An Linguistic Approach to Hemingway's Works
Abstract

As one of the Nobel Prize winners, Hemingway himself and his works have always been studied by tremendous researchers, exploring almost every aspect of his works. Some focus on the themes of his work and others devote to the analysis of the character portrayal or his writing styles. However, there are relatively few pure linguistic approaches to his works, concentrating on the interpretation of his specific use of language which is the basic carriers of connotation, emotion and theme. The present thesis contend that a detailed and in-depth analysis of Hemingway’s language  use can shed light on a better understanding of his works.

Hemingway once claimed that his works are guided by his Iceberg Principle which was proposed by himself. According to him, the dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one eighth of it being above water. So the theory is of great importance when we try to interpret his works. The delicacy of Hemingway's language is the contrast formed between the conciseness of words and the richness of connotation.

This thesis employs the Iceberg Principle, takes "A Clean, Well-lighted Place", "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", The Old Man and the Sea as examples, and focuses on the language analysis of the three works which are thought to be characteristics of his short story and novel writing respectively. The thesis consists of four parts. The first one is introduction which briefly introduces the motivation, meaning, backdrop and theory of this research and the structure of the thesis. Part two is literature review of the studies on the previous researches on the Iceberg Theory and the three works. Part three is the main body of this thesis. Detailed analysis of Hemingway’s three works in the light of the Iceberg Theory will be focused on in this part. The last part is conclusion which summarizes the major point of this thesis and draw the conclusion. The five linguistic features stated in part three, conciseness, repetitiveness, ellipsis of dialogue tags, common adjectives and ambivalent diction, can be proved to be true through this research.

From these five aspects, we can get better understanding of Hemingway’s dictions in the three works. Once we are able to fully appreciate the connotation between lines through the simple sentences, we can truly appreciate his works.

Key words: the Iceberg Theory, linguistic approach, conciseness, repetitiveness, ambivalent diction