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‘on the Road’

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Good afternoon dear professors and dear colleagues! Today I have an opportunity to present to you the research, the designation of which is «Lexical analysis of the novel «On the road» written by Jack Kerouac».
Trips, journeys, wanderings and youth are the main sources of inspiration for Jack Kerouac whose book has remained bestseller for more than 60 years. Buddhist, philosopher and travelling writer, not only wrote the book about hitchhiking, but also gave the name to the whole direction in literature and society, namely beat generation. Besides, the novel is characterized by autobiographical features since Jack Kerouac depicts the life of beat generation, the representor of which he was.
From linguistic point of view, «On the road» is a unique example of spontaneous prose invented by Kerouac therefore it is an interesting material to research. Furthermore, little research has been undertaken to study the novel ‘On the Road’ as a linguistic phenomenon.
The actuality of the theme of our research consists in research of the emotive prose as a linguistic prose, stylistic and lexical peculiarities of which are not investigated enough. The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze lexical and stylistic items used in novel ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac.
The tasks of our paper lie in description of stylistic characteristics of emotive prose, in detection and analysis of lexical and stylistic items in the novel.
The object of the research is the novel ‘On the Road’ written by Jack Kerouac.
The subject of the paper are stylistic and lexical special features of the language of the novel.
The novelty of the academic work lies in investigation into the novel as a linguistic phenomenon as well as detailed analysis of lexical and stylistic items of it.
First and foremost, it is important to mention that emotive prose is a type of belles-lettres style which is tightly connected with other functional styles and which uses the languages features of these styles. Emotive prose is distinguished by usage of lexical items of informal language. They make the language of prose work so-called alive and easy to comprehend for reader.
As far as novel ‘On the Road’ is concerned, it is featured by the significant quantity of the vocabulary which belongs to informal colloquial style. Colloquialisms are the most numerous lexical items in the novel. With the help of this usage Kerouac wanted to make the language of the novel closer to every English to make it more real. Eg, My aunt said I was wasting my time hanging around with Dean and his gang [Jack K. On the road, p. 77]. The phrasal verb means to waste time, doing nothing and it was very popular at that time among youth.
The next type of colloquial lexical items which is essential in everyday English is slang. Although slang words are used less than colloquialisms, it is impossible to imagine the novel without them. Slang words bring youth to the language of the novel and vary it. Eg, Now I’m not trying to take your hincty sweets from you, but it seems to me the time has come to decide what you are and what you’re going to do [Jack K. On the road p. 77]. Instead of typical word ‘arrogant’, the author uses slang word ‘hincty’. Slang complicates the novel and at the same time differ it from others.
Emotive prose is characterized by imagery and expressiveness and in order to achieve it, the author introduces idioms. It to compare the using of colloquialisms, the quantity of idioms is not so significant. It is a justification of Kerouac’s spontaneous style of writing since he did not return to every chapter to add some colorful expression. But still the make the novel more emotional and euphonious. Eg, Not only was there no traffic but the rain came down in buckets and I had no shelter [Jack K. On the road, p. 9]. The idiom means it is raining very heavily and it is exaggeration which adds expressiveness.
Jack Kerouac is the writer who likes experiments with words. Nonce words demonstrate his talent as the inventor of new words. Eg, He was a young jailkid all hung-up on the wonderful possibilities of becoming a real intellectual [Jack K. On the Road, p.5]. Kerouac combined two words “jail” and “kid” into one in order to economize the words. Besides, they draw reader’s attention to improvisational style of the author.
Some of the language items play additional stylistic role, namely obsolete words. They are rarely used as Jack Kerouac wanted to express the reality in which the heroes lived as much as possible. Eg, In the winter we planned to migrate to San Francisco, bringing all our beat furniture and broken belongings with us in a jalopy panel truck [Jack K. On the road, p. 176]. “Jalopy” is obsolete because of the development of English language and it is not used any more in English-speaking societies.
To sum up, the language of the novel ‘On the Road’ is a perfect example of active usage of informal colloquial vocabulary in emotive prose that help the novel be exciting and readable for people of all ages and periods. Undeniably, “On the Road” is a valuable linguistic material to examine which definitely needs further researches. Besides, the language of this novel is the reflection of life of a beat-generation, people who influenced changes in the society generally and changed the American’s attitude to life values particularly. Thank you for attention!

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