Speaking Loudly: Critical Stylistic Analysis of Selected Soliloquies in Hamlet

Abstract

Critical Stylistics is concerned with the study of ideology in literary and political texts. It draws on certain criteria from the stylistic analysis.  Thus, this paper attempts to apply Jeffries’ (2010) model of critical stylistics to soliloquies of Shakespearean Hamlet. It specifically aims at analyzing the two soliloquies made by the character Hamlet using only three textual-conceptual functions of the model: Representing Actions/ Events/ States; Exemplifying and Enumerating; and Hypothesizing. These functions are adopted here because they somehow represent what the character is saying loudly. The data is analyzed qualitatively to show how the tools are used and then quantitatively to show how many times these same tools are used. This paper concludes that Shakespeare’s language is ideologically loaded and there are discrepancies in the frequency and function of these tools. Besides, the frequency of these tools proves how the ideology is enforced through the language of the text.