பெருமாள் முருகன் நாவல்களில் கொங்கு வட்டார மொழியும் உள்ளூர் அறிவு மரபுகளும்: Corpus Linguistics மற்றும் Digital Humanities அடிப்படையிலான ஆய்வு

Regional Kongu Dialect and Local Knowledge Traditions in Perumal Murugan's Novels: A Study Based on Corpus Lingui

Abstract

Perumal Murugan stands out as a writer who has deeply documented the regional life and linguistic style of the Kongu region in modern Tamil literature. Across his nearly thirty years of literary output—particularly in the novels Koolamadhari, Madhorubagan, Aalandapatchi, and Pookuzhi—Kongu dialect usages, agriculture-related vocabulary, ritual and traditional terms, and word clusters related to food, clothing, and occupation appear in dense concentration. This article examines the Kongu regional linguistic elements found in these novels and the local knowledge traditions they reveal (agricultural knowledge, ecological knowledge, knowledge of the social-caste system, and folk-medical knowledge) using Corpus Linguistics and Digital Humanities methodologies. By employing computational linguistic tools such as text corpus construction, frequency analysis, word-cloud visualization, and collocation analysis, the article attempts to bridge the gap between traditional literary-critical reading and data-based quantitative reading. Finally, the article puts forward the need for and possibilities of documenting regional dialect literary works through digital humanities tools.