane Eyre as Entwicklungsroman
- Feminist literary theory: The Madwoman in the Attic
Summary
- Keyword-analysis of all novels (LING)
- Stylistic characteristics of realist texts (LING)
- Gothic feminism Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 12
Bridging Discourses: ASFLA 2007 Online Proceedings 13