Abstract
In this article we investigate keywords and key semantic domains in Fleming’s Casino Royale. We identify groups of keywords that describe elements of the fictional world such as characters and settings as well as thematic signals. The keyword groups fall into two broad categories that are characterized as text-centred and reader-centred, with the latter providing particular clues for interpretation. We also compare the manually identified keyword groups with key semantic domains that are based on automatic semantic analysis. The comparison shows, for instance, how words that do not seem to fit a semantic domain can be seen as reader-centred keywords fulfilling specific textual functions. By linking our analysis to arguments in literary criticism, we show how quantitative and qualitative approaches can usefully complement one another.
Highlights
A corpus approach to popular fictionIn an influential article on semantic prosody and its potential for creating ironic effects in texts, Bill Louw (1993) criticises Donald C
In this article we focus on the first novel in the series, Casino Royale (Jonathan Cape, 1953), CR, and demonstrate how a corpus analysis can provide insights into characterization, the creation of particular stylistic effects and the construction of the fictional world of the text
Such deviations are of interest in stylistic analysis, where the concept of foregrounding is used to describe the effects that result from deviations from linguistic norms
Summary
In an influential article on semantic prosody and its potential for creating ironic effects in texts, Bill Louw (1993) criticises Donald C. In this article we focus on the first novel in the series, Casino Royale (Jonathan Cape, 1953), CR, and demonstrate how a corpus analysis can provide insights into characterization, the creation of particular stylistic effects and the construction of the fictional world of the text. The ability to look at whole texts enables us to return to one of the earliest concerns of stylistics, which was the analysis of the style associated with individual authors and works It is beyond the scope of the present article to deal with this entirely, our analysis here of one novel may be taken as a starting point for an analysis of Fleming’s complete series of Bond books. A single novel would be regarded as a rather small sample of data that is unlikely to receive much attention as a text in own right, but is more likely to be included as part of a corpus
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