"Pale as death" or "p\^ale comme la mort" : Frozen similes used as literary clich\'es

TL;DR

This study develops a rule-based method to automatically identify frozen similes in 19th-20th century British and French novels, revealing their structured usage and inclusion of the tenor beyond traditional components.

Contribution

It introduces a novel automated approach for detecting frozen similes in literary texts and analyzes their patterns and semantic relationships.

Findings

Frozen similes are used systematically in literary texts.

They often include the tenor, not just the ground or vehicle.

The method confirms structured usage of frozen similes in literature.

Abstract

The present study is focused on the automatic identification and description of frozen similes in British and French novels written between the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century. Two main patterns of frozen similes were considered: adjectival ground + simile marker + nominal vehicle (e.g. happy as a lark) and eventuality + simile marker + nominal vehicle (e.g. sleep like a top). All potential similes and their components were first extracted using a rule-based algorithm. Then, frozen similes were identified based on reference lists of existing similes and semantic distance between the tenor and the vehicle. The results obtained tend to confirm the fact that frozen similes are not used haphazardly in literary texts. In addition, contrary to how they are often presented, frozen similes often go beyond the ground or the eventuality and the vehicle to also include the tenor.