A CORPUS-ASSISTED THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ANGIE THOMAS’ THE HATE U GIVE

This study presents a corpus-assisted thematic analysis of Angie Thomas’ novel, The Hate U Give, investigating the linguistic and thematic construction of racism, systemic injustice, identity crisis, and poverty. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the research integrates qualitative literary interpretation with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and quantitative data derived from Voyant Tools to explore the novel's vocabulary and statistical features. The analysis reveals that the theme of racism is dominant, with high-frequency terms like "Cops" collocating heavily with violent indicators such as "tear," "gas," and "death," while the concept of "justice" is linguistically bound almost exclusively to the victim, Khalil. Furthermore, the study examines the protagonist’s fragmented identity, demonstrating how code-switching between African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Standard English is used to navigate the segregated worlds of Garden Heights and Williamson Prep until trauma forces these personas to collapse. significantly, the research highlights the often-overlooked theme of poverty, using lexical indicators to frame it as a cyclical survival trap where characters are forced to choose between the "legitimate hustle" and the "street hustle" to meet basic needs like "lights and food". The study concludes that Thomas utilizes specific linguistic patterns to map social inequality, providing measurable evidence that systemic oppression and economic scarcity are foundational to the narrative structure