39Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO Petra Zajc UDK 811.111'38:821.111 MA student, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana DOI: 10.4312/vestnik.16.39-61 Slovenia Izvirni znanstveni članek pz66106@student.uni-lj.si Monika Kavalir Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana Slovenia monika.kavalir@ff.uni-lj.si HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO: A COMPARISON OF MR ROCHESTER AND HEATHCLIFF 1 INTRODUCTION1 The way people speak, form utterances, and express themselves reveals a great deal about their personality and intentions, and the same is true for fictional characters. Although fic- tional characters are often categorised as different archetypes, no two characters are ever the same, even if they fall under the same umbrella archetype. Using keyword analysis, the aim of this paper is to draw parallels and highlight the differences between Edward Rochester and Heathcliff, both of whom are typical representatives of the Byronic Hero. Despite both having already been thoroughly examined and speculated about from var- ious angles – such as their commitment to their love interests, alienation from society, troublesome past, their schemes and manipulative tendencies – the use of corpus linguis- tics could shed more light on their respective characters by employing an approach that complements the existing character analysis. The paper begins with a concise review of the most relevant existing contemporary literature on the archetype of the Byronic hero, Heathcliff and Mr Rochester. Following this, keyword analysis is introduced as a recognised and acclaimed method in corpus stylistics. The methodology section outlines the research procedures and parameters em- ployed in the corpus tool Sketch Engine. The findings are presented in tables that focus on each character, Mr Rochester and Heathcliff, separately. In the final part, the results are analysed in detail, interpreted and used to draw comparisons and determine the differ- ences between the two characters. 1 We thank the reviewers for their insightful comments. Monika Kavalir also gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency [research core funding No. P6-0218]. 40 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES 2 LITERATURE REVIEW Mr Rochester and Heathcliff have been analysed and compared to each other extensively due to having been created by two sisters, Charlotte and Emily Brontë. They are often treated as a matching pair, and Stoneman (2011: 114) expands on this claim by naming many actors, such as Milton Rosmer and Timothy Dalton, who assumed the roles of both characters. This section summarises some of the key aspects of what has so far been sug- gested or speculated about their separate characters, actions and speech strategies. 2.1 The Byronic Hero archetype As the name suggests, this literary hero archetype is based on the English poet George Noel Gordon Byron, also known as Lord Byron. Even though it was Byron’s character Childe Harold that was the pioneering character of the newly created hero archetype, the many critics of Byron in the 19th century, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle and Matthew Arnold, who wrote on Byron extensively, contributed to the coining of the name the Byronic Hero since Childe Harold was an embodiment of Byron himself. What makes the Byronic Hero a distinct and fascinating archetype is that the hero is a mixture of various archetypes that were popularised during the Romantic period. In com- parison to other types of heroes, Palfy (2016: 164) defines this archetype as a hero that is “characterised as a rebel who stands apart from society and societal expectations, who is deeply jaded, morally superior, and obsessed with lost love.” Poole (2010: 10) adds that the attractiveness of the Byronic Hero lies in “his transgressive allure” along with “confidence in his noble soul and the possibility of his redemption”. Although the Byronic Hero stands today as a completely separate entity in literary space, it came to be as a result of combining different character types into one. In his monograph The Byronic Hero Types and Prototypes, Thorslev (1962: 43–163) breaks down the new character type into the following preceding archetypes that served as inspi- ration: the Child of Nature, the Man of Feeling, the Gloomy Egoist, the Romantic Rebel, the Noble Outlaw and the Gothic Villain. The archetype of the Child of Nature, created and popularised during Romanticism, is typically benevolent and good at heart. He has a deep appreciation for art and nature and prefers to reside in solitude, which enables him to view society from afar and thus assume the role of its critic. Although he is characterised by naivety, sensibility and daydreaming tendencies, he can be aggressive in his views and criticism of society. Just like the Child of Nature, the Man of Feeling shows optimistic beliefs. Compared to the other archetypes that are the building blocks of the Byronic Hero, the Man of Feeling’s sentimental and sensitive nature is the most intense. His heightened emotions subject him to feverish melancholic fits, especially since his love is typically unrequited thus increasing his suffering, and his shy temperament often borders on cowardice. Like the Child of Nature and the Man of Feeling, 41Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO the Gloomy Egoist also prefers to reside in solitude. Even though he shares this trait with the other two archetypes, Thorslev (1962: 43) defines his solitude more as “rural retire- ment”, where the Gloomy Egoist is melancholically withdrawn from society and life, and can freely lament and ponder about death. In his comparison of these three types, Thorslev (1962: 46) elaborates that while “the Child of Nature could be initiated into adult society [and] the Man of Feeling could go through tender and soulful adventures, […] the Gloomy Egoist, surfeited with life could only meditate on death.” The Byronic Hero’s defiant spirit is a derivation of the Romantic Rebel and the No- ble Outlaw’s characteristics. While both have this trait in common, the Romantic Rebel’s manner is more remorseful and he specifically defies the conventional societal norms, morality, and religious teachings. The Noble Outlaw, whose dignity, courage and loyalty are never questioned, starts off as a victim. His fiery passion, bigger-than-life heroism, dark looks and austere manner make others fearful of him, but his guilty conscience, ex- perience of being wronged by someone close to him, his courteous and gentle behaviour towards female characters, and his sympathetic attitude make him likeable. The last ar- chetype that impacted the creation of the Byronic Hero is the Gothic Villain. He normally belongs to the higher echelons of society and recognises the existing social conventions but takes pleasure in wickedly defying them. Although his character is cloaked in mys- tery along with sins from his past, he is intense, solitary, ingenious, and “as egocentrically analytic of his emotions as the Man of Feeling” (Thorslev 1962: 57). With regard to his youth and wayward attitude, which evolves and matures with the progression of the narrative, the Byronic Hero resembles the Child of Nature, who, the same as the Gloomy Egoist and the Man of Feeling, prefers to live in solitude. The By- ronic Hero’s rebellious nature, which complements his preference for solitude, however stems from the remorseful Romantic Rebel and the fiery and passionate Noble Outlaw, who reject many societal conventions – they reject stoicism, repression of feelings and traditional relationships that are often subject to the defiance of social hierarchy, are disenchanted with the teachings of religion, and defy traditional notions of morality. The traits taken from the Gloomy Egoist are evident in the melancholic and arrogant thoughts and contemplation of the character, which reinforces his defiance and cynical attitude towards others, something that can also be observed in the Noble Outlaw and the Roman- tic Rebel. To expand on this characterisation, Poole (2010: 15) adds that “[the Byronic Hero’s] introversion and hostility to the world, his isolation and his lack of intimacy with others is sometimes presented as a reaction to the injustice of society, as well as a result of his superior nature and consequent contempt for humanity at large” thus making his for solitude and disdain for society distinctly different from that of the Gloomy Egoist, the Child of Nature, the Romantic Rebel and the Noble Outlaw. The most surprising source for the character’s traits is perhaps the Gothic Villain archetype, the type that gives the Byronic Hero his signature look of a dark-haired brood- ing man, his pridefulness, possessiveness and, most importantly, the dark mysterious 42 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES past that is the cause of his remorse and often also of his desire for revenge. The most important aspect of the Byronic Hero, however, appears to be directly connected to the traits of the Man of Feeling, making the new archetypal character deeply committed to the woman he loves. Although these archetypes lend some of their characteristics to the creation of the Byronic Hero prototype, not all Byronic Heroes take on all of the traits, instead appearing on a spectrum. Some characters may lean more towards certain constituent archetypes than others, while still being distinctly Byronic. When Lord Byron died in 1824, the archetype of the Byronic Hero almost died with him. However, a few notable characters kept the literary tradition alive, among them Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, and Charlotte Brontë’s Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre, also published in 1847. These characters, as Thorslev (1962: 3) puts it, “attest the continued appeal of this awesome hero,” which Stoneman (2011: 112) argues is not due to their high moral values, since they are emo- tional, changeable, and perplexing, but due to the fact they are redeemably vulnerable. The appeal that Thorslev speaks about is attested to by the many Byronic Heroes that have been created since Byron’s death, including such classic characters as Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab, and Alexander Dumas’s Edmond Dantes, as well as those that have appeared in the popular media over the last few decades, such as Dr Gregory House from House MD, Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries, Loki from Marvel Cinematic Universe, Bruce Wayne from DC Uni- verse, Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series, and Dexter Morgan from Dexter. 2.2 ‘I cannot live without my soul’: Heathcliff In Emily Brontë’s novel, Heathcliff is an orphan boy taken in by the Earnshaw family at Wuthering Heights, where he grows close to Catherine, the daughter, but is treated cruel- ly by the son Hindley. When Hindley inherits the estate and Catherine marries the heir of the neighbouring Thrushcross Grange Edgar Linton, Heathcliff runs away only to return a few years later, rich and intent on revenge. Although Heathcliff is a typical Byronic Hero, as suggested among others by Lo- dine-Chaffey (2013), Thorslev (1962), and Pykett (1989) – wicked as the Gothic Villain, rejected by society, living out his life in solitude and having tender feelings for the woman he loves – his character to this day still perplexes many, the main disagreement between the scholars being his possible origin and the kind of love he cultivates for Catherine. Heathcliff’s Otherness is established very early on in the novel, and although schol- ars generally agree that he is a member of one of the ostracised minorities of Victorian England, they struggle to pinpoint which one exactly the author had in mind. He is often described as having dark and “savage-like” looks, and scholars such as Althubaiti (2015), Gilbert and Gubar (2020) and Stoneman (2000) argue that Heathcliff is of Romani origin, 43Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO but there are also alternative suggestions. While Lodine-Chaffey (2013: 208) agrees with von Sneidern (1995) and claims that “Heathcliff’s personality traits incorporate contem- porary understanding of black stereotypes,” Joffe (2023) supports the view that Heathcliff is of Jewish descent by taking into account the dark looks of the Palestinian population, his implied accent (“gibberish”, Brontë 2020: 50), which could reflect the distinct accent the Victorian Jews spoke with, and the negative stereotype of greed, pointed out by Nel- ly: “He has, nobody knows what money, and every year it increases. Yes, yes, he's rich enough to live in a finer house than this; but he's very near – close-handed; and, if he had meant to flit to Thrushcross Grange, as soon as he heard of a good tenant he could not have borne to miss the chance of getting a few hundreds more. It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world! (Brontë 2020: 46). Both of these propos- als for Heathcliff’s heritage are historically viable, since Liverpool, where Mr Earnshaw found Heathcliff, had both a large Jewish population and also operated as a slave-trade centre during the late eighteenth century. Regardless of what Heathcliff’s origin may be, Joffe (2023), Lodine-Chaffey (2013) and Tong (2016) agree that it is the source of other people’s mistreatment of him, which causes him to become resentful and vengeful to the point of self-destruction. Ceron (2010: 5) expands on this by defining Heathcliff as “a man who is not only distrustful of everybody, but utterly unable to engage in any social relations.” Heathcliff’s departure, his sudden return as a wealthy respectable man, his marriage to Linton’s sister Isabella and the acquisition of the Wuthering Heights estate are all a consequence of the injustices he faced in his youth, a manifestation of the combination of the wicked Gothic Villain and the Noble Outlaw. Compared to other Byronic He- roes, Heathcliff does very little to please the woman he loves and is instead preoccupied with other people’s opinions of him, which is what has led Lodine-Chaffey and Stone- man to reconsider his affection for Catherine. Lodine-Chaffey (2013: 209) characterises it as an obsession within which Catherine is the pillar of Heathcliff’s identity, some- thing that he continually struggles with, “providing him with a feeling of belonging.” Stoneman’s (2011) psychoanalytical approach confirms Lodine-Chaffey’s claims since she identifies Heathcliff and Catherine’s attachment as Lacan’s mirror-phase, in which children self-identify by means of another person. She expands on this correlation with Heathcliff’s love for Catherine by saying that “while the absence of the ‘mirror’ seems to threaten [the child’s] very existence, [the child] has no conception of the other person’s independent identity” (Stoneman 2011: 115), which is evident in Heathcliff’s inability to understand Catherine’s reasons for marrying Edgar, and later leads him to disturb Cathe- rine’s grave after her death, thereby removing the ‘mirror’. Heathcliff, in short, is a dark and brooding man whose hatred, grudges, deeply rooted anger and rejection cause him to destroy not only those in his path, but also himself. Schol- ars (Adams 2000, Joffe 2023, Lodine-Chaffey 2013, Newman 2019, Stoneman 2011, Tong 2016) concur that Heathcliff is a selfish, malicious character with a strong inclination to 44 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES vengeance and villainous plans, possessing sadistic qualities and a self-destructive nature, all of which can be observed in the novel through the progressive moral decline of his char- acter. For example, after Hindley Earnshaw’s death, his son Hareton is trusted into Heath- cliff’s care, and he openly says to the child: “Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!” (Brontë 2020: 269). Heathcliff then purposefully reduces him to a servant without paying him any money and treats him the same way that he was treated by Hindley. Despite Heathcliff’s consistent display of cruelty and continued abuse, Lodine-Chaf- fey (2013), who views Heathcliff from the perspective of developmental psychology, and Tong (2016), who examines him through Sartre’s idea of freedom, agree that due to the hardships Heathcliff goes through as a child, such as childhood abuse, sympathy is invoked in the reader, who is consequently hesitant to put the blame for Heathcliff’s be- haviour and actions entirely on him. The role of the victim that is present throughout the beginning of the novel ultimately affects the reader’s perception of Heathcliff’s actions, seeing them partly as an inevitable consequence. 2.3 ‘I am the very devil’: Mr Rochester Edward Rochester, commonly known as Mr Rochester, is the master of Thornfield Hall, where Jane Eyre, the heroine of Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous novel, becomes employed as a governess to his ward. When he proposes to her and they are to be married, it is re- vealed that Mr Rochester is already married and is hiding his mentally ill wife in a remote corner of the manor. This prompts Jane to leave him, but she returns after a fire started by his wife that kills her and leaves him handicapped. In his 1962 book on characterisation of the Byronic Hero, Thorslev places and defines Mr Rochester on the Byronic Hero spectrum as “a descendant of the Gothic Vil- lain-Hero”: he resorts to tricks, such as masking himself as a fortune teller, is arrogant and cynical, feels a strong attachment to Jane, and is desperate to keep his marriage to the locked-up Bertha Mason a secret. Even though he is not driven by vengeance, he believes that his father and Bertha’s family have done him wrong in the past, which consequently turns him bitter. In his conversation with Jane, Rochester openly admits the selfish nature of his pursuits that are the result of life’s disappointments: “Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I will get it, cost what it may” (Brontë 2012: 138). Forina (2014: 86) expands on his general attitude by claiming that Rochester “thinks himself above others and depends on no one else for anything”. By the end of the book, little remains unknown about Mr Rochester or his past. Although there is little room for speculation, scholars have been most interested in dis- cussing his manipulation tactics, the major transformation of his character, the nature of his love for Jane, and, as with any Byronic Hero, what makes him a redeemable character. 45Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO While there are many instances of Mr Rochester resorting to tricks in order to ma- nipulate those around him, such as inviting Miss Ingram to spike Jane’s jealousy, the one occurrence that stands out the most is Mr Rochester’s dishonesty regarding his marital status and strategies of persuasion to convince Jane to stay with him as his mistress. Scaff (2002) takes a rhetorical approach to his conversation with Jane and analyses his speech in terms of Aristotle’s theory, a theory that Charlotte Brontë is assumed to have been familiar with. She points out, however, that although Brontë “was familiar with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome […] through Blackwood’s Magazine,” it is unlikely that she “intentionally or systematically implemented ideas from the Rhetoric in Jane Eyre” (Scaff 2002: 115). Nevertheless, Scaff (2002: 115) argues that “Edward Rochester employs all three of the Aristotelian appeals [logos, ethos and pathos] with dexterity.” The study goes on to explain that Mr Rochester tries to appeal to Jane’s reason by sharing with her a detailed account of his troubled past, but when Jane does not falter, he feels “his rightful desire must prevail” (Scaff 2002: 114) and begins to play “unabashedly on [her] feelings, eliciting sympathy for himself” (Scaff 2002: 115). He also characterises himself “as a wise and moral person who has been wronged and pushed by the limits of endurance to extremities of behaviour” (Scaff 2002: 116) in an attempt to convince Jane through the (ab)use of self-pity, self-congratulatory behaviour and guilt. Although Mr Rochester plays on Jane’s feelings of guilt and shame, as is evident after the ruined wedding when Jane tells him she does not want to hurt him and he adds: “Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to destroy me” (Brontë 2012: 304), Scaff (2002: 119) argues that he genuinely wants to pursue happiness with her, which is “a demonstration of his attachment to her”. Other scholars agree that Mr Rochester’s af- fection for Jane is genuine. Stoneman (2011: 114), who views Mr Rochester’s relationship with Jane from a psychoanalytical angle, emphasises that he is in general gentle towards Jane and that his tenderness is the result of his eagerness “to share his life with her,” while Mann (2011: 154), taking his personality under scrutiny, believes that during the persuasion scene, “Rochester’s aggression and ill-temper originate from his desire for Jane and that his mercurial temper masks a sensitive inner character.” Rochester’s genuine attachment is confirmed by a servant who recounts observations made by other people in the house: “The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was” (Brontë 2012: 433). It is his love for Jane that inspires Mr Rochester to reflect on his actions and assume responsibility for them, which ultimately becomes his redeemable quality. Besides the strong connection that he and Jane share, which Newman (2019: 200) calls an “instant concord” between them, Stoneman (2011: 117) highlights the fact that Mr Rochester “promises the adult connection of expanded minds and throbbing bodies,” which implies he does not view Jane as a temporary fling and later transforms himself through feelings of remorse for how he behaved towards her. Forina (2014: 87) goes as far as to say that Mr Rochester “must repent” to complete his transformation and become worthy of Jane’s love, which is what he ultimately achieves. 46 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES 3 METHODOLOGY For the purpose of this research, two corpora were compiled – one containing all of Heathcliff’s utterances, amounting to 11,970 words, and one of Mr Rochester’s, with 27,166 words in total. The corpora were tokenised, lemmatised and POS-tagged using the Sketch Engine corpus tool (Kilgarriff et al. 2014; http://www.sketchengine.eu/). Due to the high frequency of hyphens in both corpora, which could present a problem for the corpus tool, they were either replaced by commas or were separated from the utterance with a space. For example, the utterance “And you came from-?” (Brontë 2012: 123) was changed to “And you came from -?” After the compilation of both corpora, Heathcliff’s and Mr Rochester’s speeches were examined in order to determine if there were any spelling inconsistencies present. Some expressions were found to be inconsistent and potentially presented a problem for the corpus tool, such as to-night, good-bye, e’en, mad-woman, &c. Such items were systematically checked in the Oxford English Dictionary in order to determine the most suitable standardised forms and changed accordingly, ending up as tonight, goodbye, even, madwoman, etc. respectively. Some expressions were merely changed to their un- hyphenated forms, such as ex-act-ly to exactly. Sketch Engine was used to process and extract the data. Both characters were analysed in terms of the following parameters: • n-grams (bigrams and trigrams) • word frequencies • keywords: common/grammatically oriented single-words (rare-common focus: 1000000) • keywords: single-words (rare-common focus: 1000) • keywords: multi-word expressions (rare-common focus: 1000) Keywords are “key items that reflect the distinctive styles of each character” (Cul- peper 2009: 34) and they always reflect the relative frequency of a lexical item in the corpus under investigation compared to some other corpus, which can be either a corpus of general English or a corpus containing the speech of other characters in the same literary work or other text. For the purposes of this paper, the Heathcliff and Mr Roch- ester corpora serve as each other’s reference corpus. The term multi-words refers to combinations of two (or more) words. Keywords are items that are overrepresented in a character’s speech compared to the other character’s utterances. The rare-common focus refers to the smoothing parameter used in Sketch Engine’s Simple Maths keyness score that gives preference to less/more common lexical items (Kilgarriff 2009; https://www. sketchengine.eu/documentation/simple-maths/). The attribute for all the searches was set to lemma. 47Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO 4 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 Heathcliff Table 1: List of top ten most frequently occurring words Word Frequency Frequency per million 1. I 542 37,623 2. be 516 35,818 3. you 410 28,460 4. and 405 28,113 5. the 369 25,614 6. to 358 24,851 7. a 242 16,799 8. of 220 15,271 9. not 218 15,133 10. have 210 14,577 Table 2: List of top ten bigrams Bigram Frequency Frequency per million 1. I be 69 4,790 2. I have 66 4,581 3. do not 63 4,373 4. I will 56 3,887 5. it be 53 3,679 6. and I 44 3,054 7. you be 37 2,568 8. be not 35 2,430 9. in the 34 2,360 10. that I 33 2,291 48 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES Table 3: Keyword list of top 20 common/grammatically oriented single-words (rare-common focus: 1000000) 1. he 11. Nelly 2. him 12. to 3. his 13. do 4. not 14. that 5. Linton 15. Catherine 6. will 16. get 7. I 17. they 8. she 18. Hareton 9. her 19. we 10. if 20. from Table 4: Keyword list of top 20 single-words (rare-common focus: 1000) 1. Linton 11. Joseph 2. him 12. get 3. Nelly 13. we 4. he 14. Edgar 5. Catherine 15. Grange 6. his 16. devil 7. Hareton 17. she 8. Cathy 18. lad 9. us 19. they 10. till 20. off Table 5: Keyword list of top 20 multi-word expressions (rare-common focus: 1000) 1. Edgar Linton 11. paltry creature 2. Miss Linton 12. Ellen Dean 3. blue eye 13. young lady 4. Miss Earnshaw 14. advice concern 5. little dog 15. absurd termination 6. Thrushcross Grange 16. abominable snort 7. Catherine Linton 17. aspect next time 49Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO 8. Miss Catherine 18. daily life 9. amiable lady 19. born fool 10. few day 20. aggravation of the constant torment What is clear immediately is that the list of the top ten most frequent words (Table 1) features the personal pronoun I at the top. For the second and third hits – the verb be and the personal pronoun you – the concordances were checked to determine who Heathcliff refers to in his speech, and in both cases, the examples involve numerous second- and third-person referents, including Mr Lockwood, Catherine, Catherine’s daughter, Ellen Dean, Linton, Hareton and Isabella, which means that they are not character-specific. This makes the self-referring I even stronger and gives it more emphasis. As expected, the same item appears directly in five different combinations out of the top ten bigrams in Table 2 – I be, I have, I will, and I and that I. According to concordances, the third top bigram do not mostly – 22 out of 63 hits – appears in combination with the first-person pronoun as well. Taking this into consideration, the majority of the top ten bigrams in- volve the presence of I. The dominant presence of I in different combinations of bigrams as well as its over- all frequency stands as a firm reflection of Heathcliff’s selfish and self-centred character in speech, especially when compared with general corpora of spoken English. In the spoken part of the British National Corpus 2014 (Love et al. 2017), for instance, I is the second most common lemma in the corpus, lagging considerably behind be; in the spoken subcorpus of the British National Corpus 1994 (BNC Consortium 2007), I only appears in the third place, following be and the. While we tend to focus on ourselves when we speak in general, the comparison therefore singles out Heathcliff as considerably more egotistical than the average speaker. Such egotism can be observed in the following in- stances: in his conversation with Ellen Dean when Heathcliff first becomes jealous of Edgar: “Well, I cried last night […] and I had more reason to cry than she” (Brontë 2020: 79); in the conversation he has with Catherine, who is jealous about Isabella, when he says: “Meantime, thank you for telling me your sister-in-law’s secret - I swear I’ll make the most of it.” (Brontë 2020: 160); and when he is planning to keep Catherine Linton trapped until she marries his son, which is when he explains his motive: “Miss Linton, I shall enjoy myself remarkably in thinking your father will be miserable; I shall not sleep for satisfaction.” (Brontë 2020: 393) What stands out in the list of the top 20 common/grammatically-oriented keywords in Table 3 is the strong presence of third-person masculine pronouns, which appear in the top three positions – the personal pronouns in the top two places and the possessive one in the third place. They are followed by Linton in the fifth place, with the concordances showing this primarily reflects Heathcliff’s obsession with Edgar Linton, who Heathcliff wants to exact his revenge on for marrying Catherine, and not his son, whose name is also 50 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES Linton. This is in line with Tong’s (2016: 235) claim that “Heathcliff, with his genteel manners, deprives Edgar of his past superiority.” The personal pronoun I that appears in seventh place (Table 3) is followed by two feminine pronouns – she and her. The relative order of personal pronouns reflects Heath- cliff’s priorities, where his main preoccupation is competition with several male charac- ters, including Hindley Earnshaw, Catherine’s brother, but primarily with Edgar Linton. It also showcases that female characters are not his priority: while their names appear later on in the list, they are partially the source of his desire for revenge and he fully sees them as tools for exacting it. The presence of if among the top ten common keywords points both to his scheming nature and to his tendency to make threats, as is exemplified by Heathcliff’s conversation with Catherine and Edgar: “if you fancy I'll suffer unrevenged, I'll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while!” (Brontë 2020: 160) This can also be observed in his con- versation with Ellen Dean regarding Hindley’s abuse when Heathcliff says: “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!” (Brontë 2020: 85). Table 4, which prioritises neither common nor rare lexical items, demonstrates similar results, and although they appear in a slightly different order, there are clear parallels that can be drawn between the results of analyses with different parameters. Linton, him, he and his appear at the top of the list, all except his surpassing referenc- es to Catherine and her daughter. The most interesting addition to the results is devil, appearing in 16th place. While the concordances include many instances of devil used as a swearword, there are also instances in which Heathcliff likens himself to the devil or even portrays himself as the worse alternative, as is evident in the passage where he introduces Miss Linton to his son Linton: “You would imagine I was the devil himself, Miss Linton, to excite such horror” (Brontë 2020: 386), and towards the end of the novel when he tells her: “I’ll not hurt you. No! to you, I’ve made myself worse than the devil” (Brontë 2020: 480). In Table 5, presenting the list of the top 20 multi-word items, the first place is taken by Edgar Linton, which again demonstrates Heathcliff’s obsession with his ro- mantic competition. Although there are many names that appear among the results that could potentially refer to Heathcliff’s love – Miss Linton, Miss Earnshaw, Catherine Linton, Miss Catherine and young lady – manual analysis shows that the majority of the concordances are used to refer to Catherine’s daughter, with the exception of Miss Earnshaw. Among the results are three multi-word expressions that reflect different aspects of Heathcliff’s character. Heathcliff uses the multi-word item blue eye whenever he refers to Edgar Linton’s looks that are favoured by society and starkly different from his. Given that this expression appears among the top three, it is evident that Heathcliff has considerable inferiority and identity issues connected to his unknown origin that 51Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO he is shamed for by other characters. The second item reflecting a part of his character is little dog, the fifth multi-word item on the list, referring to Isabella’s dog, which the novel uses to showcase that Heathcliff’s cruelty knows no bounds, since he harms an innocent animal to hurt Isabella, Edgar Linton’s sister who he “plots to seduce, marry and abuse” (Lodine-Chaffey 2013: 2010), showing “no remorse or empathy for the little dog or for Isabella” (Adams 2000: 170). Heathcliff himself admits the severity of cruelty to Nelly in his speech belittling Isabella: “The first thing she saw me do, on coming out of the Grange, was to hang up her little dog, and when she pleaded for it, the first words I uttered were a wish that I had the hanging of every being belonging to her,” (Brontë 2020: 217) before saying that Isabella “disgraces the name of Linton” (Brontë 2020: 218). Heathcliff’s speech shows how preoccupied he is with other characters in the nov- el, such as Edgar Linton and Hindley Earnshaw, and their families. His tragic trait is that he has always wanted to be part of the genteel society but is never accepted by them due to his originating from one of the oppressed minorities and is thus treated poorly in his youth. His entire life consists of him assuming the role of an outcast and obsessing over people who belong to a class that is out of reach for him no matter his achievements. Both his obsession with self-gratification by means of revenge against those who contributed to his misfortune and ill-treatment and his internalised inferiori- ty are thoroughly reflected in the results provided by the corpus analysis. 4.2 Rochester Table 6: List of top ten most frequently occurring words Word Frequency Frequency per million 1. be 1,132 34,909 2. I 1,096 33,799 3. you 1,086 33,491 4. and 890 27,446 5. the 868 26,768 6. a 766 23,622 7. to 736 22,697 8. of 613 18,904 9. have 459 14,155 10. me 412 12,705 52 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES Table 7: List of top ten bigrams Bigram Frequency Frequency per million 1. I be 148 4,564 2. I have 139 4,287 3. it be 121 3,731 4. you be 118 3,639 5. of the 98 3,022 6. do not 80 2,467 7. you have 79 2,436 8. in the 78 2,405 9. be a 77 2,375 10. do you 74 2,282 Table 8: List of top 20 common/grammatically oriented single-words (rare-common focus: 1000000) 1. Jane 11. me 2. a 12. but 3. you 13. this 4. of 14. the 5. what 15. Eyre 6. now 16. very 7. with 17. Adele 8. all 18. like 9. which 19. its 10. my 20. for Table 9: List of top 20 single-words (rare-common focus: 1000) 1. Jane 11. Thornfield 2. Eyre 12. smile 3. Adele 13. man 4. which 14. all 5. Mason 15. Rochester 6. its 16. find 53Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO 7. pass 17. what 8. Janet 18. now 9. very 19. woman 10. wife 20. marry Table 10: List of top 20 multi-word expressions 1. Miss Eyre 11. good deal 2. Miss Ingram 12. something of that sort 3. Thornfield Hall 13. little child 4. little friend 14. shake hand 5. few moment 15. Mrs Fairfax 6. Jane Eyre 16. paid subordinate 7. long time 17. pearl necklace 8. Bertha Mason 18. communicative tonight 9. few minutes 19. much time 10. Grace Poole 20. Hay Lane The most frequently occurring word in the whole of the corpus is be, as shown in Table 6, which is expected across spoken corpora. What is significant, however, is the hierarchy of personal pronouns. Although I is found in second place, it should be noted that, at 33,799 instances per million words (pmw), its frequency barely surpasses anoth- er personal pronoun, you, with a frequency of 33,491 pmw. The two pronouns are thus much closer in frequency in Mr Rochester’s corpus than in general spoken corpora of English, such as the spoken parts of the British National Corpus 2014 (36,846 pmw for I in second place and 26,362 pmw for you in fourth place) and the British National Corpus 1994 (26,210 pmw for I in third place and 22,784 pmw for you in fourth place), and you in particular is used much more often. The concordances show you mainly referring to Jane Eyre. Based on the word frequency list alone, the factor that could point to Mr Rochester’s self-centredness is the presence of the only other personal pronoun on the list, me, in tenth place, especially given that it only occurs in speech at No. 58 in the British National Cor- pus 2014 and at No. 63 in the British National Corpus 1994. The similar frequencies of I and you, however, reveal more about Mr Rochester’s character, since they stand as a tes- tament to Mr Rochester’s claim that Jane is “[his] equal […] and [his] likeness” (Brontë 2012: 258), and suggest that he may indeed see her as his equal. This is emphasised by Mr Rochester’s repentant transformation later in the novel, since “in order to have equality 54 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES between them, he must repent and admit some inferiority” (Forina 2014: 87). This can be observed towards the end of the novel when Mr Rochester admits: “Divine justice pur- sued its course; [...] the shadow of death. His chastisements are mighty; and one smote me which has humbled me for ever.” (Brontë 2012: 453) Of the top ten bigrams in Table 7, the top two include Mr Rochester’s direct refer- ence to himself – I be and I have. Even though these dominate the list, which could be taken as a demonstration of his preoccupation with himself and an indication of his selfish nature since “he takes his own needs unselfconsciously for granted” (Scaff 2002: 114), it is important to note that of the five bigrams that involve personal references, only two are used to refer to himself. The common denominator of the other three is the pronoun you, used for the second person singular. The concordances show that only few instances refer to someone other than Jane, confirming his strong focus on her. One such rare utterance occurs after Richard, Bertha Mason’s brother, is wounded and Mr Rochester is sending him on his way after he receives medical attention: “Where did you leave your furred cloak?” (Brontë 2012: 216). The list of the top 20 common keywords in Table 8 further highlights Mr Rochester’s fixation with Jane, with Jane and you appearing among the top three, and Eyre in 15th place. The pronouns me and my, the only two first-person pronouns, appear further down the list, taking tenth and 11th place respectively. It is important to note that in many in- stances my is used with other words to form combinations with which Mr Rochester again refers to Jane and solely to her: my little wife, my darling, my pale little elf, my Jane, my comforter, my paid subordinate, my conscience-keeper, my little friend, my pet lamb, my lovely one, my bride, my beloved, my equal, my likeness, my treasure, my Jane, my good angel, my mistress, my sympathy, my better self, my rescuer, my hope, my love, my life, my living Jane, my living darling, my nurse, my fairy, my skylark, my little Jane, my only treasure. Due to these results, it would be unfair to classify my entirely as self-referencing, even if some of the nicknames and references are a result of his intention to achieve whatever his heart desires, even at Jane’s expense, are about a service he believes Jane could provide, which would help him achieve happiness, or are a manipulation tactic he uses to play with Jane’s feelings. After Jane becomes aware of Mr Rochester’s marital status, for example, he tries to convince her to stay with him by means of manipulation – calling her unreasonable and emotionally blackmailing her: “Never fear that I wish to lure you into error—to make you my mistress. Why did you shake your head? Jane, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic” (Brontë 2012: 308). Fol- lowing a manual analysis of the concordances, over half of the combinations with my are used by Mr Rochester to convey his tender (albeit possessive and even obsessive) feelings for and his attachment to Jane even if “the process of their coming together […] is fraught with menace” (Stoneman 2011: 113). The part of him that is derived from the Man of Feeling’s devotion to Jane is accompanied by the Noble Outlaw and 55Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO the Romantic Rebel’s self-righteousness and the Gothic Villain’s manipulative strate- gies to achieve his goals. Notably, expressions involving the attribute little referring to Jane are abundant in the first half of the book, when Jane is in an evidently lower position than Mr Rochester. Once he loses everything, suffers life-altering injuries, repents for what he has done and undergoes a transformation, only a single instance of using little to refer directly to Jane can be found in his speech, which confirms that by the end of the novel Mr Rochester truly sees Jane as his equal. His perception of her as his inferior is evident during their initial engagement, specifically when Jane shares with him visions of her nightmare, which foreshadows the bitter future of their wedding, and Mr Rochester’s first response is: “And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Jane, when I am close to you? Little nervous subject! Forget visionary woe, and think only of real happiness!” (Brontë 2012: 285). Notwithstanding the love he has for her, his speech also evidently reflects that in his mind Jane is yet to become his true equal. After they are reunited, Mr Rochester uses little in reference to Jane once when reminiscing about the past: “I thought my little Jane was all mine! I had a belief she loved me even when she left me” (Brontë 2012: 450), but he otherwise drops the use of little, as can be observed in the following quotations: “In truth? In the flesh? My living Jane?” (Brontë 2012: 441), “You should care, Janet; if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care” (Brontë 2012: 443) and in “but Jane’s soft min- istry will be a perpetual joy. Jane suits me: do I suit her?” (Brontë 2012: 452). Table 9, showcasing the list of top 20 single-words, shows three direct references to Jane among the top ten: Jane and Eyre taking the first two places, and Janet, Mr Roch- ester’s loving pet name for Jane, appearing shortly after in eighth place. Although his own name appears in 15th place, the lemma’s concordances show that he uses Rochester either to refer to himself, his first wife – Bertha Mason, or even Jane when he tells her he wants her to be the next Mrs Rochester, hence it is mainly used to refer to people he shares or wants to share his name with, once again favouring Jane. For example, when Mr Rochester is tending to the necessary arrangements for the wedding, he asks Jane for her opinion on the carriage in the following way: “You must see the carriage, Jane, and tell me if you don’t think it will suit Mrs. Rochester exactly” (Brontë 2012: 248). With this utterance, Mr Rochester does not refer to himself or Bertha Mason, but to his intentions of marrying Jane. In Table 10, four of the top 20 multi-word expressions are directly connected to Jane: Miss Eyre, little friend, Jane Eyre and paid subordinate, the first three appearing among the top three and the last one appearing in 16th place. The other indirect reference to Jane is Hay Lane in 20th place. Even though it is not in any direct way connected to her character, Hay Lane plays a major role in the novel since that is where Mr Rochester and Jane first meet. It is also a moment that Mr Rochester reminisces about multiple times over the course of the novel. In this respect, Hay Lane can be viewed as relating to Jane since it bears no other significance in the novel and is not connected to any other 56 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES character apart from her. Taking the list at face value, one might assume that Mr Roch- ester is divided between his affection for Jane and Blanche Ingram, but the concordances of Miss Ingram, with nine instances in total, show that a third of the examples occur in the passage where Mr Rochester rejects her. He voices his feelings for Miss Ingram when he proposes to Jane: “I would not – I could not – marry Miss Ingram” (Brontë 2012: 258). Bertha Mason and Grace Poole are also among the top ten items, the former being Rochester’s past that haunts him and the latter his past’s keeper, since Rochester relies on Grace Poole to keep an eye on his wife and keep her a secret from everybody else. Their high rankings among the multiple references to Jane, a person Mr Rochester sees as his present and future, show that he is haunted by “a history of entanglements with women” (Stoneman 2011: 113) which interferes with his pursuit of happiness and which he would prefer to keep buried. Although Mr Rochester may be a selfish character, this is not the trait that stands out the most in his speech. It is evident that he is actively troubled by his past due to the many references to his first wife, Bertha Mason, and those connected to her. The strong- est presence that can be detected in his speech, however, is Jane’s, highlighting the aspect of devotion and tender love of the Byronic Hero that derives from the Man of Feeling. The various analyses show that he either talks about her with equal frequency as he talks about himself, or references to her dominate his speech and override the references to himself, making her a large part of who he is as a character, which is a testimony to the genuine love he feels for Jane, even if he shows his attachment in strange and manipu- lative ways. When his transformation is complete at the end of the novel, it comes as no surprise that he becomes a good and devoted husband to Jane. 4.3 A Byronic comparison Mr Rochester and Heathcliff are both Byronic heroes, which is evident from the many traits that they share – they are both rebellious, removed from society, passionate, mys- terious, brooding and prepared to do whatever it takes to reach their goal, even when (and sometimes especially when) they do it at someone else’s expense. Their ways of speaking, however, shed light on many important differences, which ultimately makes it impossible for them to be categorised as completely the same type of character. It is evident in Mr Rochester’s speech that the majority of what he says and thinks revolves around Jane – the person he explicitly and implicitly refers to as his equal, and with whom he is deeply in love, according to the results of the in-depth analysis of the concordances. This is likely what also makes him a redeemable character, although his intensity and self-interest almost push Jane to the edge of society where she would be completely dependent on him. His plan to send her to one of his estates is exactly that: “You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean. There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life” 57Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO (Brontë 2012: 308). On the spectrum of the Byronic Hero, Mr Rochester has many traits typical of the Gothic Villain – selfishness and a manipulative, obsessive and possessive behaviour with a past filled with secrets. However, his many redeemable traits, such as the remorse of the Romantic Rebel and the melancholic contemplation of the Gloomy Egoist, together with his undying loyalty to Jane and his ability to be vulnerable around her, steadily reveal the amount of feeling that he has for her – sentiment typical of the Man of Feeling. He demonstrates this vulnerability especially towards the end of the nov- el after being humbled both physically and emotionally when he shares with Jane he feels unworthy of her love and care: “‘I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard [...] And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?” (Brontë 2012: 451). Combined with the transformation of the Noble Outlaw as the most important feature, they significantly distance him from the Gothic Villain on the Byronic spectrum. Heathcliff, on the other hand, is not the same kind of Byronic Hero as Mr Rochester. The cruelty he had to endure in the past, his humble beginnings, his burning passion for Catherine and the presence of remorse which leads to his death all affect his placement on the Byronic Hero spectrum. Due to his devious cruelty, pervasive darkness, destruc- tive tendencies, lust for revenge, his mysterious coming into fortune, all of which are confirmed by corpus analysis, he comes closer to the Gothic Villain than any other con- stituent archetype. His love for a woman does not redeem him as a character since his self-interest and desire for revenge make him violent and destructive. How to bring about his revenge and emerge victorious is at the centre of his concerns. Where Mr Rochester’s love for Jane becomes his priority over time as he forms a meaningful connection with her, which can be seen by the incessant references to Jane in his speech, Heathcliff is unable to let go of the past, as can be observed in his hatred towards his own son, who, to Heathcliff, is a painful reminder of the past he has not moved on from, and a tool in exacting his revenge: “I should not wish him to die till I was certain of being his suc- cessor. Besides, he's mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children, to till their fathers' lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp - I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!” (Brontë 2020: 299–300). Hecontinues to be driven by his desire for vengeance, his obsession with other people’s opinions, the need to emerge victorious in his competition with Edgar Linton, and his own inability to accept himself for who he is, while using his love for Catherine more as a vehicle and an excuse to demonstrate his obsession and brutality, as is thoroughly reflected in the results and the analysis. 58 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES 5 CONCLUSION Keyword analysis is a valuable and well-established method for researching the stylistic features of a language, including the speech characteristics of fictional characters and how those reflect their personalities. In this paper, keyword analysis was used to investi- gate the ways in which Mr Rochester from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights differ, even though they are both Byronic He- roes and were created by two sisters who were influenced by the same environment and society and who consequently shared many similarities. This is investigated on the basis of five types of corpus analysis: 2–3 n-grams, word frequencies, common/grammatically oriented single-words, single-words and multi-word expressions. Although keyword analysis is a computer-assisted research method and interpreting the data involves some subjectivity, all of the discussed findings show that Heathcliff’s feelings of inadequacy, brutality, competition and obsession with other people are re- flected in his speech. The overwhelming presence of self-referencing and the many ref- erences to people he wishes to destroy ultimately bring his character closer to the Gothic Villain on the Byronic Hero spectrum. On the other hand, it is evident in the case of Mr Rochester that he is undyingly devoted to the woman he loves and his speech patterns demonstrate that towards the end of the novel he truly sees Jane as his equal, while also being tortured by his past. The transformation that he undergoes is ultimately reflected both in his behaviour and his speech, which significantly distances him from the Gothic Villain on the Byronic Hero spectrum and brings him closer to the Gloomy Egoist and the Man of Feeling. BIBLIOGRAPHY ADAMS, Maureen (2000) Emily Brontë and Dogs: Transformation within the Hu- man-Dog Bond. Society and Animals 8(2), 167–181. ALTHUBAITI, Turki S. (2015) Race Discourse in Wuthering Heights. European Scien- tific Journal 11(8), 201–225. 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VON SNEIDERN, Maja-Lisa (1995) Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade. ELH 62(1), 171–196. 60 VESTNIK ZA TUJE JEZIKE/JOURNAL FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGES POVZETEK KAKO SE IZRAŽATI KOT BRONTEJEVSKI BYRONSKI JUNAK: PRIMERJAVA GOSPODA ROCHESTRA IN HEATHCLIFFA Članek uporablja korpusno analizo kot empirični temelj za karakterizacijo najbolj znanih byron- skih junakov sester Brontë – gospoda Rochestra iz romana Jane Eyre, ki ga je napisala Charlotte Brontë, in Heathcliffa iz romana Viharni vrh, katerega avtorica je Emily Brontë. Primarni cilj pri- spevka je ugotoviti, kako govor gospoda Rochestra in Heathcliffa izraža njuno byronsko osebnost, in raziskati, katere vzporednice lahko zasledimo med njima in kaj ju dela izrazito različna. Anali- zirane jezikovne značilnosti obeh izbranih likov temeljijo na korpusih njunega govora, za obdelavo podatkov pa je uporabljeno korpusno orodje Sketch Engine. Korpusna analiza je narejena na pod- lagi n-gramov, ki identificirajo pogosta zaporedja besed, in besednih frekvenc, ki izpostavljajo naj- pogosteje rabljene besede vsakega od likov. Za poglobljeno analizo smo uporabili ključne besede in besedne zveze, saj te razkrivajo unikatne in specifične jezikovne vzorce, pri čemer govor enega vedno primerjamo z drugim likom kot referenčnim korpusom. Rezultate najprej interpretiramo in postavimo v kontekst za vsak lik posebej, kar razkrije njune edinstvene lingvistične značilnosti in unikatne atribute. Nato sledi primerjalna analiza, s katero se identificirajo podobnosti in razlike med obema byronskima likoma na podlagi podatkov iz korpusa. Obravnavane značilnosti kažejo, da se v Heathcliffovem govoru odražajo občutki nezadostnosti, brutalnosti, tekmovalnosti in ob- sedenosti z drugimi ljudmi, medtem ko je pri gospodu Rochesterju očitno, da je neomajno predan ljubljeni osebi, hkrati pa ga mučijo dogodki iz preteklosti. Vsaka od naštetih analitičnih metod raz- kriva zanimive razlike v njunem govoru in prikaže kako se temačnost byronskega lika izkazuje v gospodu Rochestru in Heathcliffu ter tako prispeva nov vpogled v trajno zapuščino teh dveh likov. Ključne besede: karakterizacija, korpusna stilistika, analiza ključnih besed, Jane Eyre, Viharni vrh ABSTRACT HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO: A COMPARISON OF MR ROCHESTER AND HEATHCLIFF The paper uses corpus analysis as the empirical basis for aiding in / complementing the charac- terisation of the Brontës’ best-known Byronic Heroes – Charlotte Brontë’s Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre, and Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. The primary aim of the paper is to determine how Mr. Rochester’s and Heathcliff’s speech reflect their Byronic personalities, exploring both the parallels that can be drawn between them and what makes them distinct- ly different. The corpus analysis is based on the corpora of character speech, and the Sketch 61Petra Zajc, Monika Kavalir: HOW TO SPEAK LIKE A BRONTËAN BYRONIC HERO Engine corpus tool is used to process the data and perform detailed analyses such as n-grams, which identify common sequences of words, and word frequencies, which highlight the most frequently used words by each character. Additionally, keywords and multi-word expressions are examined to uncover unique and defining linguistic patterns. The results are first interpreted and discussed separately for each character, highlighting their individual linguistic features and unique attributes. Following this, a comparative analysis is conducted to identify the similarities and differences between the two characters based on the corpus data. The discussed features show that Heathcliff’s speech reflects his feelings of inadequacy, brutality, competition and obsession with other people, while it is evident in the case of Mr Rochester that he is undyingly devoted to the woman he loves, while also being tortured by his past. Each of these analytical methods exposes interesting differences in their speech, illustrating how both Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff embody the dark and brooding traits of Byronic Heroes in distinct ways, offering fresh insights into the enduring legacy of these characters. Keywords: characterisation, corpus stylistics, keyword analysis, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights