Negation, Expectation and Characterisation: Analysing the Role of Negation in Character Construction in To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee 1960) and Stark (Elton 1989)

Abstract

At the heart of the stylistic endeavour is the aim to illuminate the relationship between language choice and textual effect and meaning. This chapter examines how one element of language choice, linguistic negation, can contribute to stylistic effects. Simpson suggests readers can derive ‘complex inferences from absences in the story’ (2010: 299), whilst Nørgaard (2007) and Sweetser (2006) suggest that negation has significant stylistic and rhetorical potential. This study focuses on what inferences readers can derive from the possible presences that underlie the absences evoked through the use of negation and how this can contribute to the textual construction of fictional characters.