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Pragmatic patterns in Bram Stoker’s Dracula

  • Michael Stubbs

    Michael Stubbs

    retired in 2013 from a Chair of English Linguistics at the University of Trier, Germany. He was previously Professor of English in Education, University of London, and Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Nottingham, UK. He has published books and articles on educational linguistics, discourse analysis, computer-assisted corpus semantics, and stylistics, and has lectured in Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, USA, Yemen, and several European countries.

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Published/Copyright: August 18, 2021

Abstract

In an influential book on literary linguistics, first published in 1981 and revised in 2007, Geoffrey Leech and his colleague Mick Short discuss linguistic methods of analysing long texts of prose fiction. This article develops their arguments in two ways: (1) by relating them to classic puzzles in the philosophy of science; and (2) by illustrating them with a computer-assisted study of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. This case study shows that software can identify a linguistic feature of the novel which is central to its major themes, but which is unlikely to be consciously noticed by human readers. Quantitative data on the novel show that it contains a large number of negatives. Their function is often to deny something which would normally be expected, and therefore to express the protagonists’ distrust of their own senses in the extraordinary world in which they find themselves.


Corresponding author: Michael Stubbs, University of Trier, Trier 54286, Germany E-mail:

About the author

Michael Stubbs

Michael Stubbs

retired in 2013 from a Chair of English Linguistics at the University of Trier, Germany. He was previously Professor of English in Education, University of London, and Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Nottingham, UK. He has published books and articles on educational linguistics, discourse analysis, computer-assisted corpus semantics, and stylistics, and has lectured in Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, USA, Yemen, and several European countries.

Acknowledgements

Mick Short made a large number of helpful suggestions on an earlier draft. For other criticisms I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers, to Gabi Keck, and to members of the English Linguistics Circle at the University of Trier who commented on a spoken version of the paper in late 2019.

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Received: 2020-04-04
Accepted: 2021-07-14
Published Online: 2021-08-18
Published in Print: 2021-10-26

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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