EXPLORING SHELL NOUNS IN ANGELOU AND BHUTTO’S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES: A COMPARATIVE CORPUS-BASED STUDY

Abstract

This study aims to explore shell nouns in two autobiographies of Benazir Bhutto (1988), and of  Maya Angelou (1969). The purpose of this research is to conduct analysis of each type of shell  nouns with reference to their lexico-grammatical patterns and functions in both autobiographies.  Quantitative analysis, to determine frequency of each shell noun and its lexico-grammatical  patterns, is utilized by using the Antconc software (3.4.4.). Qualitative analysis, to examine their  functions in both texts, is performed manually.  The corpus for data was selected from 150 pages  from each text. Schmid’s (2000) principles of shell nouns and their lexico-grammatical patterns,  along with their functions, is used as a theoretical tool for this study. The findings and results  revealed that the linguistic and circumstantial shell nouns are frequent in selected corpus of Bhutto’s 
autobiography (1988) while factual and circumstantial shell nouns are frequent in selected corpus  of Angelou’s autobiography (1969). N+cl lexico-grammatical pattern is frequent in both  autobiographies. N+be+cl pattern is more frequent in Angelou’s autobiography (1969) than in  Bhutto’s autobiography (1988). Conclusively, shell nouns are genre specific and context dependent,  it is shown that writers and other popular entities use shell nouns in their autobiographies to portray  complex concepts in simple terms as Angelou (1969) portrayed her complex traumas of childhood  in simple terms, like situation, etc. While Bhutto (1988) portrayed her ideas and perspectives in  people’s mind through complex viewpoints in simpler terms.