Abstract

Author:
Zijun Shen, Zhenmei Zhang

Doi: 10.26480/wllcs.02.2024.39.44

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

The play Hamlet, a renowned work by William Shakespeare, has garnered significant acclaim. However, the majority of studies on Hamlet utilize the qualitative approach of literary criticism, which leaves ample opportunity to study the work linguistically. Through the process of constructing the Hamlet corpus ourselves and via the corpus analysis tool AntConc, we employ quantitative data to analyze the words used in the body of the play Hamlet. The findings indicate that the words “eye,” “hand,” “head,” “body,” and “blood” are the most commonly-occurring terms related to the human body. Furthermore, these terms each possess distinct connotations that serve to propel the development of Hamlet’s themes. This paper aims to ignite research interest and focus on the significance of the language used in Hamlet that refers to parts of the body. The application of corpus approaches in Hamlet studies has significant methodological implications.