Lexis and the construction of Cosmicism in the works of H. P. Lovecraft
A corpus linguistics perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17851/2237-2083.32.4.1066-1090Keywords:
corpus linguistics, cosmicism, Lovecraft, horror, lexiconAbstract
The aim of this paper is to study the lexicon of H. P. Lovecraft’s short stories to identify, in a systematic way, its contribution to the construction of cosmicism, one of the branches of horror. To do so, the Melhores Contos de Lovecraft corpus (MCL) was built. It comprises 19 of his short stories written between 1917 and 1936, totaling 56,036 types and 291,993 tokens. The MCL corpus was analyzed within a corpus linguistics and CADS (corpus-assisted discourse studies) framework, and used the Keyword, KWIC and File View tools available in AntConc 4.0.10. The data identified with the help of such tools was analyzed in the light of the literature on horror as well as the biography, and the work of H. P. Lovecraft (Houellebecq, 2019; Kneale, 2006; Miguel, 2006; Scotuzzi, 2017). Results show that the keywords found can be grouped into six super-categories and 36 semantic sub-categories. Such categories, and the part of speech of the words comprised in them, both allowed the mapping of the recurring themes and ideologies in Lovecraft’s short stories and suggested how the lexicon used in them contributes to build Lovecraftian cosmicism.
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