Semantic Changes in Novels: A Comparison Study of Horror Novels between 1800s - 2000s

Abstract

<p>Novel is a collection of history about how words were changing from time to time. As words moved dynamically, they could be interpreted differently depending on how people used it. Some words from now might have a different meaning in the past. This phenomenon was what we call as semantic changes. This was one of the reason why it was very common for words to have a different meaning from time to time or even extinct, especially in novels. In order to see the semantic changes that happened in novels, this paper was conducted to see and compare the semantic changes that occurred in horror novels around 1800s-2000s. Six horror novels which were being chosen were Dracula, The Exorcist, The Daughter, Frankenstein, Bedtime, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as these novels are kept being re-published from time to time, and are popular horror novels. The method that was used was qualitative, with Corpus Analysis, and software called as Antconc as the data instrument. This paper was comparing the semantic changes that occurred in horror novels around 1800s-2000s. The analysis result showed that the semantic changes that happened mostly because of the angle of talking, which meant that meaning could be changed because of the context of the text. To conclude, semantic changes could be seen in the horror novels that the researchers analyzed, and the changes happened because of the differences in contexts.</p><strong>Keywords: </strong>semantic changes, horror novels, horror