Dorian Gray and the Wilde Senses by Signe Juel Nordentoft A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of The Picture of Dorian Gray Dorian Gray and the Wilde Senses: A Corpus Stylistic Analysis of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Signe Juel Nordentoft Aalborg University Supervisor: Associate Professor, PhD. Marie Møller Jensen June 2nd, 2020 Nordentoft Abstract Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891c) offers an intriguingly sensuous read- ing experience. In the study reported here, two approaches within corpus stylistics were com- bined with cognitive stylistics and foregrounding theory, pursuing three aims. Firstly, the goal was to investigate stylistic characteristics of the novel via a bottom-up corpus-driven method- ological approach. Secondly, the colour motif was analysed in a top-down corpus-assisted ap- proach. Thirdly, the two approaches were compared in terms of results yielded, and difficulties and advantages encountered. Throughout both analyses, the corpus methods yielded the quan- titative data used as a stepping stone for the qualitative analysis, founded in cognitive stylistics and foregrounding theory. The corpus-driven analysis yielded innovative and rather dissimilar results, pointing towards multiple stylistic effects: the creation of dramatic effect; an effect of auditory stimulation; defamiliarization processes of beautiful entities; and a foregrounding of subjective intuitive feeling. The corpus-assisted analysis yielded focused results regarding the way in which the colour motif comes to be perceived as foregrounded. First of all, this analysis revealed that colour adjectives are used significantly more frequently in The Picture of Dorian Gray than in the three reference corpora consisting of Wilde’s works, Gothic literature, and literary works of Wilde’s contemporaries. It also revealed that the use of hyphenated compound adjectives is a unique characteristic of the novel and that a motif of possessions is attached to the colour motif, foregrounding dead objects in the text. Moreover, it was found that the novel’s style is poetic and rich in the sense that the textual level is embellished and heavily adorned, making for an aesthetically powerful reading experience. The impression of a strong sensuous aspect was substantiated by the analysis, in which it was found that the text creates visual and tactile stimuli in the mind of the reader. In the comparison of the two approaches, it was found that the corpus-driven approach offers quite a few disadvantages, including a fragmented ar- gumentation, disparate outcomes, and a detachment from the co-text. These issues have to be i Nordentoft amended by the stylistician at some cost of time but resulting in an analysis with high validity and originality. In the comparison, it was also found that the corpus-assisted approach had a clear advantage in its intrinsic focus, making for a targeted and unified argumentation but at the cost of possible spontaneity and serendipity. Consequently, it can be argued that in stylistics a combination of methods can be beneficial, though no exact estimate of the optimal distribu- tion of the approaches can be offered. ii Nordentoft Table of contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Table of contents ...................................................................................................................... iii List of Tables and Figures.......................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. vii 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2. Theory ................................................................................................................................. 5 2.1. Stylistics .......................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.1. Stylistics from Antiquity to present time .................................................................. 7 2.1.2. A theory of stylistics ............................................................................................... 10 2.2. Cognitive stylistics ........................................................................................................ 11 2.2.1. Schema theory and the idealized cognitive model ................................................. 13 2.3. Foregrounding theory .................................................................................................... 16 2.3.1. Defamiliarization .................................................................................................... 17 2.3.2. Entrenchment and salience ..................................................................................... 18 2.5. Corpus stylistics ............................................................................................................ 21 2.6. Quantitative and qualitative approaches ....................................................................... 24 3. Methods................................................................................................................................ 27 3.1. Corpus-driven and corpus-assisted approaches ............................................................. 27 3.2. Corpus design ................................................................................................................ 31 3.2.2. The corpora ............................................................................................................. 37 3.3. Software – AntConc, TagAnt, and corpus annotation .................................................. 43 3.4. Corpus stylistics statistics and hypothesis testing ......................................................... 47 4. Corpus driven analysis ......................................................................................................... 54 4.1. Detecting patterns in a keyness analysis of tags ........................................................... 54 4.2. Keyword analysis .......................................................................................................... 58 4.3. Key verbs and their co-text ........................................................................................... 59 4.4. Key adjectives and their co-text .................................................................................... 65 4.5. Striking keywords – ‘Thing’, ‘Things’, and ‘Something’ ............................................. 68 4.6. Conclusion of the corpus-driven analysis ..................................................................... 71 iii Nordentoft 5. Corpus assisted analysis ....................................................................................................... 73 5.1. Testing the hypothesis – A quantitative analysis .......................................................... 73 5.1.1. Null hypothesis significance test ............................................................................ 78 5.1.2. Hyphenated compound colour adjectives ............................................................... 83 5.1.3. The word ‘Gilt’ – Describing materialism ............................................................. 89 5.2. Conclusion of the corpus-assisted analysis ................................................................... 93 6. Discussion and conclusion ................................................................................................... 95 6.1. Comparing the results of the corpus-driven and corpus-assisted analyses ................... 95 6.2. Fischer-Starcke’s criteria – Evaluating the results ........................................................ 98 6.3. Comparing the corpus-driven and the corpus-assisted approaches ............................. 103 7. References .......................................................................................................................... 106 8. Corpora references ............................................................................................................. 115 9. Appendices ......................................................................................................................... 122 Appendix A: Anthony’s Tree Tagger Set .......................................................................... 122 Appendix B: p value calculation ........................................................................................ 123 Appendix C: Keyword analysis.......................................................................................... 124 Keywords in PDG compared to Wilde ........................................................................... 124 Keywords in PDG compared to GothLit ........................................................................ 128 Keywords in PDG compared to ContempLit .................................................................. 134 iv Nordentoft List of Tables and Figures Table 1. Wilde corpus contents…................................................................................ 38 Table 2. GothLit corpus contents…............................................................................. 39-40 Table 3. ContempLit corpus contents….....................................................................