Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2025

Styling the characters, setting the scene

Résumé

While not a pro drop language, English allows subject drop in specific registers such as abbreviated writing and colloquial speech. This paper studies subject drop in the representation of speech in British crime fiction. The core material consists of three stories by Agatha Christie, who uses subject drop to style characters and to create the conversational scene. Quantitative corpus data show that subject drop is a function of at least the following factors: education/social class, gender, familiarity, and (in)formality of speech setting. Nevertheless, due to the relatively small size of the samples we have studied, it is difficult to pin down the exact interactions between these four variables.

Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
lfab.20.08hae.pdf (1.23 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine Publication financée par une institution
Licence

Dates et versions

hal-05449284 , version 1 (08-01-2026)

Licence

Identifiants

Citer

Liliane Haegeman, Lieven Danckaert. Styling the characters, setting the scene. Lena Baunaz; Giuliano Bocci; Andrew Nevins. The Ziggurat of Grammar: In honor of Ur Shlonsky, 20, John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp.138-158, 2025, Language Faculty and Beyond, 9789027231505. ⟨10.1075/lfab.20.08hae⟩. ⟨hal-05449284⟩
90 Consultations
161 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

  • More