Language and Style in the Inheritors

by Hoover, David L.

• ISBN13: 9780761812630
• ISBN10: 0761812636
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-25
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

Language and Style in The Inheritors; links the linguistic characteristics of the language of William Golding's underappreciated second novel with larger stylistic and thematic issues to achieve a satisfying and persuasive interpretation while also demonstrating the usefulness and effectiveness(and some of the limitations) of linguistic and computer-assisted approaches, without being overwhelmingly theoretical or technical. This analysis uses comparative data from a corpus of more than thirty British and American novels to compare and contrast with the contents of The Inheritors. It begins with a discussion of point of view, style, and interpretation and moves into an examination of The Inheritors in regard to other works that focus on it. The author then provides a discussion of Golding's manipulation of transitivity to produce the animistic character of the novel, and a statistical analysis of its readability, sentence complexity, and vocabulary complexity, followed by an analysis of diction. He concludes with an integration of the linguistic discoveries with important thematic issues, and a consideration of altered versions of The Inheritors.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Graphs	p. iv
List of Abbreviations	p. vi
Preface	p. viii
Point of View, Style, and Interpretation	p. 1
A Famous Analysis Revisited	p. 19
Transitivity, Agency, and Animism	p. 53
Readability, Vocabulary Richness, and Other Statistical Measures	p. 79
Words, Words, Words: Diction and Dialogue	p. 115
Language and Style	p. 155
Novel Corpus: Rank List	p. 169
Novel Corpus: Alphabetic List	p. 203
Notes	p. 237
References	p. 241
Index	p. 247
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