Phrases in literary contexts

Patterns and distributions of suspensions in Dickens’s novels

Michaela Mahlberg | University of Nottingham

Catherine Smith | University of Birmingham

Simon Preston | University of Nottingham

This paper addresses relations between lexico-grammatical patterns and texts. Our focus is on a specific linguistic unit, the ‘suspended quotation’ (or ‘suspension’), which has received particular attention in Dickens studies. The suspended quotation refers to an interruption of a fictional character’s speech by the narrator with a sequence of at least five words. We show how corpus linguistic methods can help to systematically study suspensions in a corpus of Dickens’s novels: we investigate relationships between patterns of body language presentation and suspensions; we consider the distribution of suspensions across novels; and we illustrate how patterns in suspensions relate to meanings of reporting verbs. Overall, we argue that suspensions are discernible units that contribute to meaningful patterns in narrative prose.

Keywords: suspended quotation, reporting verbs, body language presentation, suspension annotation, Dickens

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 3.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 13 May 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.18.1.05mah

Full-text

Phrases in literary contexts

Cited by

Cited by 9 other publications

Bianchi, Francesca

2020. Suspended Quotations. Le Simplegadi 18:20 ► pp. 68 ff.

Esimaje, Alexandra U. & Susan Hunston

2019. In Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 88], ► pp. 8 ff.

Mahlberg, Michaela, Peter Stockwell, Johan de Joode, Catherine Smith & Matthew Brook O'Donnell

2016. CLiC Dickens: novel uses of concordances for the integration of corpus stylistics and cognitive poetics. Corpora 11:3 ► pp. 433 ff.

McIntyre, Dan

2014. The year’s work in stylistics 2013. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 23:4 ► pp. 389 ff.

Ruano, Pablo

2017. Corpus Methodologies in Literary Translation Studies: An Analysis of Speech Verbs in Four Spanish Translations of Hard Times. Meta 62:1 ► pp. 94 ff.

Ruano, Pablo

2018. A corpus-based approach to Charles Dickens's use of direct thought presentation. Corpora 13:3 ► pp. 319 ff.

Ruano San Segundo, Pablo

2016. A corpus-stylistic approach to Dickens’ use of speech verbs: Beyond mere reporting. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 25:2 ► pp. 113 ff.

Ruano San Segundo, Pablo

2018. In Voice and Discourse in the Irish Context, ► pp. 139 ff.

Stockwell, Peter & Michaela Mahlberg

2015. Mind-modelling with corpus stylistics in David Copperfield. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 24:2 ► pp. 129 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 august 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.