Conclusion

Abstract

The final chapter summarizes the results from the study and presents directions for future research. The study has illustrated that speech, writing, and thought presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction works in a variety of modes and plays a crucial role in establishing, reflecting, and construing a social mind in action. This construal affects both intra- and intertextual dimensions, including readers and their processing as well as theoretical concerns of interpretation and methodological issues of analysis. The study has done pioneer work in the way it uses the analysis of keywords and repetitive patterns as basis for a tool that automatically annotates speech, writing, and thought presentation in digitized corpora. It has furthermore shown how repetitive patterns on all levels of discourse contribute to characterization and function as a means of narrative progression.