A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of 'Pride and Prejudice'

Introduction

Studies that approach literary texts with corpus linguistic methods are developing, and the use of corpus (corpora) in stylistics has become increasingly popular in recent years, and the term corpus stylistics is substantially popular. This approach combines traditional literary analysis with modern computational methods, allowing researchers to examine texts in new ways. The Latin word corpus (corpora) refers to a collection of texts that means "body." The texts are saved in an electronic database. Baker, Hardie, and MacEnery argue that "although a corpus does not contain new information about language by using software packages which process data, we can obtain a new perspective on the familiar" (48-49). This computational approach helps researchers identify patterns and features that might be missed through traditional reading methods.

Corpus stylistics is a branch of computational linguistics, as Wales (1989) points out. It was developed in the late 1960s as a response to growing needs in literary analysis. It helps to investigate certain characteristics of the data, like the length of words and sentences, based on statistical and computer-aided tools to study a number of issues related to style (85). While it shares many features with traditional corpus linguistics, corpus stylistics has its own unique focus. As McIntyre explains, corpus stylistics is simply corpus linguistics with a different object of study (literature as opposed to non-literary language). Besides, he demonstrates that the difference between them is that corpus stylistics is not only borrowing tools from corpus linguistics, but it makes itself unique by using qualitative tools and techniques of stylistics to analyze texts with the help of computational methods (McIntyre 60). This combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches makes corpus stylistics particularly valuable for literary analysis.

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This paper presents a corpus stylistic analysis of Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice." The novel will be analyzed according to a corpus stylistic approach, focusing on patterns of language use and stylistic features that characterize Austen's writing. The current paper focuses specifically on analyzing the electronic form of the novel, examining recurrent word combinations and patterns found in the text through corpus software analysis. This methodological approach allows us to identify significant linguistic patterns that might not be apparent through traditional reading. As Mahlberg sees it, corpus stylistics serves as "a way of bringing the study of language and literature closer together" (2007: 3). Through this analysis, we aim to reveal how Austen's linguistic choices contribute to the novel's themes and characterization.

Research Methodologies

The methodology of the study follows Mahlberg & McIntyre's (2012) method. This model focuses on one literary text by one autor. They explain that studying one text may be considered as a 'small sample of data' but then they assert that this text is still regarded as part of a corpus (206). This approach is particularly suitable for detailed analysis of a single literary work.

For this study, the data was taken from the electronic version of "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen. The electronic text was processed using specialized corpus analysis software, which allows efficient analysis of large texts in a relatively short time. This computational approach provides two key advantages: first, it helps achieve the objectivity that statisticians seek, and second, it can reveal crucial textual features that might be missed in manual analysis. As McIntyre notes, corpus stylistics combines tools from corpus linguistics with qualitative techniques of stylistics to analyze texts through computational methods, creating a more comprehensive analytical approach.

This work aims to examine keywords, key semantic domains, and clusters. Firstly, keywords can be defined as the most frequent or repeated words in a single text or group of texts in comparison to a reference corpus. Words are a crucial part of any corpus study. There are three groups of words in general: proper nouns, content, and function words. Mahlberg and McIntyre point out that the most common words are function words. They work as the constituents of any text. However, content words are the carriers of meaning and writers' messages. For this reason, they are important for studying (384). In the case of "Pride and Prejudice," the analysis of content words helps reveal the novel's major themes and character relationships.

Gliozzo and Strapparava define semantic domains as fields characterized by lexically coherent words. The lexical coherence assumption can be exploited for computational purposes because it allows us to define automatic acquisition' (5). For our analysis, semantic domains are particularly important as they help identify thematic patterns in the novel. By examining how words cluster into semantic domains, we can better understand Austen's use of language to create meaning and develop themes throughout the text.

The analysis focuses on three main aspects:

• Identifying the most frequent keywords and their contexts;
• Analyzing the semantic domains these keywords belong to;
• Examining how these patterns contribute to the novel's themes and characterization.

Discussion

Corpus stylistics brings the methods of corpus linguistics to the practice of stylistics. When we talk about corpus stylistics, we specifically refer to the study of literary texts. Different researchers have different opinions about what exactly corpus stylistics means. For example, Mahlberg thinks it is a methodology that combines different approaches and is basically 'a way of bringing the study of language and literature closer together' (Mahlberg, 2007, p. 219). Wynne (2006) also thinks that corpus stylistics is mainly about studying literary language. However, some researchers like Semino and Short think differently. In their book Corpus Stylistics (2004), they also look at news reports and autobiographies.

My research of Pride and Prejudice shows several interesting patterns in the text. Using corpus analysis tools helped me find out that some words appear more often than others, and this tells us something important about the story. The analysis shows that words related to social status and relationships appear frequently in the novel, which makes sense because the story is about marriage and social class in 19th century England.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel written by Jane Austen and published on January 28, 1813. When I analyzed this novel using corpus tools, I found it interesting how it tells about upper-middle-class love in England in the late 19th century. The main character is Elizabeth Bennet, who lives in Longbourn, England. From the words used to describe her in the text, we can see that Elizabeth is cheerful and polite but also very smart and strong - she doesn't let anyone push her around.

The story focuses on the Bennet family with their five unmarried daughters. Even though they are quite rich, they have a big problem - they don't have any sons. Because of this, all their property must go to Mr. Collins (their uncle) when Mr. Bennet dies. When I looked at the frequency of words in the text, I noticed that words about money and marriage appear a lot, which shows how important these themes are. This explains why Mrs. Bennet is so worried and keeps trying to get her daughters married to rich men.

My corpus analysis shows some interesting patterns in how Austen describes these family relationships. For example, words like 'marriage,' 'money,' and 'property' frequently appear in contexts related to the Bennet family's situation. This really shows how the story connects social status with marriage prospects.

I chose Pride and Prejudice for my corpus analysis for several reasons. First, it's really popular - lots of people love it, and it's always on the list of the best books ever made by scholars and regular readers. It's actually sold more than 20 million copies, which shows how many people connect with this story.

When I started analyzing the text, which has 122,007 words in total, I found lots of interesting 'thematic signals.' These are special words that show up a lot and tell us what the story is really about. They're like clues that help us understand the main themes. For example, I found that the novel has romantic themes (obviously!) but also some psychological stuff going on, especially when you look at how characters think about pride and social status.

Looking at these thematic signals helped me understand why this book is still so popular today. When I used corpus tools to count and analyze these words, I found something interesting - there are certain words that keep showing up in important moments of the story. These words aren't just random - they help tell the story and show what Austen thought was important.

When I was analyzing the text with corpus tools, I found some really interesting patterns. Like, the word 'married' (which appears 57 times!) is super important in the story. This makes sense because the whole story is about love and marriage in upper-middle class England.

I also checked other important words. The word 'trust' shows up 28 times, which I think is pretty significant for the story's themes. And get this - the word 'pride' appears 56 times! That's almost as much as 'married', which really shows how the title connects to what happens in the story.

When I looked at how these words are used in different parts of the text, I found something cool. Let me show you an example of how the word 'married' appears in context:

• When it talks about the Bennet girls getting "married advantageously" (showing up in 4 different places);
• Mrs. Bennet keeps saying it's "a delightful thing" to be married (this appears quite a few times);
• The word often comes up when they're talking about money or social status.

I think this shows how marriage isn't just about love in the story - it's also about money and social position, which is probably why these words keep appearing together.

When I was organizing all the words I found in my analysis, I used Mahlberg and McIntyre's method (2012, 210) to group them. They suggest looking at two main types of words: ones that create the fictional world and ones that show important themes. Here's what I found:

In the fictional world category, I found lots of different types of words:

• Character names - like obviously Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy appear a lot, as the Bennet family and Mr. Collins;
• Body parts - the text mentions faces, eyes, and mouths quite often when describing characters;
• Clothes - there are lots of mentions of gowns (especially for parties and weddings!), coats, and stockings;
• Places - the story moves between different houses like Netherfield and Pemberly House, and of course Longbourn where the Bennets live.

Then there are the thematic signals - these are the really important words that show up when something significant is happening in the story. Words like 'pride' (obviously!), 'admiration,' 'prejudice,' and 'trust' appear at key moments. Also, 'married' is a super important word because it connects to the main plot.

I noticed that these words often appear together in interesting ways. Words about clothes often show up when characters are at important social events, and words about body parts (especially eyes) often appear when characters are having emotional moments.

Keywords in Pride and Prejudice

For my analysis, I used the Wmatrix3 tool to find the most important words in the novel. I compared the words in Pride and Prejudice with the BNC (British National Corpus) to see which ones stand out. This tool helped me create Table 2, which shows the top 22 keywords.

My results show that common words like 'the,' 'to,' 'of,' and 'and' appear most frequently. But here's the interesting part - even though these common words appear a lot, they're not always the most important for understanding the story. For example, the word 'advantage' doesn't appear as often, but when it does, it's usually at really important moments in the story.

I learned that you can't just trust the computer to tell you which words matter most. Sometimes, you need to look at the words yourself and think about how they're used in the story. Some words might not appear super often, but when they do, they're really important for understanding what's happening.

The words I found most interesting in my analysis were:

• Common words that create the basic structure of the text;
• Special words that appear at important moments;
• Words that show up in patterns when important things are happening in the story.

When I was doing my research, I found that Mahlberg and McIntyre make a really good point - they say we need to look carefully at concordance lines (which show how words are used in context) to really understand the keywords. They say this helps us see how words connect to the themes and the fictional world of the story (209). In my analysis, this really helped me understand how Austen uses certain words to create meaning.

Conclusion

After doing this corpus stylistics analysis of Pride and Prejudice, I've learned some interesting things. First, using both computer tools and human analysis together works really well. The computer tools helped me find patterns quickly (which saved me lots of time!), but I still needed to think about what these patterns actually meant.

Here's what I found most useful about using corpus stylistics:

• It helped me find patterns I might have missed just by reading;
• The computer tools made it much faster to analyze such a long text;
• Looking at how words are used in context showed me new things about the story.

But I also learned that you can't just rely on the computer. Sometimes, words that don't appear very often are actually super important for the story. That's why you need to combine computer analysis with careful reading.

I think the most interesting thing I found was how certain words keep appearing in patterns throughout the novel. These patterns aren't random - they show what Austen thought was important and how she built her themes and characters.

For future research, it would be interesting to compare Pride and Prejudice with Austen's other novels to see if she uses words in similar ways. We could also look more deeply at how the patterns of words change throughout different parts of the story.

References

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