Re-exploringO.Henry’sShortStories——ACorpus-BasedPilotStudy【摘要】本文试图采用语料库的方法从文体学视角分析欧•亨利小说集《四百万》。研究揭示，通过语料库软件计算出的总体统计数据，为有关欧•亨利小说广泛认同的文学阐释提供了更为具体的描述基础。在探讨小说场景和基本主题方面，重现序列的搭配及频数信息发现了前人并未关注过的语言学特征。Abstract：Thisarticleattemptstoapplycorpus-basedmethodtoastylisticinterpretationofO.Henry’sshortstorycollectionTheFourMillion.Itisshownthattheoverallstatisticscomputedbycorpussoftwarehasprovidedamoredetaileddescriptivebasisforwidelyacceptedliteraryinterpretationsofhisstories.Intermsofstorysettingsandgeneralthemes,thecollocationandfrequencyinformationofrecurrentsequencescanidentifyvaluablelinguisticfeatureswhichliterarycriticsseemnottohavenoticed.Keywords：corpus;O.Henry;setting;theme1.IntroductionHenrywascalledtheAmericanGuyDeMaupassant.Bothauthorswrotetwistendings,butO.Henry’sstoriesweremuchmoreplayfulandoptimistic.AmongtheformerstudiesonO.Henry’sshortstories,thereisconsensusthatO.Henry’sworksaregenerallybrandedwithsuchfeaturesassurprisingendings,useofcoincidenceorchancetocreatehumor,ingeniousandexquisitelayouts,smile-in-tearsironyandsoforth.Despitethedetailedliterarydiscussion,littleworkhasbeendonetorevealitslinguisticstyles.Noristhereworkwithquantitativedataasconvincingevidence.Intermsoftheestablisheddescriptionofhisstyle,itseemsunlikelythatthecorpus-basedmethodcanfindanythingoriginal.However,thestylisticanalysisinthepresentpaperaimstoillustratethevalueofcorpusempiricalmethodinexploringtheliterarystyles.Ontheonehand,statisticdatahelptoconfirmthecanonicalviewonO.Henry’sshortstories;ontheotherhand,stylisticsisrelatedtolinguisticfeaturesofhisworks.2.DataandMethodologyThispaperisdevotedtoinvestigatingthelinguisticstylesofO.Henry’sworksinanempiricalway,applyingbothquantitativeandqualitativemethods.Thestudyadoptstwocorpora.OneisO.Henry’sbookTheFourMillion(acollectionofstories),publishedin1906,containsaseriesofshortstorieswhichtookplaceintheNewYorkCityintheearlyyearsofthe20thcentury.Thecomputerreadableversionsavailableontheinternetareusedtosetupaminorworkingcorpusforinves