Murderbot Speaks : a Corpus Stylistics Look at Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries

Sammanfattning: The Murderbot Diaries is a series of science fiction books that deal with the experiences of Murderbot, a human-machine construct. This study uses a corpus stylistics methodology to analyse the language of the books and looks for changes that occur in said language. The paper attempts to answer the question of how the development of the main character can be ascertained through the use of corpus stylistics methods. Using tools like the exploration of keywords, type/token ratio, semantic prosody, clusters and collocations, this thesis attempts to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative literary. From the application of these toolkits, insights such as Murderbot’s neurotic actions, love-hate relationships, and unusual vocabulary choices can be observed. This could serve as a starting point for further research that could be carried out on this series so as to arrive at further conclusions that might prove to be useful within the study of the science fiction genre.