Your browser does not support the PubReader view.
Go to this page to see a list of supporting browsers.
The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.1128-1144
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2021
Received 11 Oct 2021 Revised 15 Nov 2021 Accepted 27 Nov 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202111.1128

A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of Writing Style in English Literary Texts over Time

Jisu Ryu ; Soonbae Kim ; Moongee Jeon
(first author) Lecturer, Dept. of English Language & Literature, Konkuk University jsryu0508@konkuk.ac.kr
Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature, Chungbuk Nat’l University pearlpoet@chungbuk.ac.kr
(corresponding author) Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature, Konkuk University mjeon1@konkuk.ac.kr


© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the characteristics of the writing style of Jane Austen, a well-known novelist, based on the corpus linguistic method. Specifically, the current study compares Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) with Persuasion (1817) written with a four-year time gap using Coh-Metrix. This study analyzed whether Austen’s writing style changes within a short period of four years despite the fact that the two literary works belong to the same genre. The Coh-Metrix measures selected for this study include basic counts, word features (word frequency, lexical diversity, imageability, concreteness, age of acquisition, familiarity, meaningfulness), personal pronouns, connectives, main parts of speech, readability indices, syntactic features, and reference cohesion measures. The findings of the study show that Austen’s writing style changes at the vocabulary level (average word and sentence length, nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, word frequency, lexical diversity, imageability, concreteness, age of acquisition, familiarity, meaningfulness, causal and additive connectives), but is maintained at the sentence level (readability indices, reference cohesion, syntactic complexity and similarity). In other words, Austen’s writing style dramatically changes in terms of vocabulary use over a relatively short period of four years. The results of this study provide linguistic and pedagogical implications related to the analysis of literary texts.

Keywords:

corpus stylistics, corpus linguistics, stylistics, writing style analysis, writing style changes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020S1A5A2A01043615).

References

  • Altintas, K., F. Can and J. M. Patton. 2007. Language change quantification using time-separated parallel translations. Literary and Linguistic Computing 22(4), 375-393. [https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqm026]
  • Bennett, G. R. 2010. Using Corpora in the Language Learning Classroom: Corpus Liinguistics for Teachers. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan. [https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.371534]
  • Can, F. and J. M. Patton. 2004. Change of writing style with time. Computers and the Humanities 38(1), 61-82. [https://doi.org/10.1023/B:CHUM.0000009225.28847.77]
  • Coltheart, M. 1981. The MRC psycholinguistic database. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 33(4), 497-505. [https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748108400805]
  • Enkvist, N. E. 1964. On defining style: An essay on applied linguistics. In J. Spencer ed., Linguistics and Style, 1-56. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Enkvist, N. E. 1985. Text and discourse linguistics, rhetoric and stylistics. In T. A. van Dijk, ed., Discourse and Literature: New Approaches to the Analysis of Literary Genres, 11-38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [https://doi.org/10.1075/ct.3.03enk]
  • Fowler, R. 1971. The Languages of Literature: Some Linguistic Contributions to Criticism. London: Routledge.
  • Gibbons, A. and S. Whiteley. 2018. Contemporary Stylistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University.
  • Goldstein, E. B. 2015. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Boston:　Cengage.
  • Graesser, A. C., M. Jeon, Z. Cai and D. S. McNamara. 2008. Automatic analyses of language, discourse, and situation models. In J. Auracher and W. van Peer, eds., New Beginnings in Literary Studies, 72-88. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Graesser, A. C., M. Jeon, Y. Yan and Z. Cai. 2007. Discourse cohesion in text and tutorial dialogue. Information Design Journal 15(3), 199-213. [https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.15.3.02gra]
  • Graesser, A. C., D. S. McNamara, M. M. Louwerse and Z. Cai. 2004. Coh-Metrix: Analysis of text on cohesion and language. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 36(2), 193-202. [https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195564]
  • Hardy, D. E. 2003. Narrating Knowledge in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press.
  • Hartley, J., A. Branthwaite, F. Ganier and L. Heurley. 2007. Lost in translation: Contributions of editors to the meanings of texts. Journal of Information Science 33(5), 551-565. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551506076392]
  • Hartley, J., H. J. A. Howe and W. J. McKeachie. 2001. Writing through time: Longitudinal studies of the effects of new technology on writing. British Journal of Educational Technology 32, 141-151. [https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8535.00185]
  • Hartley, J. and Jeon, M. 2010. The effects of genres and voices on writing styles in Alistair Cooke’s & Jeremy Clarkson’s writings. The Journal of Linguistic Science 52(1), 243-262.
  • Hatch, J. A., C. A. Hill and J. R. Hayes. 1993. When the messenger is the message: Readers’ impressions of writers’ personalities. Written Communication 10(4), 569-597. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088393010004004]
  • Hoover, D. L. 1999. Language and Style in The Inheritors. Lanham: University Press of America, Inc.
  • Hough, G. 1972. Style and Stylistics. London: Routledge.
  • Jeon, M. 2014. Analyzing the cohesion of English text and discourse with automated computer tools. Journal of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics 18(2), 123-133.
  • Jurafsky, D. and J. H. Martin. 2008. Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  • Lee, C., J. Park and Y. Seo. 2006. An analysis of linguistic styles by inferred age in TV dramas. Psychological Reports 99(2), 351-356. [https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.99.2.351-356]
  • Leech, G. and M. H. Short. 1981. Style in Fiction: a Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman. [https://doi.org/10.2307/1772012]
  • Lindquist, H. 2009. Corpus Linguistics and the Description of English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Louw, B. 1993. Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? In M. Baker and G. Francis, eds., Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, 157-176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [https://doi.org/10.1075/z.64.11lou]
  • Mahlberg, M. 2007. Corpus stylistics: bridging the gap between linguistic and literary studies. In M. Hoey and M. Mahlberg, eds., Text, Discourse, and Corpora, 219-246. London: Continuum.
  • Mahlberg, M. 2013. Corpus Stylistics and Dickens’s Fiction. New York: Routledge. [https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203076088]
  • Martin, G. A. 2011. Comparison and other “Modes of Order” in the plays of Bernard Shaw. International Journal of English Studies 12(2), 151-169. [https://doi.org/10.6018/ijes/2012/2/161801]
  • Mastropierro, L. 2017. Corpus Stylistics in Heart of Darkness and its Italian Translations. London: Bloomsbury.
  • McEnery, T., R. Xiao and Y. Tono. 2006. Corpus-based Language Studies. London: Routledge.
  • McEnery, T. and A. Wilson. 2007. Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Meyer, C. F. 2002. English Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511606311]
  • Partington, A. 1998. Patterns and Meanings. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. [https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.2]
  • Pennebaker, J. W. and L. A. King. 1999. Linguistic styles: Language use as an individual difference. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 7(6), 1296-1310. [https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1296]
  • Pennebaker, J. W. and L. D. Stone. 2003. Words of wisdom: Language use over the life span. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85(2), 291-301. [https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.291]
  • Scott, M. 2004. WordSmith Tools. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Semino, E. and M. Short. 2004. Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. [https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203494073]
  • Spencer, J. and M. Gregory. 1964. An approach to the study of style. In J. Spencer, ed., Linguistics and Style, 57-105. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Stubbs, M. 2005. Conrad in the computer: examples of quantitative stylistics methods. Language and Literature 14-1, 5-24. [https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947005048873]
  • Studer, P. 2014. Historical Corpus Stylistics: Media, Technology and Change. New York: Bloomsbury.
  • Ullmann, S. 1964. Language and Style. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  • van Peer, W. 1989. Quantitative studies of literature: a critique and an outlook. Computers and the Humanities 23(4), 301-307. [https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02176635]
  • Verdonk, P. 2002. Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Wynne, M. 2006. Stylistics: corpus approaches. In K. Brown, ed., The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 223-226. Oxford: Elsevier. [https://doi.org/10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00553-8]