Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. in Modern Languages

Department

Modern Languages

First Advisor

Allison Burkette

Second Advisor

Donald Dyer

Third Advisor

Christopher Sapp

Relational Format

dissertation/thesis

Abstract

Flannery O’Connor is known for her widely read and loved short stories. By employing sociolinguistic, quantitative, qualitative, and corpus linguistic methods along with R Studio to gather data about literary dialect utilized in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories “Good Country People” and “The Lame Shall Enter First”, I argue that not only was O’Connor a gifted author in her portrayal of African American English and Southern English, but that her writing was also accurate in comparison to language use in the South. The findings suggest that O’Connor’s characters were true to life in the Southern US at the time of her writing and further lend credence to arguments of literary critics who applaud her strength in writing.

Concentration/Emphasis

Emphasis: Languages, Specialization: German

Included in

Linguistics Commons

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