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673
39 Style in Popular Literature
Roc í o Montoro, Universidad
de Granada
Chapter Overview
Introduction 673
What is Popular Literature/Fiction? 674
The Modern Vampire’s Identity 677
Conclusion 686
1 Introduction
This chapter explores issues of style in popular fi ction. I illustrate some stylistic
aspects of popular forms by focusing on a particular manifestation of genre lit-
erature, namely horror fi ction novels dealing with a vampiric theme. The fi gure
of the vampire has recently enjoyed considerable success thanks to authors such
as Stephenie Meyer. In reality, vampires have never failed to a ract the interest
of popular authors. I start by considering possible defi nitions of the concept of
‘ popular-ness ’ . Then, I analyse some novels by Anne Rice and Charlaine Harris
as illustrative of current depictions of the vampiric fi gure. I specifi cally focus on
the linguistic (i.e. verbal) and stylistic portrayal of vampires; I employ a corpus-
stylistics methodology and consider whether the various traits generally a rib-
uted to vampires can be statistically supported by a computerized analysis of a
corpus of novels. In sum, I propose to put to the test certain claims with regard
to modern vampires in popular fi ction.
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2 What is Popular Literature/Fiction?
There appears to be lack of agreement concerning what the notion of ‘ popular-
ness ’ intrinsically entails, despite researchers ’ continuous a empts to come up
with features that could potentially help distinguish popular from ‘ non-pop-
ular ’ fi ctional forms. For instance, McCracken (1998) describes fi ction wri en
under the general, overarching ‘ popular ’ denomination as:
fi ction that is read by large numbers of people; but in the context of the late
twentieth century that defi nition needs some refi nement. Contemporary
popular fi ction is the product of a huge entertainment industry. Wri en
fi ction is only a part of that industry, which markets and sells popular
narratives for fi lm, radio, television and periodicals as well as in book form.
To study popular fi ction, then, is to study only a small part of popular
culture. (McCracken 1998: 1)
Popular fi ction could be, fi rst and foremost, defi ned by sheer size, as popu-
lar novels a ract large readerships. For instance, in a list of the top 100 fi c-
tion authors for the year 2010 (Nielsen Bookscan
1 ), we fi nd novelists such as
Stieg Larsson, James Pa erson, Lee Child, Jodi Picoult, Dan Brown, Danielle
Steel, Martina Cole or Sophie Kinsella, to mention but a few.
2 The list contains
authors who could be categorized under the sub-genres of, for instance, crime
fi ction (Stieg Larsson, James Pa erson), thriller (Lee Child, Jo Nesbo), mystery
and suspense (Karen Rose, Harlan Coben), chick lit (Sophie Kinsella), romance
(Danielle Steel), women ’ s fi ction (Maeve Binchy, Jodi Picoult) or historical nov-
els (Bernard Cornwell, Sebastian Faulks). However, this initial defi nition in
terms of sales already raises several issues that need addressing: the various
sub-categories (crime fi ction, thriller) are not comprehensively discrete as there
are no fool-proof criteria to defi ne these sub-genres as being unequivocally dis-
tinctive or separate from one another. For instance, the mystery and suspense
and thriller sub-groups, on the one hand, and the chick lit and romances, on the
other, could be said to share some important narrative and structural character-
istics and should be, perhaps, best viewed as part of a continuum rather than as
totally independent forms. This could have consequences for the way in which
sales are measured for each sub-genre. However, depending on the type of
novel they write, some of the authors above could also be ‘ rehoused ’ (see Gelder
(2004) below) in categories other than those they have been assigned to, and this
reclassifi cation could also aff ect the reading of sales fi gures. If, as McCracken
suggests, popular forms are mainly characterized by their large readership,
then all the authors above should positively be called ‘ popular ’ writers (at least
in the year 2010). But McCracken also adds that it would be over-simplistic to
think merely in terms of ‘ numbers ’ and that ‘ in the context of the late twentieth
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675
century, that defi nition needs some refi nement ’ (1998: 1). In addition to reader-
ship numbers, ‘ popular-ness ’ is also associated with a whole ‘ entertainment
industry ’ which includes ‘ popular narratives for fi lm, radio, television and peri-
odicals as well as in book form ’ . The novels I analyse here happen to meet the
two criteria pointed out by McCracken, as not only have they been successful
at reaching lots of readers but they have also been translated into formats other
than the novel: some of Rice ’ s works have been adapted for the big screen (Neil
Jordan ’ s Interview with the Vampire [1994]; Michael Rymer ’ s Queen of the Damned
[2002]) whereas some of Charlaine Harris ’ s books have been made into a suc-
cessful TV series (Alan Ball ’ s True Blood (2008 – 2014)).
Gelder (2004) refi nes the notion of ‘ popular-ness ’ and suggests that:
Popular fi ction is best conceived as the opposite of Literature. … By Literature,
I mean the kind of writing … produced by, for example, Jane Austen,
George Elliot, Henry James, James Joyce, William Faulkner – although his
novel Sanctuary (1931) has ‘ many of the ingredients that belong in a thriller ’
(Glover 2003: 143) – … Martin Amis – although he has tried his hand at genre
fi ction with the police procedural novel, Night Train (1998), Toni Morrison,
Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, Arundhati Roy, Don
DeLillo, Tobias Wolff and so on. (Gelder 2004: 11)
‘ Popular-ness ’ is often regarded as the antithesis of ‘ serious ’ literary forms,
especially those that embody the English-language literary canon (in the above
quotation, the canon from the
nineteenth century onwards). Gelder, however,
does not provide testable evidence concerning why the above authors should
be considered prototypically literary
3 and fi nally resorts to readership numbers
as a crucial distinguishing factor. Admi edly, Gelder recommends that caution
should always be exerted when quantifying readers:
Some of these writers may even have wri en what could be termed ‘ best-
sellers ’ , although this term is quantitatively open: a bestseller can mean sales
of anything from around 20,000 copies to several million (after which, we
might use the terms ‘ superseller ’ or topseller), and some works of Literature,
whether it happens over an extended period of time or immediately after
publication, can indeed do well in the marketplace. (Gelder 2004: 11)
Nash (1990) further illustrates how the notion of ‘ popular-ness ’ has been conceived
of and suggests a few parameters as to where the ‘ popular ’ boundaries might lie.
For instance, he draws a ention to the ‘ disposability ’ of popular literature:
For this is one of the principal characteristics of popular fi ction – its
disposability. You may buy Conrad or Henry James or Fielding in paperback,
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676
but you are hardly likely to leave them intentionally in a bedroom or on a
luggage rack, because they have served their turn and have nothing left to
off er you. Such authors are resources on which we repeatedly draw, and when
we buy one of their books we take some care to keep it by us. (Nash 1990: 2)
Apparently, readers easily ‘ dispense with ’ popular novels (sometimes by physi-
cally throwing them away) and somehow dismiss the whole reading experience
once the encounter with that particular book comes to an end. Nash follows on,
stating that ‘ our return to popfi ction consists of buying more popfi ction. … The
phrase “ best seller ” points to the importance of commercial success as a popu-
lar measure of value ’ . (1990: 2)
Despite their disposability, Nash also argues that these works have merits
worth mentioning:
The ability to tell a tale, to devise its episodes with such skill that the reader
often cannot bear to put the book aside, to touch on common sympathies,
to understand the judgements and desires of ordinary people, to off er the
keen experience of danger, of anxiety, of love, of sorrow, of triumph, but
all without the intruding shadow of the actual, without obliging us to quit
the Illyrian trance, so to speak, or the hermetic fold of the airport lounge. To
do all this takes talent, and the money we pay for our distraction is fairly
earned. (Nash 1990: 2 – 3)
If Nash is right in his characterization of ‘ popular-ness ’ , vampire fi ction could
be deemed an exercise in escapism ‘ from the actual ’ just like other forms of pop-
ular literature such as horror, fantasy or science fi ction; and yet, these novels are
nonetheless adroitly framed in engaging and involving narratives. Because of
lack of space, I am unable to discuss the implications of all the critical assess-
ments mentioned so far, namely, readership numbers, the connection between
popular and serious fi ction, or the way popular forms are capable of engaging
readers so that they ‘ cannot bear to put the book aside ’ (Nash 1990: 2). Instead,
I implement an analysis of one specifi c instance of ‘ popular-ness ’ , namely vam-
pire fi ction. Since I am unable to do justice to the wealth of perspectives which
vampire novels have been studied from, I look at the modern vampire of the
late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst centuries as depicted in the novels of Anne
Rice and Charlaine Harris, respectively. Secondly, I focus on the vampires ’
identity and their alterity. The vampire ’ s otherness has been viewed in light of
other fantasy, horror and science-fi ction fi gures such as cyborgs, werewolves or
mummies. However, despite the connections with other fantastical characters,
modern vampires seem to be distinguished because, in general, their vampiric
identity as ‘ a non-human other ’ needs to be conceived alongside their struggle
(and, often, desire) to recover or maintain whatever vestige is left of their former
humanity.
4 A corpus-stylistic analysis allows me to assess whether claims made
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concerning the vampire ’ s identity are, indeed, based on the linguistic make-up
of the novels and whether their complex alterity is also eff ectively underscored.
3 The Modern Vampire ’ s Identity
The modern fi ctional vampire can be said to be the most up-to-date illustration of
a lengthy history of vampirism that amalgamates elements from ancient folklore
and fi ction. As far as vampire lore is concerned, for instance, there are reports
on the existence of ‘ blood-drinkers ’ that date back to the earliest civilizations:
Assyria, Babylon or ancient Greece (Jackson 2009: 7ff ). Vampire lore also points
out the multiplicity of names by which vampires are known,
5 as well as the mul-
tifarious ways (which go well beyond the ‘ orthodox bite ’ ) in which humans can
turn into vampires (Jackson 2009: 21). Modern fi ctional vampires, wri en and
otherwise,
6 tend to be defi ned by a series of criteria that feed off this background
knowledge and which, together with subsequent variations, help construe the
modern vampire ’ s identity. In this chapter, I focus specifi cally on the investiga-
tion of fi ve traits: vampires ’ physical a ractiveness, vampires ’ heightened sex-
uality, vampires as tormented souls, vampires and their kin and vampires as
predatory and controlling. Some scholars maintain that the combination of these
characteristics defi nes the essence of their alterity and distinguishes their other-
ness from other creatures ’ , such as, for instance, ‘ werewolf ’ or ‘ alien ’ otherness.
In order to test the centrality of these traits in shaping the modern vampire ’ s
identity, I implement a corpus-stylistics analysis. The basic premise underlying
a corpus-stylistic approach is the computerized analysis of data, which need to
be organized in corpora. For the purposes of this chapter, I have compiled what
I refer to as the ‘ modern vampire corpus ’ (MVC), which contains over a million
words and comprises the following eight novels by Anne Rice and Charlaine
Harris respectively:
z Anne Rice ’ s ‘ The Vampire Chronicles ’ :
1. Interview with the Vampire (1976)
2. The Vampire Lestat (1985)
3. Queen of the Damned (1988)
4. The Tale of the Body Thief (1992)
z Charlaine Harris ’ s ‘ Southern Vampire Mysteries ’ (also known as ‘ Sookie
Stackhouse novels ’ ):
1. Dead until Dark (2001)
2. Living Dead in Dallas (2002)
3. Club Dead (2003)
4. Dead to the World (2004)
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Secondly, the computerized analysis of corpora relies on the use of specifi c soft-
ware. I have chosen two diff erent software packages, Wmatrix
7 (Rayson 2009)
and AntConc
8 (Anthony 2011), although in my analysis the la er plays mainly
a complementary role to the former. Using two pieces of software allows me to
implement both an intertextual and an intratextual examination of the MVC,
as I explain below. Additionally, thanks to this double perspective, any conclu-
sions drawn from the statistical relevance of the data obtained should either
support or, indeed, call into question some of the previous claims made about
the modern vampire ’ s identity.
Wmatrix functions by comparing the target corpus with other sub-corpora
(hence, the intertextual label) already uploaded on the web interface that
Wmatrix utilizes. This means that the results obtained are statistically measured
by considering the target corpus (in my case the MVC) in relation to the par-
ticular sub-corpus (or sub-corpora, if multiple comparisons are performed) that
the analyst deems methodologically sound. The reference corpora in Wmatrix
are extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) sampler, a sub-corpus
of the entire BNC containing a fi ftieth of the total amount of words, viz. about
two million words. The BNC sampler contains further sub-divisions, each one
illustrating specifi c text varieties. The nature of the target corpus and the kind
of investigation that the researcher is interested in are some of the factors to be
considered when choosing the reference sub-corpus. Because I am dealing with
fi ctional discourse, I have compared the MVC with the BNC sampler wri en
imaginative sub-corpus, a collection of fi ctional texts inclusive of prose, drama
and poetry. Wmatrix can tag the target corpus for keywords, parts of speech and
semantic categories as well as generate frequency lists, keyword lists, n-grams
and collocates.
9 Wmatrix uses the CLAWS (Constituent-Likelihood Automatic
Word-Tagging System) system (see Garside 1987, 1996; Garside and Smith
1997; Leech et al. 1994) and the UCREL
10 Semantic Analysis System (USAS) to
tag corpora for parts of speech and semantic categories respectively. In order to
test the fi ve traits that, allegedly, primarily project the modern vampire other-
ness, I focus exclusively on the semantic component of the MVC and the results
generated by comparing it to the BNC sampler wri en imaginative sub-corpus:
The semantic tags show semantic fi elds which group together word senses
that are related by virtue of their being connected at some level of generality
with the same mental concept. The groups include not only synonyms
and antonyms but also hypernyms and hyponyms. Currently, the lexicon
contains nearly 37,000 words and the template list contains over 16,000
multi-word units. (Archer et al. 2002: 1)
The semantic tagset used by Wmatrix was, initially, loosely based on Tom
McArthur ’ s Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English (McArthur 1981) although
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this initial category has been subsequently refi ned. The original tagset con-
tained twenty-one general discourse fi elds (for instance, ‘ the body and the
individual ’ , ‘ arts and crafts ’ , ‘ emotion ’ ), which have been further divided and
sub-categorized. The various semantic categories I will be making reference to,
therefore, emanate from the later refi ned version of semantic groupings used by
Wmatrix (for the full set of categories see the ‘ Help contents ’ in Rayson [2009]).
Some clarifi cation is also needed regarding the way Wmatrix obtains com-
parative results and identifi es keyness. Walker (2010) explains:
The test Wmatrix uses to ascertain keyness is log-likelihood (LL), and
keyword/POS/concept lists are ranked by LL value, with the highest values
(and therefore most signifi cant items) at the top of the lists. Often when
using keyness lists, the analyst will decide a cut-off level of signifi cance or
keyness to shorten the list. (Walker 2010: 369 – 70)
The log-likelihood (LL) statistical method is based on the possibility that the
outcomes of the comparison are brought about by error or chance. Wmatrix
establishes the following LL cut-off points:
95th percentile; 5% level; p < 0.05; critical value = 3.84
99th percentile; 1% level; p < 0.01; critical value = 6.63
99.9th percentile; 0.1% level; p < 0.001; critical value = 10.83
99.99th percentile; 0.01% level; p < 0.0001; critical value = 15.13
(Rayson 2009)
This means that the higher the LL cut-off point (15.13), the lower the pos-
sibility that the statistical signifi cance of the results is fortuitous. The nature
and size of the corpus and the type of text being analysed, as well as other
circumstances, will determine which LL cut-off point is most conducive to
gaining meaningful results. On occasions, se ing a low cut-off value might
result in an unmanageably large number of key items to analyse, which could
hinder rather than aid the analyst ’ s job. For the purposes of this chapter, I
have focused on those semantic categories that score over the 15.13 critical
value; therefore, any result equalling or exceeding that particular cut-off point
is to be understood as statistically signifi cant. It is, nevertheless, important to
highlight that the statistical signifi cance of results does not automatically also
entail their interpretatively meaningful salience, as results still necessitate the
subsequent close scrutiny of the researcher. In order to delve into the pos-
sible interpretative signifi cance of the resulting statistics, I have run the MVC
through AntConc; this allows me to focus solely on the target corpus and so to
investigate in detail the intratextual make-up of the MVC.
11 AntConc proves
especially useful for looking at certain collocations and clusters, as I show
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below. In practice, though, computer-based methods, whichever these might
be, still necessitate the discerning interpretation of the analyst, so results have
to be not just accounted for but also appropriately contextualized. In what
follows, I start by paying a ention to a selection of semantic categories with a
log-likelihood value of 15.13 or over.
12 More importantly, I consider whether
these over-represented categories back up the fi ve defi ning traits that scholars
associate with modern fi ctional vampires. Table 39.1 contains fi ve of the most
interpretatively salient semantic categories out of a total of 64 statistically sig-
nifi cant groups. The left column indicates their rank within the full list and
also highlights that the keyness of the fi rst three categories is both statistical
and interpretative.
The fi rst category, ‘ S9 Religion and the supernatural ’ , contains 370 diff erent
types, that is, diff erent words.
13 These types do not necessarily appear simply
once; they can also recur as a series of tokens (that is, ‘ n ’ occurrences of the
same type). However, despite the obvious statistical over-representation of
these semantically related lexemes, it could be argued that this over-recurrence
is logically accounted for by what is often called the ‘ aboutness ’ of the text. As
McIntyre explains:
Many of the words in a key word list will be indicative of the content of the
text – what is often termed its ‘ aboutness ’ (Philips 1989). Such words can in
many cases be disregarded. (McIntyre 2013: 1184)
Since the thematic content of the novels in my corpus relies on aspects related
to the ‘ supernatural ’ , it should be no coincidence that the S9 category is not just
key, but actually tops the list of over-recurrent items. On the other hand, the
fact that terms related to both the semantic fi elds of religion and the supernatu-
ral are classifi ed together in Wmatrix seems to bear some special signifi cance
when considering the MVC. Modern vampires are defi ned, to a great extent, by
the way in which their supernatural otherness is connected to the kind of spiri-
tuality and morality associated with religiosity. It could be argued, therefore,
that the over-representation of terms loaded with meanings reminiscent of both
Table 39.1
Wmatrix SEMTAG Log-likelihood value
1 S9 Religion and the supernatural +931.37
2 Z8 Pronouns +892.54
3 B1 Anatomy and physiology +712.16
22 X2.5 + Understanding +61.85
34 S3.2 + Relationship: Sexual +41.80
AQ: Please
provide
caption for
Table 39.1
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religious and supernatural aspects refl ects more than simply the ‘ aboutness ’ of
the text. As Clements argues:
Guilt leads Louis, as he goes through the story of his life and experiences,
to express a very clear spiritual struggle between the needs and desires of
his vampire nature and his shame over the actions his nature leads him
to. … He asks, ‘ Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that
of the devil? ’ Louis constantly questions his vampire nature in traditional
moral terms, but he never reaches any traditional moral answers.
(Clements 2011: 37)
Statistical keyness, thus, supports Clements ’ s claims about Louis, one of the
characters in Rice ’ s Interview with the Vampire , insofar as the spiritual-minded-
ness and supernatural alterity of Rice ’ s vampires seem to coalesce. Furthermore,
since the MVC also contains works by Harris, the statistical signifi cance of this
category could be safely extrapolated to account for vampiric identity in the
novels of a further author too. An initial tentative conclusion about modern
fi ctional vampires highlights the duality of their inner selves and also sug-
gests that this contradictory duality might be the source of the anguish some of
these vampires experience in modern novels (as explained below, the struggle
brought about by their clashing double nature becomes underscored by the
over-recurrence of other semantic categories too).
The second category in Table 39.1, ‘ Z8 Pronouns ’ , is also statistically key
with a LL value of +892.54. Of all the types in this category, the one that scores
highest is the fi rst person personal pronoun ‘ I ’ . The fi rst-person perspective in
Anne Rice ’ s ‘ Vampire Chronicles ’ has been addressed by a number of scholars:
Then, in 1976, Anne Rice published her fi rst novel, Interview with the Vampire ,
and turned the vampire paradigm on its head. This breakthrough novel
focused not on vampire hunters, but on the vampires themselves – and what
a diff erent breed they were. (Benefi el 2004: 261)
Interview with the Vampire , thus, marked a transition in the way vampires were
portrayed as it introduced a crucial shift of perspective: ‘ I ’ -narrators instead of
external tellers were granted the opportunity to depict themselves. As before,
the statistical keyness of this category indicates the over-recurrence of the
fi rst-person perspective in both sets of novels (Rice ’ s as well as Harris ’ s). The
‘ I ’ -narrator in Harris ’ s books, however, is not a vampire but Sookie Stackhouse,
a waitress working in a small Louisiana town who happens to be telepathic and
a vampire sympathizer. Sookie ’ s telepathic nature brings to the fore her own
special kind of alterity (in fact, we learn in later novels that she is half-human,
half-fairy) which, consequently, also underplays not only her own humanity
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but the general human perspective of Harris ’ s books too. In the MVC, there-
fore, the viewpoint of the ‘ human ’ becomes the dispreferred option as the
‘ I ’ -narrators insert their own subjective perspective, which underscores the
supernatural (vampiric or otherwise), instead.
The third statistically signifi cant category is ‘ B1 Anatomy and physiol-
ogy ’ (LL +712.16) with a total of 615 diff erent types inclusive of ‘ eyes, face,
blood, body, head, hair, hand, arms, back, heart, mouth, feet, lips, fi ngers,
skin, fl esh and neck ’ . One of the most recurrent statements made about
the ‘ otherness ’ of vampires concerns their beauty and a ractiveness. For
instance, Beck claims:
Vampires are diff erent. Among all the monsters, demons, and horrors in
popular culture that have amused us for centuries, vampires stand out as an
unusual menace, a ractive and erotic in their deadliness. Monsters like the
vampire have been imagined by many peoples throughout human history.
… The contemporary version of the vampire fi gure is powerfully a ractive,
fi rst of all to his fi ctional victims, and secondly to his many real, live readers,
listeners, and viewers. (Beck 2011: 90)
With regard to Charlaine Harris ’ s vampires, Clements also adds that
‘ Charlaine Harris ’ s vampires are, for the most part, beautiful and desirable.
… They are consistently a ractive to people of both sexes and have a clearly
sexual appeal. ’ (2011: 90) On its own, the ‘ B1 Anatomy and physiology ’ cate-
gory cannot be said to support Beck ’ s and Clements ’ assessments of vampires
as conspicuously beautiful. However, the statistical keyness of the B1 group-
ing becomes interpretatively signifi cant when viewed in light of a further cat-
egory, ‘ O4.2+ Judgement of appearance: Beautiful ’ which is also statistically
over-represented (LL +44.00). In order to check whether vampires ’ physical
a ractiveness is indeed a marker of their identity, I investigate the colloca-
tional keyness between types of the two categories mentioned here. AntConc
shows that in clusters of in between two and six words, the type ‘ beautiful ’
(top scorer in the ‘ O4.2+ ’ group) in the context of ‘ eyes ’ (top scorer in the
‘ B1 Anatomy and physiology ’ ) collocate (there are 123 types and 129 tokens).
AntConc reveals that ‘ beautiful ’ and ‘ face ’ (209 types and 213 tokens) also
appear in regular contact followed by ‘ beautiful ’ and ‘ body ’ , ‘ beautiful blond
hair ’ , ‘ beautiful bones ’ , ‘ beautiful breasts ’ , ‘ beautiful complexion ’ , ‘ beautiful
cultured voice ’ , ‘ beautiful eyelashes ’ , ‘ beautiful laugh ’ , ‘ beautiful long neck ’ ,
‘ beautiful smile ’ , ‘ beautiful voice ’ and ‘ beautiful young body ’ . Although it is
true that, at this stage, I am unable to categorically ascertain that these colloca-
tions exclusively depict the beauty of the vampiric characters, I am, otherwise,
supported in that suggestion by the statistical over-recurrence of fi rst-person
pronouns, which undeniably underscore the non-human perspective of the
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novels in my corpus. That is, the MVC confi rms Beck ’ s claims in relation to
the ‘ beauty ’ category but also highlights that perhaps ‘ beauty ’ is one specifi c
aspect that illustrates characterization issues in Rice ’ s and Harris ’ s work that
do not necessarily apply exclusively to vampires. Nevertheless, this is, admit-
tedly, one aspect that will still require further investigation and about which
I am tentatively only suggesting some preliminary conclusions. Apart from
the confi rmation that these two semantic categories collocate, however, an
intratextual analysis of the MVC seems to draw a ention to a further aspect
that explains the way in which vampiric a ractiveness is linguistically con-
structed. On the one hand, the over-use of items in the ‘ B1 Anatomy and
physiology ’ (615 types) indicates that body parts are recurrently invoked,
often instead of the actual creature those parts belong to. Vampires are, thus,
metonymically described by constantly alluding to (mainly) their eyes and
faces but also their hair, bones and complexion. This metonymic descrip-
tion means that vampires ’ presence is multifariously and pervasively felt.
Moreover, these body parts are being qualifi ed in positive evaluative terms,
which results in multiple projections of the vampire ’ s beauty and which, con-
sequently, also strengthens their handsome otherness. This is one aspect of
the modern vampire that seems to stand in stark contrast to older illustrations
(cf. Bram Stoker ’ s Dracula , for instance, a creature with hair on the palms of
his hands). Recently, though, the success of the modern vampire appears to be
based, at least partly, on the irresistible a raction of these creatures ’ sensual-
ity and beauty.
The fourth statistically signifi cant category illustrates vampires ’ longing to
‘ make sense ’ of their alterity. The ‘ X2.5+ Understanding ’ group (LL=+61.85)
contains fi fty-six types inclusive of ‘ understand, realized, fi gure_out, realiza-
tion, comprehend, made_sense or sympathy ’ . As mentioned earlier, vampires
question their identity and a empt to work out their whole existence through
a complex mixture of spirituality and savagery tinted with high doses of guilt.
This combination of emotions endows modern vampires with a heightened
sense of human-ness as if the la er had resurfaced and is ba ling hard to over-
come the vampiric alterity:
Rice ’ s vampires are not the simple demonic force that we saw in Dracula . They
are self-refl ective, capable of guilt, and focused on their own consciousness.
… Vampires in the Southern Vampire Mysteries are humanized in a way they
weren ’ t in earlier stories. … As vampires become a part of human society,
they are forced to deal with the social vulnerabilities that are an inevitable
part of the human condition. (Clements 2011: 34, 82 – 3)
As Clements points out, it is their desire to understand their otherness that
forces modern vampires to come to terms with their dual nature, and the
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over-representation of the ‘ X2.5+ Understanding ’ group seems to support that
longing, as in the following concordances:
in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of possibilities , fatu
shoulder, trying very hard to comprehend what was really happening bet
. Was this human to want her understanding , this desperate fear that I
-and that in the very moment of understanding what we are, she would recoil
spoke slowly . ‘ Do you need my understanding as much as I need yours? ’ ‘ You
all of Lestat ’ s words had made sense to me . I knew peace only when
the more it made sense. It made sense that something was in my blood
me to drink more blood. It made sense that it heightened all sensations
The over-representation of this category, however, can also shed light on fur-
ther aspects besides vampires ’ sense of self-refl ection and self-questioning. As
has been repeatedly highlighted above, it is important not to lose track of the
fi rst-person perspective of both sets of novels in the MVC; thus, whereas in
Rice ’ s novels, it is vampires who self-examine, in Harris ’ s writing, it is mainly
the telepathic human who exercises her right to enquire about, challenge or
examine the world around her.
14 The joint over-representation of the ‘ X2.5+
Understanding ’ suggests that some instances of recent vampire fi ction empha-
size a general interest in coming to terms with otherness, whether this is pro-
jected as vampiric, telepathic or any other type (Harris ’ s novels, in fact, are
fraught with supernatural beings other than vampires such as werewolves,
shapeshifters or maenads, among many others).
Finally, I consider vampires ’ alterity in relation to their much discussed
heightened sexuality, which appears supported by the over-representation of
the ‘ S3.2+ Relationship: Sexual ’ category (LL = +41.80). Clements, for instance,
describes Harris ’ s novels as ‘ overtly sexual ’ :
A signifi cant part of vampire culture in the books is its overt sexuality.
Sookie faces this from the very beginning when, after she saves him, Bill
comes on to her with a comment about the ‘ juicy artery in your groin ’ . …
When Sookie goes with Bill to Fangtasia, the vampire bar owned by Eric, the
vampire sheriff of Bill ’ s area, she notices that all anyone is thinking about in
the bar is sex. It is full of ‘ Fangbangers ’ , humans who get sexual thrill out of
being bi en by vampires. (Clements 2011: 90)
The over-recurrence of this category, however, is interpretatively signifi cant
mainly with regard to Harris ’ s novels in which sexuality is, as Clements states,
far more openly discussed. In Rice ’ s novels, this open sexuality seems to be
replaced with instances of sensuality or more indirect references to the sex-
ual appetite of the vampire. For instance, running the MVC through AntConc
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shows that the word ‘ sex ’ is more widely used in Sookie Stackhouse ’ s works
(118 instances out of 121 occur in the ‘ Southern Vampire Mysteries ’ ). Other
types such as ‘ lust ’ are far more evenly spread: out of 38 tokens, 20 occur
in Rice ’ s works and 18 in Harris ’ s; or ‘ kiss ’ with a total of 95 tokens, out of
which 48 occur in Rice ’ s ‘ Vampire Chronicles ’ as opposed to the 47 instances in
Harris ’ s books; conversely, the trend reverses in the case of ‘ erotic ’ , as this type
is far more frequently used in ‘ The Vampire Chronicles ’ (12 out of 16 tokens).
All of this suggests that although the modern vampire ’ s sexuality is certainly
embraced, it becomes linguistically realized in various degrees of openness.
I conclude this chapter by also investigating the statistical under-representa-
tion of some semantic categories that carry signifi cant interpretative value for
my own analysis. The intertextual approach of Wmatrix allows the analyst to
consider not just those semantic categories whose keyness is justifi ed by their
over-use, but also those semantic groupings that become key because they are
statistically under-represented. Two categories in particular seem to indicate
certain traits of modern vampires that would run counter to some of the con-
clusions drawn by previous critical assessments. The fi rst category is ‘ S4 Kin ’
15
with a log-likelihood value of (1164.13. This under-representation contradicts
the apparent role of the modern vampire as a ‘ family member ’ :
Despite the general perception, particularly in vampire fi lm, of the vampire
as a solitary predator, many texts have sought to portray the vampire as a
part of a family grouping. The fi guratively incestuous family of vampires can
be traced in rudimentary form to Stoker ’ s Dracula … . Anne Rice, however,
expanded on this considerably in Interview with the Vampire , making the
nuclear family of vampires a major theme in her novel. And as we will see,
where she broadened an existing path, others turned it into a highway.
(Benefi el 2004: 263)
Benefi el suggests here that the vampiric family fi nds its origins in Stoker ’ s
Dracula ; but she goes on to add that Rice turned that aspect into a core com-
ponent of Interview with the Vampire too, and that many other authors typically
followed suit. The semantic content of the MVC, however, does not support
such a claim, which, additionally, raises other issues that need further a en-
tion. In order to confi rm this statistically signifi cant under-representation, I
implemented a separate comparison between Rice ’ s four novels and the BNC
sampler wri en imaginative, but the results similarly displayed an under-use
of the ‘ S4 Kin ’ category with a log-likelihood value of −1152.48. Thus, if, as
claimed by some scholarly work, the rather human notion of ‘ family ’ is impor-
tant for fi ctional vampires, they cannot have drawn that conclusion on the
back of the semantic make-up of the novels, and a further explanation must be
found. Additionally, the lack of types that confi rm the under-representation
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The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics
686
of the semantic category ‘ kin ’ is strengthened by the under-recurrence of
those semantic items belonging in the ‘ companionship ’ category as the ‘ S3.1
Personal relationship: General ’
16 (LL = −121.98) indicates. This double under-
recurrence could suggest that vampires are, on the whole, solitary creatures
capable of existing without ‘ kith or kin ’ . It is, of course, true, that there are
references to members of vampires ’ families, such as Lestat ’ s mother in The
Vampire Lestat ; or to their human families, such as Bill Compton ’ s wife and
children in Dead until Dark ; or even friends such as Lestat ’ s friend Nicholas
in The Vampire Lestat . However, although these family members feature at
what could be deemed pivotal moments in the narratives, their heightened
signifi cance cannot be said to emerge from the statistical signifi cance of those
semantic categories projecting meanings related to family or friendship. This
is, undoubtedly, one other aspect that merits further investigation and expan-
sion to novels other than those in the MVC. This need for further investigation
is, nonetheless, clearly brought to the fore by using a corpus-stylistics analy-
sis, something that could be easily overlooked when implementing a manual
analysis.
Finally, I pay a ention to another under-used group, namely, ‘ S7.1+ In
power ’ (LL = −553.57). This category contains 253 types inclusive of ‘ power,
king, powerful, master, control, order, forced, managed, leader, queen,
boss, prince, Lord or command ’ . Whereas vampires have traditionally been
depicted as controlling creatures who can bend their victims ’ wills to suit their
own needs, a computerized analysis appears to call that power into question,
for they do not seem to ‘ order ’ , ‘ force ’ or ‘ command ’ their victims. One of the
possible justifi cations for this under-use resides in modern vampires ’ newly
found openness, especially in Charlaine Harris ’ s novels, in which vampires
are said to have ‘ come out of the coffi n ’ . Because they can openly feed off
willing donors or visit blood clinics and help themselves to ‘ food ’ , they do
not need to predate on humans in the way they may have been forced to do
in the past.
4 Conclusion
To conclude this brief account of the modern vampire as an illustration of cur-
rent popular literature, it is important to highlight that irrespective of the vam-
pire ’ s identity, readers ’ (as well as cinema and TV viewers ’ ) fascination with
this creature is far from waning. As Beck explains:
The plain message of today ’ s vampire lore is that we are becoming less fearful
and hostile, more curious and sympathetic to those we insist on defi ning as
strangers. That message is not a metaphor or an arcane code. Whatever else
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the vampires may be, they are not us, and the challenge of the vampire story
is whether we can live together with them, as our human nature tempts us
to do. (Beck 2011: 92)
As Beck suggests, the challenge for future vampire stories seems to reside in
the constant re-evaluation of traditional vampiric lore. Corpus stylistics can
provide the means of testing the evolution of this mythical fi gure so that more
fi ne-grained conclusions based on testable evidence can be drawn. Thus, my
analysis allows me to conclude that at least three of the fi ve traits that I set
out to investigate are fi rmly supported by statistical evidence: vampires ’ physi-
cal a ractiveness, vampires ’ sexuality and vampires as tormented souls. On
the other hand, the analysis of the MVC also highlights that some statements
made with regard to vampires as family creatures or as predatory and control-
ling are not backed up by the statistical signifi cance of my fi ndings. Although
I am currently not able to extrapolate these results to account for the totality
of vampiric identities in modern popular novels (nor was that ever my inten-
tion in this chapter), this study allows me to confi dently ascertain the validity
of using a corpus-stylistic methodology to investigate large amounts of data.
As Nash states above ‘ our return to popfi ction consists of buying more popfi c-
tion ’ (1990: 2), so corpus analysis should off er stylisticians and the analysts of
popular literature a solid tool for the future investigations of a genre largely
dependent on large production numbers.
Notes
1. Nielsen Bookscan kindly provided this information for me. I thank David Walter,
Research and Development Analyst for Nielsen Bookscan, for his generosity in sup-
plying these sales fi gures.
2. Others in the list are: John Grisham, Terry Pratche , Audrey Niff enegger, Linda
La Plante, Cecilia Ahern, Alexander McCall Smith, Hilary Mantel, Iain Rankin,
Karin Slaughter, Tess Gerritsen, Peter James, Simon Scarrow, Alice Sebold, Lesley
Pearse, Nora Roberts, Kathy Reichs, C. J. Sansom, Stephen King, and Rosamund
Lupton.
3. For instance, there are cultural, genre, structural and linguistic features associated
with ‘ popular-ness ’ . To be fair to Gelder ’ s work, he amply develops the issue of ‘ pop-
ular-ness ’ in relation to the notion of genre, but space constraints prevent me from
delving into this aspect and doing justice to his work.
4. I am aware that this statement fails to acknowledge the abundance and variety of
vampiric identities and the varying degrees of adherence to human values (if at all)
both in modern and more traditional vampire novels. Again, there is no space here to
pursue this variety further.
5. One of the most infl uential and most-quoted scholars investigating the fi gure of the
vampire is Montague Summers (1880 – 1948). His The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928)
and The Vampire in Europe (1929) illustrate fully the varied terminology used to refer
to this fi gure.
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6. Film and TV vampires are the clearest examples of non-wri en instances of fi ctional
vampirism but not the only ones, as they have also featured in artistic forms such as
paintings and sculptures.
7. Wmatrix is a software tool for corpus analysis and comparison originally devised by
Paul Rayson at Lancaster University.
8. AntConc is a freeware concordance program for Windows, Macintosh OS X, and
Linux devised by Laurence Anthony at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
9. When writing the present chapter, however, some of these functions were inopera-
tive in the current version of the software (Wmatrix 3).
10. UCREL stands for University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language at
Lancaster University.
11. AntConc also permits the comparison between diff erent corpora, but these need to
be imported as they are not pre-loaded in the software.
12. I restrict my analysis to those categories that can help me explore vampiric identity
in relation to the fi ve traits mentioned before. Despite the statistical signifi cance of
many categories other than those I discuss, they lack the interpretative salience I am
interested in. Yet, this does not imply that their statistical over-representation should
be overlooked, nor that they lack any interpretative value whatsoever, as they would
be illuminating to account for aspects other than those that occupy me here.
13. For instance, words included in this category are ‘ vampire, vampires, God, spirits,
devil, soul, witches, soul, and hell ’ .
14. A separate comparison of the ‘ Southern Vampire Mysteries ’ with the BNC sampler
wri en imaginative sub-corpus also confi rms that ‘ X2.5+ Understanding ’ is over-
represented with a LL of +17.86.
15. The kin category (133 types) includes terms such as ‘ mother, brother, father, family,
gran, twins, sister, grandmother, son, and daughter ’ .
16. Types in this category include: ‘ Friend, met, meet, friends, companion, relationship,
meeting, encountered, companions, partner, encounter, escort, friendship, buddy,
companionship, encounters, escorted, accompany, or comrade ’ .
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