This paper reports recent findings in ongoing research into the limits of applying the methods of corpus linguistics (CL) to the analysis of ‘verbal art’ using Hasan’s Systemic Socio-Semantic Stylistics framework (SSS; Hasan 1985). The text investigated is Coetzee’s novel Foe – a post-colonial rewriting of Robinson Crusoe. Focus is on the evaluation of the notion truth' in Foe by means of APPRAISAL SYSTEMS (Martin and White 2005) and identification of appraisers, appraisees/eds, also considering what Thompson (2014) calls the ‘Russian Doll’ dilemma: the overlapping of different Appraisal categories. The comparative wordlists and keywordlists compiled, for both Foe and Robinson Crusoe as reference corpus, reveal potentially relevant lexical items, including silence/word/story/tru* (truth/true/truly), subsequently analyzed in concordances for meaningful patterns of evaluation and significant textual location. Findings bring us closer to the novel’s Theme, defined by Hasan as a meaningful reflection about human existence. This is tentatively formulated as the complex and relative connection between silence/words, authorship (in both fiction and history) and veracity. Our findings also show how CL plays a valuable instrumental role in SSS: a means for identifying significant features which, however, call for further manual scrutiny, also - crucially - taking into account the text’s ‘context of creation’.

Software-assisted systemic socio-semantic stylistics – Appraising tru* in J. M. Coetzee’s Foe

donna rose miller;antonella luporini
2018

Abstract

This paper reports recent findings in ongoing research into the limits of applying the methods of corpus linguistics (CL) to the analysis of ‘verbal art’ using Hasan’s Systemic Socio-Semantic Stylistics framework (SSS; Hasan 1985). The text investigated is Coetzee’s novel Foe – a post-colonial rewriting of Robinson Crusoe. Focus is on the evaluation of the notion truth' in Foe by means of APPRAISAL SYSTEMS (Martin and White 2005) and identification of appraisers, appraisees/eds, also considering what Thompson (2014) calls the ‘Russian Doll’ dilemma: the overlapping of different Appraisal categories. The comparative wordlists and keywordlists compiled, for both Foe and Robinson Crusoe as reference corpus, reveal potentially relevant lexical items, including silence/word/story/tru* (truth/true/truly), subsequently analyzed in concordances for meaningful patterns of evaluation and significant textual location. Findings bring us closer to the novel’s Theme, defined by Hasan as a meaningful reflection about human existence. This is tentatively formulated as the complex and relative connection between silence/words, authorship (in both fiction and history) and veracity. Our findings also show how CL plays a valuable instrumental role in SSS: a means for identifying significant features which, however, call for further manual scrutiny, also - crucially - taking into account the text’s ‘context of creation’.
2018
On Verbal Art. Essays in Honour of Ruqaiya Hasan
53
79
donna rose miller; antonella luporini
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/642116
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