摘要

   《荆棘鸟》是澳大利亚著名女作家考琳•麦卡洛的作品。自1977年出版以来一直风靡全球，受到广大读者、学者的钟爱。在语言学中，语料库指有特定用途的文本的集合。语料库是语言学习、研究的基础资源和工具。本文旨在使用语料库，采用定量的方法分析《荆棘鸟》的写作特点。首先建立《荆棘鸟》的语料库。然后利用检索软件对《荆棘鸟》文本进行检索，得出词表、关键词表以及《荆棘鸟》的整体信息。最后通过对检索结果的分析得出《荆棘鸟》写作风格的特点即本文具有浓厚的地方色彩，以宗教，爱情为主线对人物之间的纠葛及命运的发展进行描写，在字里行间体现出女性主义色彩等。

关键字：梅吉；拉尔夫；德罗海达；爱情；宗教；地方色彩；女性主义

Abstract

   The Thorn Birds is written by Australian writer Colleen McCullough. It has been popular and followed by many readers and scholars from different countries since 1977. In linguistics, corpus indicates a body of text assembled according to explicit design criteria for a specific purpose. Corpus is basic resources for language learning and research. This thesis uses quantitative method to analyze the characteristics of The Thorn Birds. Firstly, set up the corpus of The Thorn Birds. Secondly, use the functions of some retrieval package like Concordance, Concordance Plot, File View, Clusters, Collocates and Wordlist to get general information of The Thorn Birds. At the same time, show the wordlist and keyword list. Finally, find out the characteristics of The Thorn Birds, like local color, the theme---love and religion and feminism by analyzing the collected data.

Key words: Meggie；Ralph; Drogheda；love；religion；local color; feminism

1. Introduction

1.1 Introduction of The Thorn Birds
The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel written by Australian author Colleen McCullough. After that, many producers use this novel as the raw material to make television mini-series and films. This novel is popular and followed by numbers of readers from different countries. This novel uses a small area--- Drogheda as its background and introduces many local traditions. The story begins with Meggie and her family living in New Zealand in the early twentieth century. Her father is Paddy, an Irish farm laborer, and her mother Fee. Meggie has several elder brothers. Paddy is poor, but has a wealthy sister, Mary Carson, who lives in Australia on an enormous sheep place called Drogheda. One day, Paddy receives a letter from Mary who offers him a job on her estate. He accepts, and the whole family moves to the Outback. Meggie falls in love with old Aunt Mary’s capable and ambitious Father Ralph de Bricassart who was punished for insulting a bishop is relegated to a remote parish in the town of Gillanbone, near Drogheda. In fact, the priest can not love common people. His love with Meggie is not known by others. Ralph befriends Mary, hoping that a hefty enough bequest from her to the Catholic Church might liberate him from his exile. Aunt Mary loves Ralph for many years. Finally, she finds the love affairs between Ralph and Meggie. This story describes the complicated relationship between the three characters.