A Stylistic Analysis of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This book is based on my MA thesis. It is a multi-level linguistic analysis of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the level of phonology, lexicon, and syntax. It also analyzed the deviance from the established norms of pragmatics and logic. Through this multi-level linguistic analysis, the study revealed Carroll’s creative manipulation of language, which enabled Carroll to capture the interest of children as well as adults in a fascinating manner. The analysis revealed that at a superficial level, the book seems to be incongruous and nonsensical because its events and arguments do not fit into the accepted system of our society, which creates humor. At a serious level, however, through the nonsensical, yet seemingly logical, arguments, Carroll was able to depict how confusing adults and their world are to children. He was also able to convey deeper messages, such as satirizing the education and the justice systems of Victorian society and mocking some aspects of the restrictive Victorian society. It is through the creative manipulation of language that Carroll was able to intertwine nonsense and logic to create sense out of nonsense and to convey all these effects.