Linguistics of Stephen King

James Arthur Anderson is a professor emeritus at Johnson & Wales University, where he taught writing, literature, and science fiction until his retirement in 2021. He has published book-length critical studies on H.P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and received The Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship for Nonfiction from the Horror Writers Association in 2016.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Carrie: The Truth Within the Lie2. ’Salem’s Lot: The Word Gives Being3. “The Word Processor of the Gods”: The Writer Creates the World4. The Shining: The Sleep of Reason5. Pet Sematary: The Spoken Secret6. Misery: The Death of the Author7. The Dark Half: The Duplicity of Language8. “Secret Window, Secret Garden”: The Writer’s Secrets9. “The Body”: Portrait of the Artist10. “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet” and “Dedication”: Nature, Nurture and the Writer’s Psyche11. The Running Man: Simulacra and Simulation12. IT: The Unnamable Horror13. Needful Things: The Linguistics of Brand Names14. The Green Mile: Remembrance of Things Past15. Bag of Bones: King’s Horror Matures16. Cell: The Metalinguistics of Technology17. Lisey’s Story: Private Language18. “Ur”: Textual Reality19.  “1922” and “A Good Marriage”: The Secret Collection20. Joyland: Linguistic Registers21. Revival: Cosmic Horror22. End of Watch: To Be or Not to BeConclusionWorks CitedIndex

“impressively informative, thought-provoking, and inherently fascinating...critically important...highly recommended”—Midwest Book Review; “employs concepts of modern literary theory to analyze the work of American horror writer Stephen King. Written from a scholarly perspective, the book is accessible to devoted fans”—ProtoView.