Pride and Prejudice on the Page and on the Screen: Literary Narrative, Literary Dialogue and Film Dialogue

Francesca Bianchi,Sara Gesuato

doi:10.35360/njes.564

Abstract

This study explores the similarities and differences in content between the dialogic and the narrative parts in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and between the novel’s dialogues and those in its 1940 and 2005 film adaptations. These four datasets were semantically tagged and compared to one another by using qualitative and quantitative methods. The findings show how, in covering conceptual areas largely complementary to those of the narrative, the dialogues in the novel perform various communicative functions. The investigation also points to how dialogues are adapted to the semiotic needs and goals of its film adaptations.

Highlights

Speaking, a novel is the verbal representation of non-verbal phenomena and circumstances, a report of imaginary events and a description of fictitious situations, conveyed in the fabric of a text
We address these research questions: 1) What conceptual areas are covered in the dialogic versus the non-dialogic parts of the novel? 2) What conceptual areas are covered in the dialogues in the films? 3) How different are the novel’s dialogues and the films’ dialogues in terms of the conceptual areas they cover? To these ends, we examine the lexicalsemantic fields characterising the dialogic and non-dialogic parts of the novel, taken separately, and compare them to those in the film dialogues, as represented in the film subtitles
Eight conceptual areas appear in the key domains retrieved from the dialogues only; five conceptual areas characterise non-dialogues only; and nine conceptual areas appear in the key domains of both corpora, though not with the same degree of prominence

Summary

Introduction

A novel is the verbal representation of non-verbal phenomena and circumstances, a report of imaginary events and a description of fictitious situations, conveyed in the fabric of a text. This verbal narrative conveys human motivation and values in “propositions which attempt to develop perception”, throwing “them out onto the external world, elaborating a world out of a story” (Dudley 1984: 101). Its linguistic code imposes constraints on the rendering of its content: for example, episodes and entities may or may not be concurrent or copresent, respectively, in the fictional world, but in the text they can only be introduced sequentially (McFarlane 1996: 27). “Pride and Prejudice on the Page and on the Screen: Literary Narrative, Literary Dialogue and Film Dialogue.” Nordic Journal of English Studies 19(2):166198

Methods

Results

Conclusion