The Language of Suicidal Ideation: A Corpus-Assisted Cognitive Stylistic Analysis

Abstract

The research examines how three important novels from different time periods-The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath, Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace, and Norwegian Wood (1987; English translation 2000) by Haruki Murakami-convey linguistic patterns of psychological distress and well-being via their narratives. The study intends to reveal how these novelists circumnavigate issues of psychological suffering and suicidal ideation by studying the cognitive stylistic features, such as figurative expressions, unusual speech acts, and colorful descriptions. The research purpose is to investigate how cognitive stylistic features enable precise depiction of psychological well-being, especially suicidal thoughts, in fictional works.

               The research problem, however, encounters bias because it studies the depiction of psychological well-being in fictional works which primarily focus on suicidal behavior patterns. The study uses qualitative close reading together with corpus-assisted procedures which include lexical frequency tracking and concordance analysis (via Wordsmith Tools) to control for such an interpretive bias.

               As a result, the study investigates how language and fiction relate to psychological well-being through its examination of famous stories which establishes a more extensive examination of these complex relationships. Thus, it establishes a connection between cognitive stylistics and psychological well-being depiction to advance understanding of how suicidal ideation appears in fiction while creating the basis for future studies in this field.