Charles Dickens's Influence on Shaw Revisited: A Corpus-Based Stylistic Study

ABSTRACT This article analyzes Charles Dickens's alleged influence on Shaw. Traditionally, such influence has rested upon impressionistic content-based references, which usually include themes, scenes, and especially characters. As will be shown here, though, Dickens's impact on Shaw is more profound than usually thought—or at least demonstrated. The analysis was limited to Dickens's fourteen novels and Shaw's five apprentice novels. It was carried out using a corpus-stylistic approach, making it possible to identify linguistic patterns used by both authors that have remained so far unremarked. A selection of the most frequent patterns in both corpora was scrutinized in an attempt to gauge to what degree Dickens's style had an impact on Shaw's craftsmanship. The analysis discloses more subtle concomitances in the style of both authors than so far have been noted, thus reinforcing Dickens's well-known influence on Shaw from a purely stylistic point of view.