A Lexical Analysis of Words Signifying Happiness in Dickens' Novel Oliver Twist

Being a transient state, happiness extends from the highest degree of pleasure to the lowest one. It differs from one person to another. Lexically, happiness can be fulfilled by using certain words that are used to describe this feeling. The existing study tries tofind answers for the subsequent queries: 
 
What are the most common words uttered to express happiness in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist? 
Is there a distinction between happiness and other negative feelings in the texts above? 
Do they all have the same indications of happiness? 
 
     This paper aims at: 
 
Examining the semantic aspects of words denoting happiness in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. 
Identifying the correlation between happiness and other negative feelings in the text above. 
 
3.Investigating the implied meaning of that words used in this particular novel.   
 

1. In Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, there are certain words that carry the meaning ofhappiness.

2.There is no clear-cut distinction between happiness and other negative feelings in Dickens'
novel Oliver Twist.
3. It is suggested that each word of happiness has a lexical denotation that makes it exceptional.
After analyzing the data selected, the findings of the investigation validate all the hypotheses above.

1.Literature Review
In different periods, many scholars studied Oliver Twist from various perspectives, and most of them focused on the analysis Dickens' common style of irregularity or language translation, while few studied the novel from the perspective of semantics. For instance, Miyata (2011) studied the deviation from the norm in Oliver Twist, Shantikumar Sharma &Shimreingam (2017)and Lian(2018)examine the degradation of the human relation at the Victorian age. Stefan (2014)figured out the challenges of the translating idiom.
To bridge the semantic gap, this paper deals with happiness, which is a psychological state, in terms of semantics. It intends to further validate that happiness can be expressed linguistically in the above-mentioned novel.

Introduction
Being a multidimensional experience, happiness is enthroned in people's hearts. It is either a transient state or lasting for a long time. The study attempts to the following questions: 1. Linguistically, what are the words used to express happiness in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist?

3.What is the indications of words of happiness?
This paper aims at: 1. Investigating the semantic properties of words of happiness in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist.
2. Showingthe interaction between happiness and other unfavourable feelings in the text above.
3. Determining implications of that words in the text above.
It is hypothesized that: 1. Concerning Dickens' novel Oliver Twist,happiness can be conveyed linguistically.
2.it is expected that happiness has an association with other unwilling senses.
3. It is also suggested that each word of happiness has a lexical meaning that makes it remarkable The procedures adopted are: 1-Reviewing the concept of happiness and its various denotations.
2-Analyzing some selected texts from Dickens' novel Oliver Twist in terms of using words of happiness.

Definitions of Happiness
Dating back to the Ancient Greeks, Veenhoven (1984:1, 17) emphasizes that happiness has various indications. Wierzbicka (1992:539) and Lewis et al.(2008:106)  To be seen as a complex process, happiness involves certain steps to be achieved (i.e. it is integration (of identity), fulfillment (of needs) and extension (contrary to alienation) (Schulz-Hageleit, 1979, as cited in (Veenhoven, 1984:1, 17 andFink, 2013:127)). Michalos (1980:57) defines happiness as "a lasting, complete and justified satisfaction with life". Likewise, Aaberg(2003:108) assumes that happiness is "the emotion that is excited by the acquisition or expectation of good." They both agree that happiness lasts for a short time.
As a social state, Mihalcea and Liu (2006:3) remark that happiness is a natural condition in human daily life. Lewis et al. (2008:457) also state that happiness can be seen as "sharing positive experiences with others Hard to be defined, Sillick and Cathcart (2013:494) confirm that happiness " is an elusive construct and difficult to definedue to its inherent subjectivity." Happiness, as Fink (2013:143) concludes, is the cornerstone of life.

Types of Happiness
Having a positive sense, Janis (2010:1-2) classifies types of happiness as follows: 1-Physical Happiness: it requires the essentials of life such as water, food,air, and shelter.

DOI:
www.ijellh.com 204 6-Eternal Bliss: it is "a realm of unearthly ecstasy and oneness with all."

Different Perspectives on Happiness
Being analyzed in different dimensions, happiness includes philosophy, society, psychology, religion, and culture.
According to Veenhoven (1984:3) and Lu (2001:1), happiness is purely a psychological phenomenon. It is a matter of maintaining harmony between oneself and the outside.
Atanassova-Trifonova(2011:1) confirms that "happiness is one of the emotions that people experience, express, and identify in others from the very early stages in life." For Veenhoven (1984:23) and Sillick andCathcart (2015:495), religion is anchored in happiness.
Being a crucial philosophical issue, Wienand (2009:105) emphasizes that happiness is" based on the principle that each person can find his or her own method to reach selfcontentment." From the social point of view, Veenhoven (2006:23) and Rojas and Ibarra-López (2014:23) agree that happiness is a human interactive state which can be shared with others and it has different forms in various contexts. Regardless of age, intelligence and attractiveness, Zimbardo and Weber (1997:372-3) emphasize that there are other factors that affect the concept of happiness such as love, work satisfaction, and personality.

Happiness and Gender
Happened naturally, happiness is higher in women than in men. Many studies have emphasized that women tend to be happier than men in their adulthood. As they gradually grow up, women become less happy than men (http://ww w.centreforhumanpotential.com.au/blog/happiness-and-gender/).
To be compared with women, it is found that men are happier than women in Brazil and According to Lu (2001:1) and Radford (2004:31), happiness is a noun of the adjective happy. It is used to denote the meaning of fortunate or lucky, besides the two other meanings: (2) (In polite formulas) pleased; (3) (Of language, conduct, suggestion) well-suited to the situation. Lam (2004:6) points out that "the non-count noun 'happiness' is generic, applied to almost every kind of enjoyment." Being a typical adjective having all the derivational properties of regular adjectives, Happy, as Lam and Radford assert, has the following derivations: 1-Unhappy (the negative prefix un-)
From the syntactic point of view, Happy can be used both attributively and predicatively (Bouillon and Viegas, 1999:2) (1) She is a happy woman. (an attributive adjective ) (2) You seem happy today. (a predicative adjective ) Along with sad, small, wise, healthy and wealthy, Happy, as Chalker and Weiner (1994:328) remark, is one of the qualitative adjectives which "describe quality that someone or something has." To create a special rhetorical effect, a double negation of not unhappy can cancel the sense of negation and produce an affirmative one (Verhagen, 2005:70).
(3) I am definitely not unhappy with his remarks.

DOI:
www.ijellh.com 207 In a similar vein, Kroeger (2005:211) differentiates between sentence negation and morphological negation, in the sense that the former is a negative sentence; whereas the latter is a positive one.
(4) a-Arthur is not happy, is he?
b-Arthur is unhappy, isn't he?
Concerning its function as a compliment, the adjective happy can be used as Cs=subject is employed to describe (feelings or emotions).
(10) Frankdidn't sound his happy self on the phone this morning. (ibid) To avoid redundancy and absurdity, one of the restrictions of the word Happy is that it cannot be followed by spatial prepositions (Feigenbaum andKurzon, 2002:121-2).
(12) #Mary is happy in the garden. Downing and Locke (2006:495) emphasize that the adjective happy is used in "that -clause" (13) I am happy that you are leaving. Idiomatically, the adjective Happy can be chained with some words in order to denote additional meanings (Greenbaum, 1996: 426, Azar et al., 2003:117, Lam, 2004:6 and Longman of Exams Dictionary, 2009. (22) I've never felthappier in my life.
(23) I loved her and thought I could make her happy.
(24) I will be so happyto see you.
(26) She is anattractiveschoolgirl with a happy disposition.
(27) He is as happy as a clam!

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www.ijellh.com 209 According to Downing and Locke (2006:506), the adjective Happy may have intensifiers to make the meaning more strong.
(26) He lives all alone but seems pretty happy.
The adjective Happy, as Radford (2004:60) states, can be alternatively used to avoid redundancy.
Similarly, Panther et al. (2009:222) highlight that the adjective Happy can be ellipted when it is recoverable from the context.  1-I am delighted to hear of your success.

9.1.2'Elated'
To show the greatest feeling of happiness and pride, elated is to be excited.

9.1.3'Jubilant'
Jubilant is also an adjective that denotes the feeling of being very happy because of achieving something or happening something bad to someone.
3-The climbers were jubilant after reaching the top of Everest.

9.2.1'Bliss'
Bliss is a noun that formulates a perfect happiness.
4-If there's another world, he lives in bliss.

9.2.2'Ecstasy'
Being in an extreme happiness, ecstasy is another noun that indicates the feeling of pleasure.
5-This is the very ecstasy of love.

9.2.3'Glee'
To be a delight at another's foolishness, glee"suggests spiteful pleasure such as that experienced at another's bad fortune." 6-He laughed with glee when he learned of his opponent's defeat.

9.2.3'Joy'
Joy is a noun that has the meaning of bringing "pleasure or success". 7-My child is a great joy to me.
8-I tried to get her on the phone, but I didn't have any joy.

DOI:
www.ijellh.com 212 Feeling pleasure because of happening something bad to someone, exult is a verb of happiness which ''usually takes the complementation types of prepositional phrases with at, in and over.'' 9-He was exultant. "They lost the game", he shouted.

9.3.2'Rejoice'
Rejoice "is a transitive verb but with no passive form." being widely common in religion, the verb rejoice conveys the meaning of having unmanageable happiness.
10-They all rejoiced that the war was over.

9.3.4'Gratify'
Making someone feeling happiness is to gratify him.
12-His praise gratified me a lot.

9.3.5'Satisfy'
Satisfy is another verb of happiness which means "causing somebody to feel satisfaction." 12-The song pleases me.

9.3.7'Cheer'
Cheer is to make someone feeling happy and confident.
Something that comforts or gladdensis a sudden feeling of excitement 9.3.9'Thrill' To thrill means to be happy and excited.
-His disappointment had turned to joy and he leaped in the air, relived the Bookman had escaped.

9.3.12'Roll'
In an uncontrolled way, Janis (2010:30) mentions that roll is another verb of happiness.
-A teller of tall tales has been brought in to help would-be vicars keep the congregation rolling in the aisles.
1-'Walk on air' is to be very happy because something great has happened.
-She's been walking on air ever since she met Julia.
2-'In seventh heaven' denotes ''the property of feeling very happy about something or enjoying oneself immensely.'' -Gloria was in seventh heaven as she wandered around the shops knowing she could buy whatever she liked.
3-'On cloud nine', describes ''the property of feeling extremely happy, usually for those who are in love''.
-He was on cloud nine after winning the competition

Data and Analysis
Relying on the foregoing discussion, it is worthy to mention that the model adopted for analyzing the following selected verses is developed on the basis of other models, such asLam (2003)  Feeling happiness at the expense of others' suffering is so common at that time.

Conclusion
In spite of the miserable atmosphere, it is obvious that words denoting well-being are widely used in this particular novel. This can be ascribed to the author's ultimate goal of escaping the present situation.The word "happy" is the most common word of happiness that are employed in this novel. This can be attributed to the comprehensiveness of this word,its aesthetic dimension and the richness of having this feeling.This validates the hypothesis which reads "It is suggested that each word of happiness has a lexical denotation that makes it exceptional." In the light of the data selected, it is clear that people practice happiness differently.
This verifies the hypotheses which say "happiness differs from one person to another and from one situation to another."Words of happiness are not pure ones, they are in the middle of the happiness-sadness continuum. This validates the hypothesis which states that "There is no clear-cut distinction between happiness and other negative feelings in Dickens' novel Oliver Twist."