Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

This paper applies Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA) to a corpus of English tweets to uncover the most common patterns of linguistic variation. MDA is a commonly applied method in corpus linguistics for the analysis of functional and/or stylistic variation in a particular language variety. Notably, MDA is an approach aimed at identifying and interpreting the frequent patterns of co-occurring linguistic features across a corpus, such as a corpus of spoken and written English registers (Biber, 1988). Traditionally, MDA is based on a factor analysis of the relative frequencies of numerous grammatical features measured across numerous texts drawn from that variety of language to identify a series of underlying dimensions of linguistic variation. Despite its popularity and utility, traditional MDA has an important limitation – it can only be used to analyse texts that are long enough to allow for the relative frequencies of many grammatical forms to be estimated accurately. If the texts under analysis are too short, then few forms can be expected to occur sufficiently frequently for their relative frequency to be accurately estimated. Tweets are characteristically short texts, meaning that traditional MDA cannot be used in the present research. To overcome this problem, this paper introduces a short-text version of MDA and applies it to a corpus of English tweets. Specifically, rather than measure the relative frequencies of forms in each tweet, the approach analyses their occurrence. This binary dataset is then aggregated using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), which is used much like factor analysis in traditional MDA – to return a series of dimensions that represent the most common patterns of linguistic variation in the dataset. After controlling for text length in the first dimension, four subsequent dimensions are interpreted. The results suggest that there is a great deal of linguistic variation on Twitter. Notably, the results show that Twitter is commonly used for self-commodification, as people manage their identities, engaging in practices of self-branding through stance-taking, self-reporting, promotion and persuasion, as well as broadcasting their message beyond their followership, distributing news and expressing opposition, and this often occurs in order to attract attention. Additionally, the results show that interaction is common, suggesting that Twitter is also used for social and interpersonal gain.

Genre definitions by Swales (1990) and Miller (1984) include the communicative purpose of a text as an indicative feature of its genre. Genre studies have also identified how expert members of discourse communities possess professional expertise in genre styles. This article shows that beyond discourse community expert members, ordinary audiences also have conceptions of genre and use those conceptions to evaluate texts. Through a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of listener reviews of the true crime-comedy podcast My Favorite Murder, the analysis shows that negative reviews view the true crime-comedy categorisation as two separate genres, evaluating the podcast based on expectations of true crime and expectations of comedy. Positive reviewers accept the true crime-comedy genre as a new, mixed genre and evaluate the podcast from an in-group perspective, identifying themselves as members of the My Favorite Murder discourse community. Through this analysis, I show that audiences implement some form of genre analysis in text evaluations and that membership of the discourse community influences how they apply genre expectations to evaluations of texts.

This article reports the findings of the first large-scale study into how dementia is depicted in the minds of fictional characters. Dementia is increasingly prevalent and, in the absence of a cure, requires better societal and cultural awareness. Literary representations offer readers the opportunity to ‘try on’ fictional minds, and better understand alternative cognitive experiences. Stylisticians have explored the ‘mind styles’ of characters with various illnesses, characteristics and behaviours, but this is the first comprehensive study of dementia mind styles, and indeed, any one syndrome. A substantial corpus of contemporary fiction depicting the internal perspectives of characters and narrators with dementia was compiled. The data is analysed qualitatively and quantitively, embracing a methodological eclecticism suited to understanding the patterns in characters’ cognitive experiences across texts. The results are presented thematically, demonstrating the enduring significance of features traditionally associated with mind style (underlexicalisation, diminished sense of cause and effect, and pragmatic difficulties), as well as a wide range of new features. These include discourse presentation, sensory descriptions and conceptualisation of the self and others. By exploring the mind styles of many characters with dementia, this research not only widens the application of the concept, but also the range of features associated with its creation and, importantly, offers a theoretical redefinition: mind style is redefined as an iconic representation of fictional cognition, offering a simulated experience for readers.

Catchphrases have long been a hallmark of US-American sit-coms and dramas, as well as reality, game and variety show programming. Because the phenomenon of the television catchphrase developed throughout the era of network, commercial broadcasting under Federal Communications Commission guidelines regulating profanity in network television, catchphrases traditionally have not included swear words. Nevertheless, certain past television catchphrases can be regarded as euphemistic alternatives of swearing expressions (e.g. ‘Kiss my grits!’), while contemporary catchphrases from cable or streaming series do include explicit swearing (e.g. ‘Don’t fuck it up!’). We examine a database of 168 popular catchphrases from a 70-year period of US-American television programming according to categories for bad language and impoliteness formulae. We identify three categories of catchphrases based on structural-functional similarities to swearing expressions, and we trace the distribution of these categories over time and across networks. The data reveal a trend towards explicit swearing in catchphrases over time, not only in series on cable and streaming services, but across networks. We conclude that the expressive nature of catchphrases and their structural-functional properties render the inclusion of swear words both more palatable to a television audience and more compatible with television norms, thus propagating catchphrase swearing on cable and streaming television services, and mitigating the use of swear words on network television. Due to appropriation phenomena, swearing catchphrases may serve to blur the lines between actually swearing and simply invoking a swearing catchphrase, thereby potentially increasing tolerance for swearing both on television and off.

Present-tense narration has become a prevalent narrative style in English literature over the past few decades. This narrative style tended to be considered unnatural and odd in narrative theory in the late twentieth century (Cohn, 1999; Fludernik, 1996), since using the present tense to describe events at the story level of narrative was regarded as incongruous with the traditional story-telling convention of ‘live now and tell later’, in which the present tense is generally associated with the narrator’s deictic centre at the level of discourse. In contemporary present-tense narratives, however, the present tense is often employed as a narrative tense that develops the narrative plot-line, making the unmistakable demarcation between story and discourse impossible by means of tense. As a case study, this paper examines the narrative effects of using present-tense narration in Ali Smith’s How to Be Both (2014). It demonstrates how in this novel, the unique handling of the narrative present tense serves to achieve the particular effects of blurring levels between experience and narration as well as past and present. These effects can only be appreciated by reconsidering the relationship between story and discourse and by clarifying the connection between the functions of present-tense narration and the novel’s central theme, being both. Suggesting that the narrative present tense has varied functions in this novel, such as figural and retrospective, this paper illustrates that the diverse usage of the narrative present tense adds to the unclear distinction between narrative levels.

Josefine Mutzenbacher oder die Geschichte einer Wienerischen Dirne von ihr selbst erzählt, published in Vienna in 1906, represents one of the most fascinating cases of attribution of authorship in German literature. Although Josefine Mutzenbacher is usually attributed to Felix Salten, the author of the world-famous Bambi (1923), the novel’s authorship has never been confirmed, and many other candidates have been named as potential authors. Among them is Arthur Schnitzler, who published Reigen, a cycle of amorous adventures in Viennese society, in 1903. Some scholars, instead, have attributed the novel to such lesser-known writers as Ernst Klein and Willi Handl. The controversy surrounding the authorship of Josefine Mutzenbacher was the starting point for our stylometric analyses, and our results help to answer some unresolved questions in a debate that has lasted for more than 100 years. The analyses were performed using the R package Stylo, which enables an efficient application of Burrows’ Delta and its variants. Focusing on both the entire text and on the final pages, two different types of analysis were carried out: one combines 1200 different stylometric methods to compare the candidate authors Salten, Schnitzler, Bahr, Altenberg, Hofmannsthal, Klein and Handl; the other verifies the attribution using the ‘impostors’ method. The results show that the most probable author is Felix Salten, while none of the candidates could be identified as the author of the final pages, confirming the hypothesis that the text was left unfinished by Salten and completed by an as-yet-unidentified ghost-writer.