Corpus linguistic techniques can be used to explore the language of Dickens at http://clic.bham.ac.uk/.
CLiC was developed by a team led by Michaela Mahlberg at the University of Nottingham. Michaela is now Professor of Corpus Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, where she continues to develop CLiC.
CLiC (Corpus Linguistics in Cheshire) is developed as part of the AHRC-funded project: “CLiC Dickens - Characterisation in the representation of speech and body language from a corpus linguistic perspective” (Arts and Humanities Research Council grant reference AH/K005146/1).
The project demonstrates through corpus stylistics how computer-assisted methods can be used to study literary texts and lead to new insights into how readers perceive fictional characters.
CLiC specifically supports the analysis of fictional speech and literary body language by enabling the user to search in particular parts of the texts, e.g. in quotes, which typically contain the direct speech of fictional characters in the novels.
Initially, the texts that can be searched will be Dickens’s novels and novels written by other 19th century authors.
