Key Pronouns through Wmatrix in a Novel of Formation: Conrad’s The Shadow-Line
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2532-8816/10542Parole chiave:
Joseph Conrad, fiction, Corpus linguistic, Wmatrix, corpus-assisted methods, POS keyness analysis.Abstract
L’avvento dell’era digitale ha avuto un enorme impatto sul modo con cui noi facciamo ricerca, insegniamo e pensiamo il nostro linguaggio (Leech 1992: 1). L’applicazione di metodi computerizzati agli studi umanistici rende fattibile l’analisi di corpora (campioni digitalizzati della lingua in uso), porta a scoperte impossibili con altri strumenti e offre elementi di verifica oggettivi all’interpretazione tradizionale dei testi. Essa aiuta poi efficacemente nell’analisi del linguaggio di singoli testi e rende la lettura ravvicinata più efficace. Questo articolo ha lo scopo di suggerire come si possono analizzare con il software Wmatrix (Rayson 2009) le voci narranti in un’opera narrativa. Oggetto di studio di questo articolo è il Bildungsroman The Shadow-Line, A Confession (1917) di Conrad, un racconto che ha come protagonista l’io narrante un giovane ed inesperto capitano di marina che durante il suo primo comando deve superare una serie di difficoltà per portare a termine la sua missione. In quest’opera la netta divisione tra il mondo interiore dell’io-protagonista e il mondo esterno con cui si deve confrontare si presta all’analisi dei pronomi di prima persona e degli altri pronomi personali nell’intera opera. Considerato che l’analisi stilistica di testi letterari implica un processo fondamentalmente di comparazione, si confronta il testo target The Shadow-Line con un due romanzi simili dello stesso autore per analizzare le categorie grammaticali predominanti dei pronomi. I risultati statistici dei pronomi e la loro analisi tramite concordanze contribuiranno a posizionare l’io narrativo al centro della narrazione e a identificare l’interazione tra l’io narrante e le altre voci narranti.
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