Abstract
Abstract My Son’s Story and Disgrace are two novels written by two South African Noble laureates – Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee, respectively. The current study attempts to comparatively uncover the thematic foci as well as characterization aspects and interpersonal relations between characters in the two novels by dint of corpus linguistic tools, i.e., keywords and key clusters. Thus, using Sketch Engine online interface, the study presents a comparative thematic categorization of the two novels – a categorization which proves congruent with the thematization provided by previous critical literary studies of each novel. Both novels are found to revolve around racial tensions and illicit relationships in South Africa. However, although My Son’s Story is set during the apartheid and Disgrace is set after the apartheid is supposedly over, comparative corpus-driven investigation of the two novels reveals that the South Africa promised in My Son’s Story is betrayed in Disgrace, since racial violence and cross-race sexual dissipation persist. Quantitatively, using the notion of local textual functions, the associations between the use of key clusters, their repercussions on characters’ depiction, and their interpersonal relationships are uncovered. Clear affinities between the two protagonists, Sonny and David, are discerned, e.g., their love for music and literature, their sexual whims, their unsettled relationships with their children, etc. Empirically, the father–son/daughter turbulences, husband–wife vicissitudes, landlord–farmer intricacies, and love affairs’ intricacies are fathomed.
Highlights
Ho (2011) and Fischer-Starcke (2010), among many others, define corpus stylistics as the use of corpus linguistics tools in analyzing literary texts
McIntyre and Walker (2019, 14–15) add that the application of corpus tools to the analysis of texts enhances the insights attained through traditional stylistics and contends that corpus stylistics is the use of stylistics frameworks, theories, and models in corpus analysis
Thematization and characterization in My Son’s Story and Disgrace 47 particular writer, preferably a comparison is to be made with the literary work of another as is the case in literary stylistics where “distinctions can be made with regard to the style of a particular work, a particular author, a period, and so on” (Mahlberg 2007a, 220)
Summary
Ho (2011) and Fischer-Starcke (2010), among many others, define corpus stylistics as the use of corpus linguistics tools in analyzing literary texts. The study adopts a corpus stylistics approach whereby a thematization process is comparatively worked out through keyword analysis (Mahlberg and McIntyre 2011), and local textual functions of key clusters in the two novels are specified and investigated as a way into recognizing enriched characterization and interpersonal relations between characters (Mahlberg 2007a, 2007b). The present research argues that a quantitative approach represented by corpus linguistic tools can readily yield interesting insights into thematization and characterization when investigating two literary works in comparative terms, capturing potential aspects of comparison and contrast. These insights can empirically sustain literary interpretations and contribute toward a rather objective means of analyzing a fictional work
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