A Corpus-Assisted Analysis: The East/West Binary Oppositions in Isabella Hammad's The Parisian

Abstract

Drawing upon the theory of postcolonialism in tandem with Edward Said's views on Orientalism, this study explores the East/West binary oppositions in Isabella Hammad's The Parisian. In this study, we treat the novel as a corpus consisting of 196,000 words and adopt a corpus linguistics (CL) approach to literature by using the corpus software Antconc. The analysis reveals a group of postcolonial binary oppositions related to three categories, namely, characteristics, geography, and characters. The contribution of the current study is twofold. First, the application of CL extends the current line of research of an under researched area by bringing together CL and literary studies. Second, it highlights the East/West binary oppositions in diaspora literature.