Abstract:

Corpus linguistics analysis is founded on the use of electronic collections of naturally occurring texts and it provides analysis of a great quantity of data not only in linguistic studies but also in literature by uncovering meanings of literary texts that have not been discussed or detected before. As a complement of feminist stylistics theory, this study aimed at examining the discourses of Woolf and Bennett in terms of sexist language through a corpus-based analysis. Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Light House and Arnold Bennet’s Anna of the Five Towns, The Old Wives Tale, Helen with the High Hand were analyzed using corpus linguistics methods. The concordance lines of the gendered binary oppositions girl-boy, woman-man, lady-gentleman, female-male were analyzed in terms of sexist language aspect and the results were evaluated under feminist literary criticism theories.