A CORPUS DRIVEN STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ADJECTIVES IN THE LAST WHITE MAN (2022) BY MOHSIN HAMID

Author(s) : Nida Zahra, Asad Ali Hashmi and Dr Mamoona Khan

Abstract:

The Last White Man (2022) by Mohsin Hamid is a narrative which symbolizes the physical and psychological struggles of the White people who turned Brown overnight. The novel's portrayal of this transformation is crucial to its investigation of identity, race, and trauma. The research aims to highlight the utility and kinds of frequently used adjectives incorporated by Mohsin Hamid in construction of plot and presentation of significant themes of the novel. The study is based on sequential explanatory mixed methods (Creswell, 2013) to highlight the use of adjectives on lexical level, through corpus tools; AntConc (4.1.4) and CLAWS POS7 tagger and by incorporating the Leech and Short model (1981). Furthermore, the analysis reveals that Mohsin Hamid used attributive and predictive adjectives in abundance to express and visualize the challenges faced by the characters of this novel. Moreover, the research concludes that the adjectives are significantly utilized to enhance the thematic depth of the novel and reflect the physical and psychological dimensions of the characters’ transformation. The study outlines the significance of corpus tools in literary stylistic analysis providing a corpus driven approach to understanding linguistic choices that shape literary narrative. It will help the students, and scholars to understand the new horizons of incorporating corpus approaches to stylistic analysis.
Keywords: Corpus stylistics, literary stylistics, adjectives, lexical choices, the last white man