A Corpus-based Stylistics Study On Fantasy Literature

George Raymond Richard Martin is the master of fantasy fiction in America.A Song of Ice and Fire,which is published in 1996,is the most representative work of him.Although scholars at home and abroad have made a lot of achievements in the study of A Song of Ice and Fire,the studies in the perspective of linguistics are less involved.Corpus Stylistics applies the corpus-based method to the traditional stylistics,which is the combination of quantitative and qualitative research.The objective data extreacted by corpus tools provides an empirical and reliable interpretation for literary works.In this study,on the basis of theoretical of Corpus Stylistics and Leech and Short(2007)’s list of literary stylistic analysis,based on the the self-built observed corpus “A Song of Ice and Fire” and the reference corpus which is consisted of 28th American fictions of different genres,with the help of Word Smith Tools,it researches the stylistic features and manifestation mode from lexical,syntactic and rhetorical category.The results show that :(1)At the lexical level,A Song of Ice and Fire has a shorter word length but a rich vocabulary and contains a large amount of information.The POV narrative writing stlyle is used to constantly shift the third person perspective.Although this novel is based on the background of real history,it includes various fantasy elements,which is the combination of reality and fantasy.(2)At the syntactic level,the sentences in A Song of Ice and Fire are long,but the sentence structure is simple.And the narration of A Song of Ice and Fire is more passionate.(3)At the rhetorical level,the two pole conflict between “Ice” and “Fire” is the core and the power source of the development of the novel.The theory of Corpus Stylistics applied to the analysis of stylistics of fantasy novels enhances the explanatory power of corpus stylistics to literary texts.Two corpora established in this study provide references for future related studies,provide inspiration for writers’ creation and readers’ appreciation of the fantasy novel A Song of Ice and Fire and promote the teaching and learning of literature and linguistics.