A Corpus-based Study Of Characters In Literary Works From Suspended Quotations

In recent years, corpus linguistics has found its rapid application to literature increasingly. However, most of research makes a quantitative analysis of keywords &clusters to objectify literary interpretation. This thesis introduces a new checklist,“suspended quotation”, into character analysis in corpus stylistics. Based on self-made corpora, the study explores how suspended quotations help present character information in corpus stylistics by taking a character, Professor Snape in the Harry Potter Series written by an English writer J. K. Rowling as an example, with corpus software and manual screening.The research procedures are presented below: 1) Based on self-made corpora, the study sets out to retrieve suspended quotations related to Snape with the software and manual screening; 2) The study syntactically classifies the sentence patterns in suspended quotations related to Snape and analyzes how the sentence patterns,especially the highly frequent ones could help reveal the character; 3) The study classifies the body language from the content and elucidates how body language helps present more real aspects of the character; 4) The study classifies the contextual information and digs into how contextual information emphasizes the character from multi-angles; 5) The study intends to judge from the form or the content, whether suspended quotations could provide beneficial information for characters in corpus stylistics and could be a certain place where body language shows frequently in literary works.Through the classification and analysis, the thesis arrives at the following findings: 1) Simple sentences with adjoint adverbial structures are most frequently used in suspended quotations, which upholds the impact of synchronicity between the speech and body language and in turn suggests similarities to the co-occurrence of speech and body language in real life; other sentence patterns, namely complex sentence, compound sentence and compound-complex sentence, and simple sentence with SVO/SLP structures alternate, diversifying sentence patterns, providing circumstantial information to the character and guiding readers into the character’s mind better; 2) The body language, such as roars, black glittering eyes and twisted smiles in suspended quotations repeatedly appears only when the communicative objects are Harry, Snape’s favorite and hateful student and Black and Lupin, his enemies in school life. His speech accompanied with the repeated body language subconsciously discloses a real Snape, cold, calm and rigorous on the surface, but self-abased, self-respectful, brave and loyal in deep heart; 3) The contextual information here highlights Snape’s strict and undesirable aspects from multi-angles,which not only has a profound influence on readers, but also paves a way for the sharp contrast, the soft and self-sacrificial respects hidden in Snape, revealing from the end of the book; 4) Suspended quotations are the means to provide insights for characters in corpus stylistics and could be a place where body language shows frequently in literary works.The significance of the research lies in that it is valuable to retrieve and analyze the suspended quotation related to a specific person in narrative fictions. As a new checklist, it is found to be effective in quantifying and pinning down body language in literary works, which conveys more real and rich feelings of the character. The contextual information adds more to the character and has a notable effect on readers.In sum, sentence patterns, body language and contextual information in suspended quotations work jointly in uncovering subtle information of the character and emphasizing the character repeatedly, which suggests a more objective and original perspective for corpus stylistics.