Abstract
Interest in the application of corpus linguistic methods in literary linguistics grows apace. One simple use of Scott's Keywords procedure (from his Wordsmith Tools text analysis package) is here reported, since it may be of interest to analysts of narrative text. Automatic' abridgement of a short story, by selecting in their original sequence just those of its sentences in which the most key keyword occurs, creates a partial but semi-coherent and 'resonant' text (not an orthodox summary), where mostly incoherence might have been expected. The top keyword in a short story is most often a focalized character's name (or, as rare alternative, part of the narration's standard lexical means of naming and denoting a particular character). Perhaps a story's top keyword, in its sentential contexts of use, creates a form of foregrounding, a waymarking of more noticeable and noteworthy (not necessarily the most noteworthy) sentences, asserting or reinforcing those sentences' centrality to the developing situation (action and theme).
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 181-194 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Journal of Literary Semantics |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2006 |