《荆棘鸟》写作风格特点分析——基于语料库的研究【毕业论文】.doc

1、 I （ 20_ _届） 本科毕业 设计 英语 荆棘鸟写作风格特点分析 基于语料库的研究 A Corpus-based Study on the Writing Style of The Thorn Birds II 摘要 荆棘鸟是澳大利亚著名女作家考琳麦卡洛的作品。自 1977 年出版以来一直风靡全球，受到广大读者、学者的钟爱。在语言学中，语料库指有特定用途的文本的集合。语料库是语言学习、研究的基础资源和工具。本文旨在使用语料库，采用定量的方法分析荆棘鸟的写作特点。首先建 立荆棘鸟的语料库。然后利用检索软件对荆棘鸟文本进行检索，得出词表、关键词表以及荆棘鸟的整体信息。 最后通过对检索结果的分

2、析 得出荆棘鸟写作风格的特点即本文具有浓厚的地方色彩，以宗教，爱情为主线对人物之间的纠葛及命运的发展进行描写，在字里行间体现出女性主义色彩等。 关键字： 梅吉；拉尔夫；德罗海达；爱情；宗教；地方色彩；女性主义 III Abstract The Thorn Birds is written by Australian writer Colleen McCullough. It has been popular and followed by many readers and scholars from different countries since 1977. In linguistics,

3、 corpus indicates a body of text assembled according to explicit design criteria for a specific purpose. Corpus is basic resources for language learning and research. This thesis uses quantitative method to analyze the characteristics of The Thorn Birds. Firstly, set up the corpus of The Thorn Birds

4、. Secondly, use the functions of some retrieval package like Concordance, Concordance Plot, File View, Clusters, Collocates and Wordlist to get general information of The Thorn Birds. At the same time, show the wordlist and keyword list. Finally, find out the characteristics of The Thorn Birds, like

5、 local color, the theme-love and religion and feminism by analyzing the collected data. Key words: Meggie； Ralph; Drogheda； love； religion； local color; feminism IV Contents Abstract . III 1. Introduction . 1 1.1 Introduction of The Thorn Birds . 1 1.2 The aim of chosen title and significance of res

6、earch . 1 2. Literature Review . 1 2.1 Introduction of Corpus . 1 2.2 Previous studies on The Thorn Birds . 3 3. Research Design . 5 3.1 Research questions . 5 3.2 Methods . 5 3.3 Procedure . 5 4. Analyses and results . 6 4.1 Descriptive statistics . 6 4.2 Analyses of the writing style of The Thorn

7、Birds . 9 5. Discussion . 10 6. Conclusion . 12 Bibliography . 12 Acknowledgements . 14 Appendix: Keyword list of The Thorn Birds (Top 500) . 15 1 1. Introduction 1.1 Introduction of The Thorn Birds The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel written by Australian author Colleen McCullough. After t

8、hat, many producers use this novel as the raw material to make television mini-series and films. This novel is popular and followed by numbers of readers from different countries. This novel uses a small area- Drogheda as its background and introduces many local traditions. The story begins with Meg

9、gie and her family living in New Zealand in the early twentieth century. Her father is Paddy, an Irish farm laborer, and her mother Fee. Meggie has several elder brothers. Paddy is poor, but has a wealthy sister, Mary Carson, who lives in Australia on an enormous sheep place called Drogheda. One day

10、, Paddy receives a letter from Mary who offers him a job on her estate. He accepts, and the whole family moves to the Outback. Meggie falls in love with old Aunt Marys capable and ambitious Father Ralph de Bricassart who was punished for insulting a bishop is relegated to a remote parish in the town

11、 of Gillanbone, near Drogheda. In fact, the priest can not love common people. His love with Meggie is not known by others. Ralph befriends Mary, hoping that a hefty enough bequest from her to the Catholic Church might liberate him from his exile. Aunt Mary loves Ralph for many years. Finally, she f

12、inds the love affairs between Ralph and Meggie. This story describes the complicated relationship between the three characters. 1.2 The aim of chosen title and significance of research This paper aims at using several functions of the AntConc, like Concordance, Concordance Plot, File View, Clusters,

13、 Collocates, Wordlist and keyword list to analyze the characteristics of The Thorn Birds. We can find that studies in theme, feminism and local color of this novel are insufficient in other researches. This paper, based on corpus, tries to discuss the characteristics of The Thorn Birds by analyzing

14、how the word and phrase realize the significant meaning in expressing the theme. It may develop the study of The Thorn Birds. It can help people to make a further understanding of English language, enhance the sensitivity to the target language and promote the cross culture communication. 2. Literat

15、ure Review 2.1 Introduction of Corpus 2 In modern linguistics, a corpus can be defined as a body of naturally occurring language, though strictly speaking: “It should be added that computer corpora are rarely haphazard collections of textual material: They are generally assembled with particular pur

16、poses in mind, and are often assembled to be (informally speaking) representative of some language or text type”. There are many ways to define a corpus, but there is an increasing consensus that a corpus is a collection of (1) machine-readable (2) authentic texts (including transcripts of spoken da

17、ta) which is (3) sampled to be (4) representative of a particular language or language variety. (Quoted from Tony McEnery, Richard Xiao and Yukio Tono, 2006) Corpus is basic resources for language learning and research. In linguistics, it indicates the collection of numerous texts. These texts are w

18、ell-recognized and well- established in computer. They have specific formats and signs. Corpus has three characteristics: Firstly, the texts in corpus truly appeared in practice. Secondly, corpus is recourse of language learning, but does not mean language knowledge. Lastly, corpus needs analysis an

19、d settlement before it puts into practice. The development of corpus has experienced the first generation, the second generation and the third generation. Corpus-based research has already been responsible for significant developments in linguistic theory, linguistic description, natural language pr

20、ocessing, and in foreign language teaching theory and practice. In recent years, corpus is widely used in language analysis, context analysis, and literature works analysis. Many researches have been done on literature works analysis at home and abroad. For example, Bill Louw uses corpus to analyze

21、words and phrases of 4 poems. The results show the intuitive comprehension of critics can be proved directly by data-assisted literature comments. Wikberg makes a contrastive analysis between the writing style of Life on Earth and The Birthday Party based on corpus. The researcher uses TACT to resea

22、rch, lists word type ratio and word token ratio, and finds that phrases of the former works are more abundant than other one. In order to get further research on the characteristics of Life on earth, the researcher lists all highly used words in Chapter 3 and 6 respectively. In chapter 3, the highly

23、 used words are “insects”, “plants” and “flowers”. While in chapter 6, the highly used words are “water”, “fish” and “egg”. Data shows that two chapters have different focuses. Chapter 3 focuses on insects and plants. Chapter 6 focuses on fish and animals. The verbs following these highly used words

24、 are “develop”, “grow” and “become” which indicate the development and evolution of the living things. (Quoted from He Anping, 2004) Chinese researchers use corpus to analyze many texts. Zhang You（ 2001） uses the function of Wordlist to collect the place name of the Tess of the DUrbervilles; the res

25、ult shows forty-seven place names. Blackmoor, HambledonHill, Bulbarrow are the real names of the English historic spots. All the descriptions of the background are origin from the English 3 town-Dorchester. At the same time, wordlist also lists some old names of the places, such as Shaston, Stourcas

26、tle, Casterbridge. This novel is one of the most famous novels with local color. Ren Penhong (2008) uses Concordance to lists all the sentences with the names of main characters in Wuthering Heights. Use these statistics to analyze the personalities of Heath Cliff. The result shows four hundreds and

27、 twenty-seven words to describe the Heath Cliff, most of them are bad words like rough， uncultivated, irritated, hard, cruel, diabolical, atrocious, violent nature. These words show his horror and cruelty personalities. Xu Ke (2009) uses corpus to analyze the Chrysanthemum. The collected data provid

28、e the rational understanding of this novel. The author uses corpus to analyze the writing style of the Chrysanthemum, characteristics of word usage and the frequency of key words. The result shows the dualism of this novel. Yang Xiuzhen, Xu Na and Liu Meiyu (2010) use corpus to analyze the words usa

29、ge of The Twilight Saga. They use Wordlist to find out the most highly used word is I. They have to ask a question why the most highly used word is I. In order to investigate this question, the authors compare The Twilight Saga with the Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, and Robinson Crosio. They find that

30、 the use of I is one of the main characteristics of The Twilight Saga. In most cases, I is refers to the main character Bella. This novel uses first person instead of her name. Readers can imagine they are main characters of this novel and attach themselves to the mystery world. The highly used verb

31、s make this novel simple, interesting and readable. The researchers set up corpora of Dream of the Red Chamber, Hemingways A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Shakespeares tragedy Hamlet to analyze the characteristics from different points of view, such as writing style, the personality of main characters.

32、 Nowadays, corpora are also used to analyze the characteristics of news and speeches. It helps the government and news agencies improve their efficiency. Corpus is also widely used in language teaching. It becomes a useful tool for teachers and students. 2.2 Previous studies on The Thorn Birds Resea

33、rchers at home and abroad analyze The Thorn Birds from different points of view. Some Chinese researchers pay much attention to its theme-love, religion consciousness, female consciousness, immigration and local consciousness (Zhang Jinyang, LuoYanyan, 2006; Cao Shuangping, 2010). Some of them inves

34、tigate the writing method (Song Jianhua, 2001) and structure of this novel (Tang Koulan, 2001). Besides, most of the foreign researchers like to make a comparison between Australian culture and American culture. They pay much attention to the local culture in this novel and try to find out culture d

35、ifferences. In An Australian Ingredient in American Soap: the Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough, Morris, Gwens (1991) makes a comparison between 4 Australian culture and American culture. The author analyze integrate parts of the Australian culture and enhance the research of culture comparisons to

36、a new level. Others pay much attention to the author and the story. In Colleen McCullough, Steinberg, S. (1990) introduces the writer Colleen McCullough, her educational certificate, the background of this novel and her fiction series. In The curse of Colleen, Lipton, Michael A， Passa, Dennis(1996)

37、get the inspiration from television mini-series The Thorn Birds and make a conclusion of this novel. In China, Zeng Xiaohui, Lei Gang, Su Xuelian (2010) focus on its theme-love. This novel uses many words to describe the complicated love relationships between Meggie, Ralph and Mary. Their love is ha

38、rd and uncommon. Ralph enjoys the physical material from Mary and accepts the pure love from Meggie. The three persons, a priest, a little girl and an old woman get into emotional dispute. The Thorn Birds is named Gone with the Wind in Australian version. But there are few researches to analyze the

39、similarities between the two novels. Cao Shuangping (2010) compares the development of female consciousness in the two novels. Gone with the Wind was published after the first feminine liberation movement, the heroine shows out her brave challenge to the authority, insisting on her independent statu

40、s. The Thorn Birds was published after the second feminine liberation movement, so the author has a deep feeling towards the female consciousness. The heroines are not only pursuit equality between the male and female, but also advocate the traditional family structure on the basis of gender differe

41、nces. Song Jianhua (2001) compares the writing methods of The Thorn Birds, the Scarlet Letter and Rebecca which published in different periods. Rebecca is a kind of gothic novel with mystery, sadness and horror. The Thorn Birds is a kind of realistic novel with magnificent scenery and a bit of fatal

42、ism. The Scarlet Letter is a love tragedy. Rebecca has a good ending; main characters begin their new life. The Thorn Birds has a deep meaning which requires readers to think by themselves. Tang Koulan (2001) uses structuralism analysis method to illustrate the life philosophy of The Thorn Birds. Th

43、e author first analyses the basic structure of The Thorn Birds, then advances a new theory-dualism. Meggie and Ralph are the main characters of this novel. Meggie is portrayed as the opposite of Catholicism, Ralph as the opposite of humanity, and Catholicism as the opposite of the humanity in the no

44、vel. Zhang Jinyang, Luo Yanyan (2006) think the love tragedy of Meggie and Ralph show the cruelty of the religion. The Thorn Birds satirizes the Christianity. Yuan Guie (2004) makes a comparison between The Thorn Birds and Mind History to find out the differences in writing style, the characteristics of the language and aesthetic appreciation con