Pragmatic patterns in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

In an influential book on literary linguistics, first published in 1981 and revised in 2007, Geoffrey Leech and his colleague Mick Short discuss linguistic methods of analysing long texts of prose fiction. This article develops their arguments in two ways: (1) by relating them to classic puzzles in the philosophy of science; and (2) by illustrating them with a computer-assisted study of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. This case study shows that software can identify a linguistic feature of the novel which is central to its major themes, but which is unlikely to be consciously noticed by human readers. Quantitative data on the novel show that it contains a large number of negatives. Their function is often to deny something which would normally be expected, and therefore to express the protagonists’ distrust of their own senses in the extraordinary world in which they find themselves.

Person-ness of voices in lived experience accounts of psychosis: combining literary linguistics and clinical psychology

In this paper, we use concepts and insights from the literary linguistic study of story-world characters to shed new light on the nature of voices as social agents in the context of lived experience accounts of voice-hearing. We demonstrate a considerable overlap between approaches to voices as social agents in clinical psychology and the perception of characters in the linguistic study of fiction, but argue that the literary linguistic approach facilitates a much more nuanced account of the different degrees of person-ness voices might be perceived to possess. We propose a scalar Characterisation Model of Voices and demonstrate its explanatory potential by comparing two lived experience descriptions of voices in interviews with voice-hearers in a psychosis intervention. The new insights into the phenomenology of voice-hearing achieved by applying the model are relevant to the understanding of voice-hearing as well as to therapeutic interventions.

Introduction

The first half of this chapter provides a clear and non-technical explanation of what turn-taking is and why it matters. According to William Empson, the most important step in the solution of any literary critical problem is to identify ‘the right handle to take hold of the bundle’. The claim made here is simple: when the bundle is Shakespearean dialogue, the right handle is the turn at talk. This claim is then illustrated with a pair of examples—Isabella’s petitioning of Duke Vincentio in 5.1 of Measure for Measure and the final meeting between Hal and his father in 4.3 of 2 Henry IV—each of which yields fresh insights when analysed as an exchange of turns rather than speeches. The second half of the chapter situates the turn-taking approach in relation to previous work on Shakespearean dialogue, literary linguistics, and dramatic discourse.

Top keyword abridgements of short stories: A corpus linguistic resource?

Interest in the application of corpus linguistic methods in literary linguistics grows apace. One simple use of Scott's Keywords procedure (from his Wordsmith Tools text analysis package) is here reported, since it may be of interest to analysts of narrative text. ‘Automatic’ abridgement of a short story, by selecting in their original sequence just those of its sentences in which the most key keyword occurs, creates a partial but semi-coherent and ‘resonant’ text (not an orthodox summary), where mostly incoherence might have been expected. The top keyword in a short story is most often a focalized character's name (or, as rare alternative, part of the narration's standard lexical means of naming and denoting a particular character). Perhaps a story's top keyword, in its sentential contexts of use, creates a form of foregrounding, a waymarking of more noticeable and noteworthy (not necessarily the most noteworthy) sentences, asserting or reinforcing those sentences' centrality to the developing situation (action and theme).