A Lexical Analysis And Semantic Diaspora in Life of Pi
| Autor: | Shu-fang Tsai, 蔡淑芳 |
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| Rok vydání: | 2013 |
| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 101 The Diaspora literature, Life of Pi, is a fantasy adventure novel written by Yann Martel in 2001.It plays a primordial role in the modern world literatures and films. The goal of this research is to implement a lexical analysis on diasporas in Life of Pi to relate it to the lexical applications of the “discrete infinity” (Chomsky, 1981, 2000). Vocabulary learning could not be separated from lexical analysis and semantic discourse analysis. Both provide us with the linguistic context as well as semantic and situational context. These will give clues to the learners to cover and comprehend those meanings of unfamiliar words and exotic thoughts. This paper is a result of an applied linguistic graduate study of interpreting sophisticated lexicon about the theme of diaspora in Life of Pi. Both the quantitative approach and the qualitative approach are used in the research. The quantitative approach is referred to using on-line freeware lexical profile tools to automatically analyze texts in Chapter 1to Chapter 11 of Life of Pi at the lexical level. And the researcher has investigated into the distribution of words in comparison with the Academic Word List and Word Level Lists provided by Paul Nation. Meanings, frequencies, and co-occurrences of words and phrases can be analyzed on the basis of a large number of contextualized tokens for lexical items in Chapter 1to Chapter 11of Life of Pi; and the qualitative approach is to observe the lexical features from the aspects of conceptual relationships between semantic “diasporas” and lexical “discrete infinity”. While Life of Pi has focused on the theme of diaspora, the researcher has illustrated some typical words from etymology and semantic points of view, with examples covering a wide range of subject fields and spheres of interest. On theoriesof Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Noam Chomsky, the researcher makes some in-depth interpretation and discussion of lexical features of diasporas in Life of Pi. With the same method, the author further explores the differences between word pairs of binary oppositions. Some findings will be helpful for those who are interested in the novel as well as some pedagogical guidance for English teaching. Key Words: diasporas, lexical analysis, word pairs, binary oppositions, discrete infinity |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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