Style Complexity in the Novels of William F. Buckley
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August 1996 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9700902 UMI Microform 9700902 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48103 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Sty le Co m pl e x it y in THE N o v els of W il l ia m F. B u c k l e y , J r . William Francis Meehan IQ B.A. Hampden-Sydney College M.A. University of Delaware Approved: ^ È iz k Michael J. Neth, Ph.D Director^ Laura C. Jarmon, Ph.D Reader Theodore J. Sherman, Ph.D. Donald L. Curry, Ph.D. Reader David L. Lavery, Ph.! prman, Department o f English Donald L. Curry, Ph.D. Dean, College o f GraduaéeSfudies Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract Style Complexity in the Novels of William F. Buckley Jr. by William Francis Meehan III The primary purpose of this study is to measure through clause analysis the style complexity in the novels of William F. Buckley Jr. This study also attempts to discover whether Buckley’s style exhibits any trends, whether the style in his ten Blackford Oakes novels differs from the style in his one departure form the spy genre, and whether the clause analysis procedure is a reliable measure of an author’s style complexity. The method used to examine Buckley’s style is clause analysis, a procedure initiated by Walter A. Cook at Georgetown University and developed by Louis A. Arena at the University of Delaware. Based on tagmemic grammar, this linguistic approach to style analysis involves three steps; 1) reduction of the corpus to single clause structures according to the main verb phrase construction in each clause; 2) identification of each clause type and the separation of main clauses from dependent clauses; and 3) calculation of style complexity, which includes Average Sentence Length (ASL), Average Block Length (ABL), and Average Clause Depth (ACD). A total of 1711 clauses from Buckley’s eleven novels is analyzed. Clause analysis shows that Buckley requires his readers to process less than 3.0 clauses per sentence, slightly more than 2.0 main clauses per clause, and less than 2.0 embedded clauses per clause. This means that Buckley’s style is similar or equal to the style in Heller’s Catch-22, Twain’s Innocents Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly's Lover. It also means that Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Buckley’s style is not as difficult to process as Faulkner’s Light in August, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Kaflca’s The Trial, or Thoreaus’s Walden. Clause analysis also demonstrates that Buckley’s style over the nineteen years he has been writing novels does not display any detectable trends; that the style in the ten Blackford Oakes novels does not differ from the style in the one departure from the espionage genre; that clause analysis is a reliable method of measuring a writer’s style complexity when it is modified to include a larger corpus of at least 150 clauses from a novel. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgments I thank my committee for their service: Michael J. Neth, Ph.D. as director, and Theodore J. Sherman, Ph.D., Laura C. Jarmon, Ph.D., and Donald L. Curry, Ph.D. as readers. In particular, I am indebted to Dean Curry for his scholarly contribution. I express my gratitude to William F. Buckley Jr., who not only allowed me to peruse his speech files, but who also set aside almost two hours of his time to discuss his novels with me. My visits to National Review were facilitated by Frances Bronson, his executive assistant; I am appreciative for her ministration. I am beholden to Louis A. Arena, Ph D., one of my professors at the University of Delaware, not only for encouraging me to pursue this study, but also for allowing me to borrow his clause analysis procedure and research. I am grateful for the assistance of Sondra Lee Turner, Ph.D., who wrote the seminal work on Buckley’s spy novels and who, through hours of phone conversations, has affirmed my belief that studying Buckley as a novelist is a long-overdue and rewarding academic pursuit. I am obliged to Sutee Sujitparapitaya, senior research analyst in MTSU’s Office of Institutional Research, for designing the graphs, and I am thankful for the cooperation of Betty Neal McFall, head of the interlibrary loan office in Todd Library. I am deeply indebted to the following for their support: Jane duPont Lunger; R. Brett Lunger; Ronda Minor; M. Lisa Wilkins, my sister; M. Cordelia Serge, my aunt and godmother. And, 1 am eternally grateful to William F. Meehan Jr. and Catherine C. Meehan, my parents, whose love heartens me in all my endeavors. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents List of Fig u res .......................................................................................................................ii List of T a b le s .................................................................................................................iii Preface............................................................................................................................ vi Chapter I. Introduction: A Tagmemic Description of English Grammar . 1 U. Background and Procedure: Measuring Style Complexity ..................... 34 III. Results: the Clause Analyses.................................................................... 59 IV. Discussion and Conclusion: Buckley’s Style Complexity ......................... 126 Appendix A Mean Style Complexity Based on Three Readings Per Novel ....................................... 158 Appendix B Interview with William F. Buckley, Jr....................................................................... 163 Works Cited ................................................................................................................... 173 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. List of Figures Figure 1. Kernel Sentence Patterns and Derived Sentence Patterns .......................... 6 Figure 2. Examples of Nine Derived Sentence T y p e s ............................................ 7 Figure 3. Subordinating Particles that Designate Time ................................................ 16 Figure 4. Subordinators that Indicate Manner ...............................................................17 Figure 5. Prepositions in English ................................................................................. 23 Figure 6. Determiners in English ............................................................................. 26 Figure 7. Modal Auxiliaries in English ....................................................................27 Figure 8. Intensifiers in E nglish ................................................................................. 28 Figure 9. Subordinating Particles that Introduce Dependent Clauses ........................... 29 Figure 10. Codes Used in Clause A nalysis ...................................................................48 Figure 11. Buckley’s Style Complexity 1976-1995: Average Sentence Length . .136 Figure 12. Buckley’s Style Complexity 1976-1995: Average Block Length . .137 Figure 13. Buckley’s Style Complexity