28.3398, Review: Discourse Analysis; Ling & Literature; Linguistic Theories: Gavins, Lahey (2016)

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Subject: 28.3398, Review: Discourse Analysis; Ling & Literature; Linguistic Theories: Gavins, Lahey (2016)

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Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 12:26:39
From: Kim Jensen [ebensgaard at hum.ku.dk]
Subject: World Building

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-2787.html

EDITOR: Joanna  Gavins
EDITOR: Ernestine  Lahey
TITLE: World Building
SUBTITLE: Discourse in the Mind
SERIES TITLE: Advances in Stylistics
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Kim Ebensgaard Jensen, Københavns Universitet

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

A contribution to cognitive poetics, which is an increasingly popular branch
of stylistics, “World Building: Discourse in the Mind” (henceforth, WB) is an
anthology of sixteen chapters. Edited by Joanna Gavins and Ernestine Lahey, WB
contains a range of contributions by experts within the field, all of which,
in one way or another, are positioned within the framework of text world
theory (Werth 2009, Gavins 2007). 

The first chapter ’World building in discourse’ is the editors’ introduction
to the volume, in which Gavins and Lahey identify the main premise of all
chapters in the volume: a primary function of language is world-building,
which is the construction of a mental representation, or world, in the mind of
the reader based on linguistic cues in the text (Ryan 1998: 138). The editors,
drawing mainly on possible worlds theory and text world theory (Werth 1999,
Gavins 2007) (henceforth PWT and TWT respectively), address the overall
landscape of world-building theories applied in literary and stylistic
analysis.

In Chapter 2 ‘’I felt like I’d stepped out of a different reality’: Possible
worlds theory, metalepsis and digital fiction’, Alice Bell explores the
application of PWT in the analysis of metalepsis in Andy Campbell and Judi
Alston’s multimodal digital novel “Nightingale’s Playground”. First offering a
definition of metalepsis, which draws on Genette (1980: 234-235) according to
whom metalepses are transgressions of the boundaries between narrative levels
(or, indeed, text worlds), Bell explores the metaleptic potential of a number
of narrative strategies deployed in the novel such as the cursor through which
the reader interacts with the visual, textual, and audible worlds of the
narrative itself.

Chapter 2 ‘Author-character ethos in Dan Brown’s Langdon-series novels’
presents a study by Ernestine Lahey of strategies of characterization of
Robert Langdon, the main character in Dan Brown’s popular book series. In her
analysis Lahey applies a combination of TWT and more traditional stylistics
and addresses three aspects of Langdon’s characterization: his good sense, his
physical appearance, and his humility. Through stylistic analysis of excerpts
from all four novels in the series, Lahey maps world-architectures and
identifies a number of interesting linguistic strategies deployed by Brown in
the construction of Langdon’s ethos.

David Herman’s contribution, Chapter 4 ‘Building more-than-human worlds:
Umwelt modeling in animal narratives’ is an exploration of storyworlds and the
construction of minds of animals in primarily non-fiction texts. Drawing on
Leech & Short’s (2007) model of speech and thought presentation in literary
language, in which the presentation types constitute a continuum ranging from
narrative to free direct discourse, Herman makes a case for Sternberg’s (1982,
2011) Proteus Principle (the idea of a many-to-many correspondence between
forms and functions). Analyzing excerpts from a number of texts belonging to
the non-fiction genre of nature writing, Herman further draws on the concept
of mind-style (Fowler 1977) and identifies a number of ways in which the
speech and thought presentation strategies are used in modeling the minds of
animal characters and building their Umwelts (von Uexküll 2010).

In Chapter 5 ‘Building Hollywood in Paddington: Text world theory, immersive
theatre, and Puncdrunk’s The Drowned Man’, Alison Gibbons offers an analysis,
based on TWT, of Punchdrunk’s immersive theater play “The Drowned Man”. In
offering a detailed linguistic analysis of the play’s Welcome Speech, Gibbons
demonstrates how text worlds are constructed and interrelated via linguistic
and discursive cues in the speech itself. Arguing for the application of the
blended-world framework (Gavins 2007: 146-164) in the analysis of immersive
theater, Gibbon’s makes a case for TWT enabling more nuanced understandings of
the ontology of immersive theater than does Fauconnier & Turner’s (2002)
application of conceptual integration theory (the blended-world framework
combines conceptual integration theory and TWT such that the text-world of the
narrative and the discourse-world of the reader reading a text or, in this
case, the audience viewing a theatrical play, are blended into a metaleptic
complex in which characters and the audience interact).

Isabelle van der Bom addresses identity-construction in a cognitive-discursive
perspective in Chapter 6 ‘Speaker enactors in oral narrative’. More
specifically, van der Bom investigates, via application of TWT, the
construction of the self in the oral narrative by a British-born Chinese woman
captured in an interview. Among the linguistic strategies investigated are the
discursive markers ‘you know’ and ‘like’ which are used by the interviewee as
ways to navigate the text worlds of the interview. Van der Bom addresses the
challenges that face-to-face communication poses to TWT due to the ontological
complexity of face-to-face discourse – and this in spite of the general
assumption that face-to-face discourse is considered the prototypical
discourse type – but ultimately makes a case for TWT being very useful in the
study of linguistic self-representation.

Chapter 7 ‘Text world theory as cognitive grammatics: A pedagogical
application in the secondary classroom’ by Marcello Giovanelli reports on a
study of a school teacher’s application of practical TWT in the classroom as
an ingredient in what Giovanelli calls “cognitive grammatics”. Cognitive
grammatics is essentially a cognitively oriented version of Halliday’s (2002:
386) grammatics. In Giovanelli’s study, an English teacher at an upper
secondary school had her pupils read William Carlos William’s short poem ‘The
Red Wheelbarrow’ and subsequently draw the scenes depicted in the poem. The
pupils extensively drew on their extant encyclopedic knowledge as a resource
when constructing the text world of the poem, which was reflected in
differences in their drawings. Giovanelli argues that the study points to
TWT’s potential for being used in the classroom as a ‘thinking tool’, and that
it can be a way to map the cognitive baggage that pupils bring with them into
the classroom.

Jeremy Scott’s contribution is Chapter 8 ‘Worlds from words: Theories of
world-building as creative writing toolbox’ is first and foremost a plaidoyer
for the integration of elements from cognitive-poetic approaches to
world-building into the creative writer’s toolbox. In his discussion, Scott
addresses the application of schema theory (Bartlett 1932), TWT, PWT, and
deictic shift theory (Galbraith 1995) in the writing process. Ultimately,
Scott appeals to creative writers to consider engaging in principles in
cognitive poetics pertaining to world-building and the relationship between
writing and reading.

Chapter 9 ‘The texture of authorial intention’ by Peter Stockwell discusses
readers’ application of mind-modeling to authors as part of the reading of
literature. After an overview of authorial status in literary criticism and
stylistics, Stockwell argues for the very likely possibility that readers in
general treat literary works as having “authorial lives” (p. 149) and
mind-model authors just like they mind-model characters in fiction. In
analyzing deictic shifts in war poetry, Stockwell demonstrates – combining
mind-modeling theory (Stockwell 2009) and TWT – how mind-modeling may be a
factor in generating empathy and sympathy in readers towards the author and
ultimately argues that authorial intention is a cognitive model constructed
and elaborated by the reader.

In Chapter 10 ‘Building resonant worlds: Experiencing the text-worlds of The
Unconsoled’, Sara Whiteley applies TWT in conjunction with Stockwell’s (2009)
attention-resonance model as well as mind-modeling theory. Her chapter
explores how Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel “The Unconsoled” resonates with readers.
Whitely presents a detailed analysis of an excerpt from the novel, pointing to
resonance-generating linguistic attractors therein. However, Whiteley does not
restrict her treatment of the novel to the novel itself, as her analysis of
the excerpt is preceded by an analysis of online discussions of the novel in
which the participants verbalize their responses to the novel.

Sam Browse’s contribution, Chapter 11 ‘’This is not the end of the world’:
Situating metaphor in the text-worlds of the 2008 British financial crisis’,
offers a cognitive discourse analysis of British op-eds in which the 2008
British financial downturn is discussed. Focusing on megametaphors (Werth
1994), Browse addresses this phenomenon in the op-eds. More specifically,
Browse identifies metaphors based on the apocalypse, sea storms and
conceptualizations of trust as glue, as he demonstrates how such metaphors are
situated in different world-clusters throughout the texts.

Chapter 12 ‘The humorous worlds of film comedy’ by Agnes Marszalek applies TWT
in a study of humor in three cinematic comedies – namely, “In Bruges”,
“Bridesmaids” and “In the Loop”.  Essentially a contribution to the stylistics
of film, Marszalek’s chapter investigates the assembly of disrupted elements
into what she has termed humorous worlds (Marszalek 2013).

Jane Lugea discusses mind-style and TWT and in her contribution, Chapter 13
‘Spanglish dialogue in You and Me: An absurd world and senile mind style’, she
investigates dialog in the absurdist play “You and Me” by Little Soldier
Productions. In providing a detailed analysis of dialog features and
juxtaposing these with findings from clinical-psychological research into
senility (Bayles & Kaszniak 1987), Lugea suggests that a quite realistic
senile mind-style is represented in the play. Her study is anchored in TWT and
aligned with text-world-oriented research into absurd drama, (Cruikshank &
Lahey 2010, Vassilopoulou 2008), as she maps a world-architecture from the
discourse world down to modal worlds and proposes a cross-world cline of
absurdity within the play.

In Chapter 14 ‘Autofocus and remote text-world building in the earliest
English narrative poetry’, Antonina Harbus discusses how readers build text
worlds when reading texts which in the discourse world is temporally remote
from the reader. Investigating a sequence in the early English poem “Beowulf”
in which the titular protagonist fights a dragon (the mightiest of three
monster-enemies he has to face during the narrative), Harbus proposes that a
cognitive process which she calls autofocus is at play in which the reader
applies what she calls f-stops which are “default position[s] developed during
lived experience as habituated and emotional reactions to types of
situations”. The autofocus process allows readers react emotionally to even
temporally remote heroic narratives which are rich in otherworldly and
fantasy-based elements, and thus construct emotionally and otherwise
meaningful text worlds.

Chapter 15 ‘’Into the futures of their makers’: A cognitive poetic analysis of
reversals, accelerations and shifts in time in the poems of Eavan Boland’ by
Nigel McLoughlin is a study of Boland’s poetry which combines the mobilities
paradigm (a paradigm in the social sciences and neighboring theories which
focuses on movement of people as well as entities and concepts and ideas)
(Sheller & Urry 2006), attention-resonance theory, and TWT. This chapter is
particularly neatly structured, as it first offers brief introductions to the
three components of its theoretical backdrop so as to make sure that the
reader is acquainted with the basic ideas of the three theories, and then
offers an analysis of the poem ‘Is It Still the Same’ in which a rich
world-architecture is offered based on rigorous analysis of deixis-based world
switches.

Closing the volume we find Joanna Gavins’ contribution, Chapter 16 ‘Stylistic
interanimation and apophatic poetics in Jacob Polley’s ‘Hide and Seek’. Here,
Gavin applies TWT in the analysis of Jacob Polley’s poem ‘Hide and Seek’. More
specifically, Gavins addresses Polley’s use of apophatic strategies in the
poem with specific focus on the phrases ‘I wasn’t V’ and ‘I didn’t V’ which
constitute two major parallelisms in the poem. Building on a detailed
linguistic analysis of the poem, Gavins concludes that it is necessary to take
into account the interconnectedness of the individual text features of the
poem and argues that TWT is particularly useful in serving this analytical
purpose.

EVALUATION

Not only are all contributions to the volume interesting reads as such; many
of them are also, in my opinion, very important contributions to the study of
discourse and cognition, and the contributions by Bell, Herman, van der Bom,
Giovanelli, Whiteley, and Browse in particular are worth highlighting. Bell’s
chapter places the narrative device of metalepsis in the limelight and
demonstrates its usefulness in the cognitively oriented study of narratives
and makes a very compelling case for metalepsis being reflective of underlying
text worlds. The importance of Herman’s contribution lies in how he
demonstrates that mind-modeling and world-building are not just features of
fiction but can also be encountered in non-fiction as well. Similarly, van der
Bom and Browse both demonstrate how TWT and, more broadly, cognitive poetics
can be fruitfully applied in discourse analysis of non-literary texts. I would
argue that van der Bom’s contribution to the volume is not just an important
contribution to cognitive poetics but also to cognitive anthropology, and
Browse’s chapter, in demonstrating that cognitive poetics can be applied in
the study of newspaper discourse, joins the ranks of work by the likes of van
Dijk (e.g. 2014) and Hart (e.g. 2014) as important contributions to
(socio)-cognitive discourse studies. Another particularly important
contribution is Whiteley’s study of resonance; in particular, I think that her
study of readers’ verbalizations of their experiences of reading the novel is
an important step in the development of an empirically and scientifically
reliable approach to reader-response. While these six chapters are important
contributions to the study of discourse – literary and otherwise – and
cognition, Giovanelli’s findings may potentially feed into actual teaching
practices in the classroom, thus indicating that cognitive stylistic research
can constructively feed into society outside of the ‘ivory tower’ of academia.
This, I think, is extremely important, as it is an example of how research in
the humanities certainly does generate societal value despite the often
deprecating stereotyping misconceptions of the humanities and humanists which
flourish in contemporary mainstream society.

Overall WB is characterized by a very clear red thread that binds all
contributions together, and this focus is the main strength of the volume as a
whole. Unlike many other research anthologies, whose chapters often strike me
as being loosely interconnected via a broad theme, WB seems very focused and,
due to TWT figuring in all chapters, there is a pervasive sense of coherence
throughout the entire volume which makes reading the entire volume a seamless
experience. This does not mean that each individual chapter cannot stand on
its own, and all chapters can be read on their own.

The chapters in the volume appear to me to be primarily aimed at researchers –
two exceptions perhaps being Scott’s and Giovanelli’s chapters – within
cognitive stylistics and narratology and not so much at students. While
undergraduate students would need to be closely guided by their tutor in
reading any chapter from WB, I think that postgraduate students might be
better equipped to read some chapters from WB and benefit from it (one
exception is perhaps McLoughlin’s chapter whose structure strikes me as very
undergraduate-friendly). In this perspective, WB is a veritable treasure trove
of course material which can be used in advanced postgraduate courses in as
diverse areas as stylistics, media studies, creative writing, theater studies,
cognitive linguistics, pedagogy, literary studies, and discourse studies. I
would certainly recommend that university libraries acquire a copy of the
volume and that teachers within the fields mentioned above explore the volume
for useful chapters.

One point of criticism I have, which is admittedly a minor issue, has to do
with the organization of the volume. While the sense of focus and coherence is
praiseworthy, I do wish that the chapters had been organized into thematic
parts based on, say, the type of discourse addressed (e.g. literary discourse,
multimodal discourse, and non-literary discourse). For instance, the
contributions by Herman, van der Bom, and Browse all deal with non-fiction,
while Gibbons, Marszalaek, and Lugea’s chapters all deal with the stylistics
of drama. I am well aware that, in applying a structure such as the one hinted
at above runs the risk of going counter to the very sympathetic non-elitist
stance of cognitive poetics: “Cognitive poetics, too, sees literature not just
as a matter of the happy few, but as a specific form of everyday human
experience and especially cognition that is grounded in our general cognitive
capacities for making sense of the world” (Steen & Gavins 2003: 1).
Distinguishing between types of discourse might admittedly lead the reader
into thinking that cognitive stylisticians retain some sort of hierarchy among
literary and non-literary discourse types. However, the question is whether or
not this should trump the reader-friendliness of an overtly thematically based
organization of an edited volume.

This minor criticism aside, “World Building: Discourse in the Mind” is an
immensely important contribution to the study of the interrelation between
narrative, discourse, and cognition, and I sincerely hope that the findings
and views put forth in the volume will feed into fields such as linguistics,
stylistics, discourse studies, narratology, cultural studies as well as media
studies and creative writing. Needless to say, the volume will primarily
appeal to cognitively oriented researchers within these fields, but I would
encourage researchers and postgraduate students alike within these fields more
generally to engage with the volume even if cognition is not their primary
research interest.

REFERENCES

Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social
Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bayles, K.A. & A.W. Kaszniak (1987). Communication and Cognition in Normal
Aging and Dementia. Boston, MA: College Hill Press.

Cruikshank, T. & E. Lahey (2010). Building the states of drama: Towards a
text-world theory account of dramatic play-texts. Journal of Literary
Semantics, 39: 67-91.

Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and
the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.

Fowler, R. (1977). Linguistics and the Novel. London: Methuen.

Galbraith, J. (1995). Deictic shift theory and the poetics of involvement in
narrative. In J.F. Duncan, G.A. Bruder & L.E. Hewitt (eds.). Deixis in
Narrative: A Cognitive Science Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
19-59.

Gavins, J. (2007). Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
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Genette, G. (1980). Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY:
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Halliday, M.A.K. (2002). On grammar and grammatics. In J. Webster, ed. On
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384-417.

Hart, C. (2014). Discourse, Grammar and Ideology: Functional and Cognitive
Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury.

Leech, G.N. & M. Short (2007). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to
English Fictional Prose (2nd ed.). London: Longman.

Marszalek, A. (2013). “It’s not funny out of context!”: A cognitive stylistic
approach to humorous narratives. In M. Dynel, ed. Developments in Linguistic
Humor Theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins: 393-412. 

Rescher, N. (1975). A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and
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Ryan, M.-L. (1991). Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative
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Ryan, M.-L. (1998). The text as world versus the text as game: Possible worlds
semantics and postmodern theory. Journal of Literary Semantics, 27(3):
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Sheller, M. & J. Urry (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Journal of
Environment and Planning A, 38: 207-226.

Steen, G. & J. Gavins (2003). Contextualising cognitive poetics. In J. Gavins
& G. Steen (eds.). Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London: Routledge. 1-12.

Sternberg, M. (1982). Proteus in quotation-land: Mimesis and the forms of
reported discourse. Poetics Today, 3(2): 107-165.

Sternberg, M. (2011). Reconceptualizing narratology: Arguments for a
functionalist and constructivist approach to narrative. Enthymema, 4: 35-50.

Stockwell, P. 2009. Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.

Uexküll, J. von (2010). A Foray into the worlds of Animals and Humans.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Van Dijk, T. (2014). Discourse and Knowledge: A Sociocognitive Approach.
London: Cambridge University Press.

Vassilopoulou, K. (2008). Possible worlds in the theatre of the absurd. In G.
Watson, ed. The State of Stylistics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 157-176.

Werth, P. (1994). Extended metaphor: A text world account. Language and
Literature, 3(2): 79-103.

Werth, P. (1999). Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse.
Harlow: Longman.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kim Ebensgaard Jensen is Associate Professor of English linguistics at the
University of Copenhagen. His research falls under the rubric of cognitive
linguistics, and he has also contributed to the fields of stylistics, corpus
linguistics, and cultural linguistics.





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