A Corpus-Driven Study of the Style Variation in The Grapes of Wrath

Abstract

The novel The Grapes of Wrath is distinctive in the arrangement of intercalary chapters and narrative chapters. Existing studies of the narratological distinction of this novel are primarily qualitative. This article conducted a corpus-driven study of the variation of styles in this novel from the perspectives of word cluster, type-token ratio, descriptivity and activity, keyness, and sentiment. The cluster analysis shows that the choice of words in the narrative chapters is more consistent than that in the intercalary chapters. The type-token ratio analysis testifies to the heterogeneity of the intercalary chapters in terms of lexical richness. The descriptivity and activity analysis and the keyness analysis reveal that the narrative chapters are more active than the intercalary chapters. The sentiment analysis finds that the novel is pervaded by negative sentiments and that negative sentiments are more prevalent in the narrative chapters than in the intercalary chapters. The research concludes that the corpus-driven study can provide insights into the narrative structure and the stylistic variation of the novel.