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

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References


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

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