Factual Mentality vs. Emotional Make-up: A Lexical Featural Analysis of Characters’ Dialogue in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

Suzan Makhloof

Abstract


This paper is mainly concerned with making a systematic and objective lexical analysis of the language used by the main dynamic characters (Gradgrind and Louisa) in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. This lexical analysis is mainly conducted in light of the lexical category in Leech and Short’s (2007) checklist of stylistic categories, each containing several subcategories. Some of the questions under each subcategory are answered in an attempt to unravel the stylistic significance underlying the language used by these characters, which enables the researcher to track their inner dynamicity throughout. This invites the researcher to stylistically tackle selected sentences uttered by these dynamic characters before the change, during change and after the change. As far as the lexical features are concerned, some lexical items (i.e., nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs) are used for characterization.

Keywords


Character Change, Hard Times, Lexical Analysis, Louisa, Gradgrind

Full Text:

PDF

References


Amen, D. (2008). Healing the hardware of the soul: Enhance your brain to improve your work, love and spiritual life. NY, US: Simon and Schuster.

Bodenheimer, R. (1991). The politics of story in Victorian social fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Boege, F. W. (1953, Dec). Recent criticism of Dickens. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 8(3), 171-187. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Brantlinger, P. (1971).Dickens and factories. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 26(3), 270-285. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Darr, R. (2014). Notes for a lecture on Invitation to Critical Thinking – Rudinow and Barry. Reasoning and Argumentation (RA 101). Retrieved from http://webpages.charter.net/criticalthinking106/Chapter2.html

Davis, P. (1999). Charles Dickens A to Z. The essential reference to his life and work. NY, US: Facts On File, Inc.

Dickens, C. (2005). Hard Times. San Diego, US: ICON Group International, Inc. (Original work published 1854)

Drabble, M. (ed.). (2000).The Oxford companion to English literature (6th ed.). NY, US: Oxford University Press, Inc.

Fahmy, Y. S. (2012). A study of the verbal and non-verbal language in Hard Times in assessment of Dickensian characterization (Master's thesis). Cairo: Faculty of Arts.

Fielding, K. J. (1956). Mill and Gradgrind. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 11(2), 148-151. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Hughes, J. L. (2013). Dickens as an educator. London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1902)

Kearns, K. (1992). A tropology of realism in Hard Times. ELH, 59(4), 857-881. Retrieved from Jstor database / http://www.jstor.org/

Leech, G. N. & Short, M. (2007). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. Great Britain: Pearson Education Ltd.

Thoroddsen, A. M. (2011). The theme of facts and fancy in Hard Times by Charles Dickens (B.A. thesis). Iceland: Faculty of Foreign Languages.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.9n.4p.49

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.