狄更斯《艰难时世》的语言分析 英文论文

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The Use of Language in Hard Times





Hard Times is a Victorian novel written by the British writer Charles Dickens. The novel’s use of language is very worth exploring.

First, Dickens’ words were full of satire, especially in the description of some scenes or background, he used many metaphor to criticize the bad effect brought by the industrialization. For instance, at the beginning of chapter 11,the narrator described the awakening of the Coketown factories “The fairy palaces burst into illumination before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown.” In fact, the fairy palaces were simply the factories bursting with light as the fires are lit inside them. While Dickens suggested that fancy can make even Coketown beautiful and magical, the image is ironic because these palaces house the poorest segment of society and were filled with noise, grime and smoke. While Dickens didn’t describes directly how terrible the living conditions of the hands were, it did create a general impression of filth and noise.

Another very interesting thing is I found that Dickens used very colloquial expression for every character in the novel. And by using colloquial expressions, the difference between the “hands”(workers) and middle class are very obvious. This also can be a proof that in Victorian times, social class division was obvious and every classes has their own way to speak English. As for the working class, their English was very nonstandard and even a little hard for foreign readers whose English aren’t their first language, to understand. Here is one of them:“ Come awa’ from th’ bed! Come awa! from ‘t. Tis mine, and I’ve a right to t’!” This is a sentence from a worker Rachel, and other workers appeared in the novel, like Stephen, use the same way to express themselves. If we just see their words, we can’t even know what’s the meaning, but if we read these words out, we can easily get them. In this way, Dickens showed us that under the rigid social structure, even accents were the symbols of one’s class. So


that can be more cynical when Mr.Bounderby told others he was grew up from badly poor to wealth. It’s just a lie he created to boast himself.

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