Topic 10 (session A) - Prose analysis > Bilgewater: Lexis > Task A > Our answer

Bilgewater: Lexis

Task A - our answer

One way to look at word complexity would be to compare it with other passages in terms of the syllable-length of words. Most common words are one or two syllables long (e.g. 'girl', 'boy'; 'father' 'mother'). So we could compare passages in terms of the proportion of words which are 3 syllables or more long.

Below we give the percentage of words which are 3 syllables or longer in Jane Gardam's Bilgewater passage, compared with the three short passages by John Steinbeck, D. H Lawrence and Jane Austen which we looked at in topic 6. For the purposes of this task, we have defined the word orthographically. In other words, a word is a set of letters separated by a space on either side. This decision is not uncontroversial. For example, it means treating ellipted constructions like 'I'm' and hyphenated constructions like 'brother-in-law' as one-word items. But counting orthographic words is simple and straightforward, and whatever happens we need to use the same method of counting for all the passages.

Obviously, the more very long words you find, the more complex a passage will be lexically. But in all of the passages we are going to compare, there are no words longer than 4 syllables.

So lexically the Bilgewater passage is nearer Austen than Steinbeck or Lawrence passages (and you will remember that in general the Austen passage was more complex than the other two when we looked at them in topic 6). Nonetheless, it is not amazingly complex lexically (it is easy to think of more complex lexis), and what complexity there is appears to have to do mainly with the references to the academic context (e.g. 'Principal' 'interview', 'candidate') and perceptions and judgements (e.g. 'ridiculous', 'intelligence' 'formidable', 'proportions').

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