Experiencing Fictional Worlds 2018045332, 2019002688, 9789027202017, 9789027263032

Citation preview

Linguistic Approaches to Literature

Experiencing Fictional Worlds Edited by Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

32

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Experiencing Fictional Worlds

Linguistic Approaches to Literature (LAL) issn 1569-3112

Linguistic Approaches to Literature (LAL) provides an international forum for researchers who believe that the application of linguistic methods leads to a deeper and more far-reaching understanding of many aspects of literature. The emphasis will be on pragmatic approaches intersecting with areas such as experimental psychology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive linguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, rhetoric, and philosophy. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog/lal

Editors Sonia Zyngier

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro

Joanna Gavins

University of Sheffield

Advisory Editorial Board Douglas Biber

Arthur C. Graesser

University of Memphis

Willie van Peer University of München

Marisa Bortolussi

Frank Hakemulder

Yeshayahu Shen

Donald C. Freeman

Geoff M. Hall

Mick Short

Northern Arizona University University of Alberta University of Southern California

Richard Gerrig

Stony Brook University

Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.

University of California, Santa Cruz

Rachel Giora

Tel Aviv University

Utrecht University

University of Nottingham Ningbo, China

David L. Hoover

New York University

Don Kuiken

University of Alberta

Paisley Livingston

University of Copenhagen

Keith Oatley University of Toronto

Volume 32 Experiencing Fictional Worlds Edited by Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

Tel Aviv University Lancaster University

Michael Toolan

University of Birmingham

Reuven Tsur

Tel Aviv University

Peter Verdonk

University of Amsterdam

Experiencing Fictional Worlds Edited by

Benedict Neurohr Lizzie Stewart-Shaw University of Nottingham

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/lal.32 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2018045332 (print) / 2019002688 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0201 7 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6303 2 (e-book)

© 2019 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

Table of contents

List of contributors Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Introduction Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

vii xi xiii 1

Part 1.  Foundations of fictional worlds Chapter 2 Immersion and emergence in children’s literature Peter Stockwell

15

Chapter 3 A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory Benedict Neurohr

33

Chapter 4 World-building as cognitive feedback loop Ernestine Lahey

53

Part 2.  Forming fictional worlds Chapter 5 Experiencing horrible worlds Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

75

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Experiencing Fictional Worlds

Chapter 6 Framing the narrative: The “fictive publisher” as a bridge builder between intra- and extratextual world Natalia Igl Chapter 7 Constructing inferiority through comic characterisation: Self-deprecating humour and cringe comedy in High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary Agnes Marszalek Chapter 8 Cognitive grammar and reconstrual: Re-experiencing Margaret Atwood’s “The Freeze-Dried Groom” Chloe Harrison and Louise Nuttall

97

119

135

Part 3.  Fictional worlds in context Chapter 9 Immersive reading and the unnatural text-worlds of “Dead Fish” Jessica Norledge

157

Chapter 10 Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom Marcello Giovanelli

177

Chapter 11 Sharing fiction: A text-world approach to storytime Sarah Jackson

199

Chapter 12 Afterword Joanna Gavins

219

Subject index

225

List of contributors

Joanna Gavins is Chair in English Language and Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has published widely within the disciplines of stylistics and cognitive poetics, and on Text World Theory in particular. She is the author of Reading the Absurd (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), Text World Theory: An Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), co-editor (with Gerard Steen) of Cognitive Poetics in Practice (Routledge, 2003) and co-editor (with Ernestine Lahey) of World Building: Discourse in the Mind (Bloomsbury, 2015). She is the Director of the Text World Theory Special Collection at the University of Sheffield. Marcello Giovanelli is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Aston University, UK. He has research interests in applications of Text World Theory and Cognitive Grammar to literary discourse and, more generally, in pedagogical and descriptive stylistics and in English education. Recent books include Text World Theory and Keats’ Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), Teaching Grammar, Structure and Meaning (Routledge, 2014), and Knowing About Language (Routledge, 2016). He has published widely on cognitive stylistics, applied linguistics and the teaching of language and literature in a number of major international journals. Chloe Harrison is a Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Aston University. Her research interests include cognitive poetics, cognitive linguistics, reader response and contemporary and postmodern fiction. She is the author of Cognitive Grammar in Contemporary Fiction (Benjamins, 2017) and co-editor of Cognitive Grammar in Literature (Benjamins, 2014). She is also co-author of the textbook, Cognitive Grammar in Stylistics: A Practical Guide (Bloomsbury, 2018), and Treasurer for the International Association of Literary Semantics. Natalia Igl (Dr.) currently holds a postdoctoral researcher position as a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow (EU grant) at the University of Oslo’s Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages. Previously, she worked as an assistant professor at the Chair of Modern German Literature at the University of Bayreuth and a research assistant at the Department of German Linguistics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. As a researcher and lecturer, she is especially interested in the intersections of literary studies and (cognitive) linguistics.

viii Experiencing Fictional Worlds

Her recent projects and publications deal with the complex perspectival strategies in narrative (see Perspectives on Narrativity and Narrative Perspectivization, coedited with Sonja Zeman), the multimodality of historical illustrated magazines, and the “aesthetics of observation” in 1920s-30s German literary modernism. In her current research, she looks into the radical forms of reader engagement in contemporary German and English speaking multimodal novels. Sarah Jackson is a doctoral researcher in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on pre-school reading practices and explores the formative years of the cognition of literature. Sarah adopts a mixed-methods cognitive approach to pre-literate interactions with literary discourse, combining ethnography with stylistics and analytical frameworks from cognitive poetics. Specifically, she applies Text World Theory to storytime discourse in order to examine how adults and pre-school children comprehend literary texts together during read-aloud practices. Ernestine Lahey is Associate Professor of Linguistics and Stylistics at University College Roosevelt (the Netherlands). Her research interests include cognitive stylistics, Text World Theory, Canadian literature, literary landscape representation and corpus stylistics. She is the co-editor (with Joanna Gavins) of World Building: Discourse in the Mind. Agnes Marszalek received her PhD from the University of Glasgow (2016), and is now based at Glasgow International College, where she teaches academic writing and research skills. Her interests include humour, psychological approaches to text analysis, and health communication. She has published on the stylistics of comic novels and films, as well as literary linguistics more broadly. In 2017, she was a Research Associate on the project Power, Control and the Language of Voicehearing, led by Dr Zsófia Demjén from the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics. Benedict Neurohr is a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on cognitive linguistics and the phenomenon of textual understanding. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, he is working to include more recent advancements of cognitive science, in particular in the area of Predictive Coding, within a framework of literary reader response. His guiding research question is how understanding of a text by a reader may be defined, analysed and predicted by researchers and authors alike. His thesis combines this theoretical approach with empirical data using eye-tracking. Jessica Norledge is a teaching associate in Applied English at the University of Nottingham. She is centrally interested in cognitive poetics, Text World Theory and the emotional experience of reading literary discourse, and her research seeks



List of contributors

to present a stylistically and empirically grounded explanation of fictional dystopia in particular. Her forthcoming monograph The Language of Dystopian Fiction (Palgrave) brings together these interests, offering an extended stylistic analysis of the dystopian genre and exploring the evolution of new dystopian media. She is also the current stylistics contributor for The Year’s Work in English Studies. Louise Nuttall is a Senior Lecturer in English Language & Linguistics at the University of Huddersfield. Her research centres on cognitive stylistic approaches to the language of fiction, with a particular focus on mind style. She is author of Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar (Bloomsbury, 2018) and co-editor of Cognitive Grammar in Literature (Benjamins, 2014). Her first published article in the journal Language and Literature won the 2015 Poetics and Linguistics Association Prize. She is Secretary for the International Association of Literary Semantics and coedits the Bloomsbury book series Advances in Stylistics. Lizzie Stewart-Shaw is an early career researcher and teaches on the Distance Learning Masters Programme in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. Her research focuses on cognitive-poetic and linguistic approaches to the experience of contemporary literature. In particular, she is interested in the ways in which horror fiction creates anxiety, fear, and disgust, and how it can also be cathartic. She has published on Text World Theory, intertextuality, and Stephen King in the peer-reviewed journal, Pennywise Dreadful (2017). Peter Stockwell is Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham, and a Fellow of the English Association. He has published 12 books and over 80 articles in stylistics, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, including Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), Cognitive Poetics (Routledge, 2002), and the recent The Language of Surrealism (Palgrave, 2017). He co-edited The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics (Cambridge University Press, 2014), The Language and Literature Reader (Routledge, 2008) and Contemporary Stylistics (Continuum, 2007). His work in cognitive poetics has been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Persian, and Arabic.

ix

Preface

This book represents the combined thoughts of an international and brilliant group of researchers who have agreed to contribute to answering a series of research questions close to our hearts. The questions themselves arose from a one-day symposium held at the University of Nottingham, planned by the Stylistics and Discourse Analysis reading group, then led by Lizzie Stewart-Shaw, before being led by Benedict Neurohr until April 2018. The symposium was intended to explore experiences of fictional worlds, which we had defined very loosely at the time. Eventually we settled on the title “Experiencing Fictional Worlds: Where Does A Text Take The Reader?” in order to leave our question open not only to the aspects of fictional worlds but also to experience and experientiality, or simply readerly impressions. We were overwhelmed by the quality of abstracts we received, and saddened to be unable to accept them all as speakers on the day. In the time following, discussions and contributions continued and it became obvious that we could do something more with all of this material, out of which the idea of a book was born. In deference to the enormous success of the day and of the question posed by it, we decided that, although it features authors who were not involved in the symposium, the book should inherit its title. We invited a range of excellent stylisticians and linguists from amongst our speakers and beyond to contribute to this book and we were once again saddened to be unable to include all the contributions we received. The result is the present volume.

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the series co-editors, Joanna Gavins and Sonia Zyngier, who have been incredibly helpful and patient throughout the process of editing this work. Their enthusiasm and constructive feedback enhanced this volume overall, especially our own chapters. We would also like to thank all those who have read and commented on drafts of various parts of the book, particularly Kathryn Conklin, Jessica Norledge, and Peter Stockwell. We are also very appreciative of the encouragement of all our friends and colleagues, especially Arwa Hasan and the Stylistics and Discourse Analysis Reading Group. We would also like to extend gratitude to our families. Ben would like to dedicate this to his wife Michala who was his support and cheerleader throughout, even while heavily pregnant, and his beautiful daughter Claire who was born while working on this book. He loves you both eternally. Lizzie is very grateful for the emotional support of her husband Alistair throughout the publishing process, especially when she was heavily pregnant. She would like to dedicate her work to her son Arthur, who has been her best work buddy from the very beginning.

Chapter 1

Introduction Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

Since its conception, cognitive poetics (Stockwell 2002; Gavins and Steen 2003; Vandaele and Brône 2009; Freeman 2014; Harrison and Stockwell 2014) has been used to explore the readerly experience of fictional worlds. This has been achieved by drawing upon the most recent advances in the cognitive sciences and applying them to the study of literary reading, with the ultimate goal of understanding the elusive nature of the readerly experience. While it is fairly easy to have a literary experience, it is more difficult to explain exactly what this experience is and how it works. All approaches to such issues necessarily must consider the role of the reader, whether directly or not. An experience does not occur in a vacuum; it requires consciousness. Therefore, the contributions of this volume all in some way explore the interaction between literature and the experiencing consciousnesses of readers. These investigations take various forms, from critical introspection to qualitative empiricism. This book also looks into how fictional worlds are built and updated, how the context of encountering texts affects fictional worlds and how emotions are elicited. Experiencing Fictional Worlds is not only the title of this book, but a challenge: to reveal exactly what makes the “experience” of literature. In putting the chapters together, it became clear that while we do not encourage the usage of any particular descriptive vocabulary for fictional worlds, one research paradigm plays a major role in many of the analyses presented. Most of the contributions view fictional worlds from within the framework of Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), which is rooted in discourse analysis and modal logic with widespread applications. Here, the authors discuss innovative ideas in relation to Text World Theory, present original analyses, or apply the theory to fascinating empirical studies of real reading situations.

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.01neu © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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1.1

From possible worlds to fictional worlds

In line with existing thoughts of Text World Theory and other approaches to fictional worlds, such as Ryan’s (1991), we define fictional worlds as mental constructs created by readers when engaging with a text. The origin of this approach and of this term lies in possible worlds theories which gained widespread use in 20th-century philosophy and logic. They came to be used for the purposes of discussing causation and the logic of counterfactual sentences (Lewis 1973), the linguistic nature of reference (Kripke 1980), and eventually, literature directly (Ryan 1991). Major questions arising from this view concerned the nature of these possible worlds: do they actually exist? Or are they perhaps mentally created by an individual when thinking about alternate realities? While Lewis (1973) argued that all possible worlds are factually real, theories which defined them as pure mental constructs such as Stalnaker’s (1976) and Rescher’s (1999) became the template for new ways of considering literature. Rescher’s (1999) argument was pragmatic: real objects and worlds are entirely determined regarding their attributes. This means that for every question of whether something has a particular size, colour, composition etc., there is an answer. Fictional objects meanwhile are indeterminate and do not have such a set of answers (Rescher 1999: 403–409). As possible worlds can never be entirely determined in the way real objects are, we should abandon the idea that possible worlds are real, and view them as fictional constructs which are underdetermined but still allow us to consider how reality might behave under specific circumstances (Rescher 1999: 415–417). Rescher’s position became the inspiration for a unique and highly useful way of analysing fictional stories. Ryan (1991) proposed that readers conceptualise fictional stories by constructing partial and indeterminate worlds from the fictional material. She theorised that this process was catalysed by certain uses of language termed “world-building predicates”, including modal predicates which cause a reader to begin to conceptualise the things described as a new, alternate world (Ryan 1991: 19–20). A reader is of course aware that the worlds described by most literature are fictional, but must nevertheless process them in the same way as reality, leading to a mental construction of what Ryan calls the “Textual Actual World”, or TAW (Ryan 1991: 22). This TAW becomes the centre of reality for the fictional situation. It is now possible for new world-building predicates to form a constellation of many fictional possible worlds surrounding the fictional reality within the reader’s mind (Ryan 1991: 22). This conceptualisation creates difficulties for the theories outlined by Rescher, notably the fact that fiction is underdetermined and does not always include all



Chapter 1.  Introduction

the details necessary to identify or fully mentally represent an alternate world. This leads Ryan to introduce what she calls “the principle of minimal departure”: we reconstrue the central world of a textual universe in the same way we reconstrue the alternate possible worlds of nonfactual statements: as conforming as far as possible to our representation of AW [the actual world we inhabit]. We will project upon these worlds everything we know about reality, and we will make (Ryan 1991: 51) only the adjustments dictated by the text.

With this principle, Ryan offers a powerful framework for describing the way in which a reader may make sense of a fictional text, taking as much information as possible from the text itself while avoiding the problem of textual underdetermination through the use of their knowledge of reality. Ryan’s theory is quite useful for the analysis of texts of all kinds, but new approaches have since taken the notions of text-worlds even further. The most notable theory which dominates the field to this day is that of Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007). Drawing upon various worlds theories from several disciplines (i.e. from philosophy and literary criticism; “mental models” [Johnson-Laird 1983] and “situation models” [van Dijk and Kintsch 1983] from cognitive psychology; and Mental Space Theory [Fauconnier 1985] from cognitive linguistics), Werth asserts that through his theory he can explain all human conceptualisation. 1.2 1.2.1

Text World Theory An introduction

Text World Theory has been considered as “one of the most dynamic areas of research in contemporary stylistics” (Gavins 2015: 444). This cutting-edge framework is the basis of many stylistic investigations. For example, there are text-world explorations of fictional works (Lahey 2016); non-fictional writing (Hidalgo-Downing 2003); spoken discourse (van der Bom 2015); and multimodal discourse (Gibbons 2012), to name a few. Text World Theory is currently enjoying widespread use because of its applicability to many contexts, for example readings of genre fiction (see Gavins 2013 for absurdism; Stewart-Shaw 2017 for horror, etc.), political discourse (Browse 2016, 2018), and pedagogical settings (Giovanelli and Mason 2015). Together, existing research is evidence that Text World Theory is indeed applicable to all of human discourse. Text World Theory (Werth 1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1997, 1999; further expanded by Gavins 2007, 2013, 2015; Whiteley 2010, 2011, 2015; Gavins and Lahey 2016) rests on three interrelated claims: that language is cognitive and based on human

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experience; that knowledge is vital to language; and that the text determines what knowledge is activated (Werth 1999: 356–358). The first two claims align with the cognitive-linguistic principle that understanding language is based on our knowledge of the world which is rooted in our embodied interaction with it (Steen and Gavins 2003: 8–9; see also Ungerer and Schmid 2006). The second claim highlights the significance of each individual’s store of knowledge, or “the residue of the experience of the individual” (Werth 1999: 357), to discourse-processing, which implies that each discourse participant’s knowledge-base is vital to the construction of text-worlds. This accumulation of personal experience includes the individual’s emotions, dreams, hopes, beliefs, knowledge, memories, imagination, and intentions. However, not all of this information will be relevant to understanding the discourse. The language itself cues specific areas of knowledge which shape the individual’s understanding of the communication; this is text-drivenness. The fact that text-worlds are created through textually-driven prompts enables the analysis to be linguistically grounded. This volume focuses on the experience of engaging with fictional worlds, but the analyses carried out consider it from several different perspectives, ranging from the world structures of the text itself, to the worlds created by readers as they discuss the fictional texts, to considerations of both aspects. The following section briefly outlines the key concepts in Text World Theory and the part they play in the conceptualisation of discourse.1 1.2.2 The structure of Text World Theory The conceptualisation and tracking of discourse can be discussed through an interrelated three-level structure. At the first level, the discourse-world represents the reader’s “here and now”; that is the reader’s physical body in the “actual” world and the context of reading, including the text itself, the conditions (e.g. night or day, inside or outside), and any other factors that may affect the reader’s experience of the discourse. In the reading context, this level also includes the author of the text as a discourse participant, in that the author has created the text with which the reader engages. This relationship is generally manifested as a split discourse-world (Gavins 2007: 26–27), as the author typically does not occupy the same spatiotemporal environment as the reader. The second level is the text-world, or the reader’s mental representation built and populated through world-building elements, such as characters or other entities (enactors in Text World Theory terms [Gavins 2007: 41]; also see Emmott 1997) and deictic terms which situate the discourse spatially and temporally, and 1.  For a full account of Text World Theory, see Gavins (2007) and Werth (1999).



Chapter 1.  Introduction

function-advancing propositions. These propositions, which Gavins (2007) maps out in terms of systemic functional grammar (see Halliday 1985), offer further information about the action, events, and states within a text-world, essentially driving the discourse forward. Also operating at the text-world level are any marked changes to the spatio-temporal boundaries of a world, termed a worldswitch (Gavins 2007: 48–52). In a world-switch, deictic elements such as space or time differ from those of the originating text-world, signalling the reader to create a new text-world with these new deictic parameters in order to process the ongoing discourse. Together, world-building elements and function-advancing propositions cue readers to construct, maintain, and switch between the fictional worlds of a discourse. The third level deals with any apparent changes to the ontological boundaries of a world, as signalled by the expression of attitude, termed a modal-world (Gavins 2007: 73–125). Drawing on Simpson’s (1993) modal grammar, Gavins (2007) proposes that modalised propositions in the text reflect the speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards a particular subject and trigger the creation of a modalworld. These worlds are categorised in line with Simpson’s terminology, creating epistemic modal-worlds (reflecting expressions of certainty or belief); boulomaic modal-worlds (indicating wishes or desires); or deontic modal-worlds (triggered by expressions of obligation). Modal-worlds are ontologically distinct from the originating text-world because readers must “conceptualise both the propositions being modalised and, separately, the speaker’s attitude toward them” (Gavins 2007: 13). The construction of modal-worlds creates a sense of conceptual distance between the reader and the modalised proposition. Throughout a discourse, linguistic features can trigger an abundance of world-switches and modal-worlds. The complex conceptual movement through embedded world-switches and modalworlds can contribute to the multitude of aesthetic effects that readers experience. 1.2.3

Text World Theory and experientiality

Text World Theory’s commitment to the notions of embodiment and experientiality, mirroring the concerns of cognitive poetics more generally, makes it a suitable model to adopt for the consideration of readerly experiences of fictional worlds. The embodied mind (Johnson 1987, 2007; Turner 1991, 1996; Lakoff and Johnson 1999) accounts for the experientiality of fictional worlds. Our minds and bodies are inextricably connected and our physical senses cannot be disconnected from our conceptual capabilities. As reading is experienced through our conceptual faculties, the fictional worlds created can be seen as extensions of our human senses. These feelings of embodied experientiality account for the metaphors commonly associated with reading. For example, readers often feel transported or moved by

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texts (see Gerrig 1993; Gibbs 2002). Text World Theory offers a means to discuss our embodied experiences as mental representations which map out discourse. Many of the contributors to this volume see the notion of experience as being implicit in the viewpoint of Text World Theory in which the experience of literature is always the focal point. “Experience” as a term is one which is not easily defined, or categorised in any one single way. One large theoretical body of work comes from the work of Fludernik (1996), who reimagines the essence of narrative as “experientiality”, which she terms “the quasi-mimetic evocation of ‘real-life experience’” (1996: 12). Another way of conceptualising experience is through the “transportation metaphor” used by Gerrig (1993), who speaks of being mentally transported to alternate worlds as if we were experiencing them directly. Rather than using any single definition, the chapters in this volume engage with all of the facets of literary reading as experiences had by readers, focusing instead on explaining how these phenomena work. Text World Theory and the complementary theories used in this volume are suited to this more implicit view of experience because they are capable of addressing many different forms and definitions of the concept. Both Werth (1999) and Gavins (2007) repeatedly stress the importance of the experiential nature of reading, or of any process involving language. As such, the discussion which follows focuses not so much on the nature of experience itself, but on the things being experienced, and the processes of experiencing them. This in no way means that the discussion is impoverished, but rather reflects the difficulty in speaking of subjective aspects of experience or of forcibly considering it from any one perspective. Instead, this volume as a whole considers the experience of literature and fictional worlds to be a multi-faceted phenomenon, incorporating many levels of social interaction, textual interaction, and different text types. 1.4

Book overview

Due to the differing approaches taken by our contributors, the book is organised into three sections which reflect the general aims of the chapters within each section. We hope that this will make reading easier as each section can be taken for itself, offering insights into a particular way of looking at fictional worlds. The sections in turn deal with new theoretical approaches towards fictional worlds, refinement of current theories, and finally applications of theories using empirical reader data. In Part 1 theoretical approaches to Text World Theory and fictional worlds in general are addressed, focusing on the cognitive processes behind readers’ perceptions of fictional worlds in literature. Building upon the work of Rescher (1999),



Chapter 1.  Introduction

Ryan (1991), Friston (2005), Werth (1999), and Gavins (2007), each chapter within this section contributes to the question of how fictional worlds are mentally represented by adding new theoretical insights. These include psychological theories, theories of cognition, and cognitive-linguistic approaches which have not previously been considered within literary research in great depth. As a whole, this section offers insights into new theoretical and practical research which may be used for future studies of fictional worlds and experience, as well as for potential re-examinations of existing theory. Chapter 2 discusses the concepts of immersion and emergence, with these notions being illustrated in an analysis of Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children. Here, Stockwell offers an addition to Text World Theory in the form of “mind-casting”, a dynamic method used by readers to move at will between text-worlds and adopt different points of view from within a narrative, even if this is not prompted directly by the language of the text. Cognitive psychology and the concept of “flow” is used to explore the phenomenon of immersion and how child readers must learn how to become immersed in texts through deictic clues (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 1996). In the third chapter, Neurohr discusses the application of a new cognitive paradigm called Predictive Coding (Friston 2002, 2005) to the analysis of fictional worlds. Using the principle of predictions and of parallel processing, he argues that readers not only assemble text-worlds in real time out of smaller incremental knowledge fragments, but that they may not always construct text-worlds in the same way, with differences emerging based on individual background knowledge and assumptions. This is shown alongside a textual example from Brandon Sanderson’s Words of Radiance and a discussion of possible reader interpretations of it. Part 1 closes with Lahey’s chapter which argues for the inclusion of a theoretical “cognitive feedback loop” into Text World Theory. Her aim is to show that the flow of knowledge between a reader and a text is not unidirectional, but that there is a simultaneous flow as a reader applies existing knowledge to the text, while acquiring new insights from that text. This is aided by a detailed analysis of Sheldon Currie’s The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which relies on knowledge of Canada, and a discussion of how readers unfamiliar with this country can make sense of the story. In Part  2 world-building and the major factors involved in shaping novel fictional worlds or changing existing ones are covered, such as emotion, metaphor, and immersion. Drawing more closely on Text World Theory and discourse analysis, the chapters in this section address how fictional worlds are influenced by different genres and text types, ranging from German Romanticism through comedy and horror fiction. Building upon the theories of Minsky (1975), and

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Schank and Abelson (1977), as well as Langacker’s (2008) Cognitive Grammar, these contributions explore new ways to consider the shaping and changing of readers’ representations by different types of literature. Chapter 5 discusses world-building in the context of horror fiction, specifically illustrated by an analysis of Stephen King’s IT. Using both Text World Theory and Stockwell’s attention and resonance model (2009), Stewart-Shaw argues that horror fiction uses very specific negatively oriented lexis and world-building strategies in order to create fear and tension in readers. She also considers how textworld conceptualisation can be used to manipulate readers’ attention, affecting them emotionally in order to achieve the feelings of horror which define the genre. In Chapter 6, Igl investigates the use of an unusual authorial device, known as a “fictive publisher,” as employed within Adelbert von Chamisso’s The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl. Using frame theory (Quendler 2008, 2010; Grishakova 2009), Igl analyses the effects on the paratext which includes a fictional account of how the text was published. The analysis concludes with the suggestion that this device serves first to increase but then ultimately decrease the distance between reader and text, offering a conspiratorial viewpoint into the workings of the fiction. Characterisation in humorous novels, specifically with the phenomenon of self-deprecating humour, is taken up in Chapter 7. Here, Marszalek uses theories of characterisation, humorous fiction, and social interactions to analyse the careful construction of characters which make cringe humour successful. She argues that self-deprecating humour as a fringe genre relies on a careful balance of presenting characters as having either high or low social status. The main characters in this genre must find a balance between being of high status yet being compared unfavourably to other characters for certain humorous situations. Her analysis uses examples from Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. An exploration of readers’ experiences of re-reading a text is provided by Chapter  8. Here, Harrison and Nuttall consider how knowledge gained upon the first reading of a text will affect the second reading. Drawing on Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 2008; Croft and Cruse 2004), they offer a framework of reader processing to account for readers’ evolving experiences of the fictional worlds of Margaret Atwood’s short story, “The Freeze-Dried Groom”. Their analysis focuses in particular on readers’ construal (Langacker 2008: 43) upon first reading and subsequent reconstrual (Langacker 2008) of characters and other textual elements of the fictional worlds. The third part of the volume deals with reader-response studies and other applications of fictional worlds in context. Chapters in this part focus on direct empirical research on the subject of fictional worlds and how readers respond to and experience them in a variety of actual reading situations. Utilising Text World



Chapter 1.  Introduction

Theory and direct social interaction between readers, the impact of different reading contexts is explored. Building upon the works of Whiteley (2011), Mercer (1995), Alber (2009), and others, the discourse strategies of teaching literature in UK classrooms, of reading groups made up of experienced readers, and “storytime” between parents and children are explored. In Chapter 9, Norledge presents a Text World Theory analysis of “unnatural narration” (Alber and Heinze 2011) in Adam Marek’s “Dead Fish”. This dystopian short story includes world-building elements which may have a defamiliarising effect on the reader. Norledge’s analysis focuses on a small-scale reading group and their consideration of fictional entities in the story and the extent to which they perceived them as unnatural. She discusses their responses in light of readerly immersion and the emotional experience of reading unnatural texts. Chapter  10 highlights the importance of focusing on the context in which reading occurs to understand fully the experience of reading. Giovanelli centres on the reading context of the literature classroom. He presents a small case study and focuses on data taken from UK GCSE level school lessons on Gillian Clarke’s poem “Cold Knap Lake”, taught to a group of fifteen-year-old students at a large secondary school. His Text World Theory analysis draws on recordings of the students talking about their experience of reading this poem. In Chapter  11 Jackson explores the complexities of the practices of early childhood reading. Adopting an empirical approach, she presents an investigation of ethnographic research on a particular adult–child pair and their experience of reading picture books, specifically considering the process of what she terms “interpretive interaction”. Jackson’s analysis focuses on how participants work together during storytime to negotiate meaning and integrate their independent text-worlds for a coherent literary experience. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of pictures and imagery in aiding this process. Finally, Chapter  12 provides an afterword in which Gavins reflects on the success and evolution of Text World Theory and conceptualisations of fictional worlds since the mid-20th century. Summarising the various approaches taken by our contributors, she highlights the directions in which the theory has been taken but also where it may yet go. Showing how Text World Theory has become a mainstay in literary linguistics and increasingly in education within UK secondary schools, she makes one thing certain: There is an even brighter future ahead for Text World Theory. All in all, this volume advances the field of literary research, cognitive poetics, and Text World Theory. While showcasing many varied and individual critical methods and literary examples, the contributors give a multi-faceted and fascinating picture of what readerly experience is. They break new interdisciplinary ground and showcase the breadth of possibility for future research and integration of new

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theories, empirical data, and continued refinement of our existing knowledge. In this sense, this volume represents a major step towards answering the question of what it means to experience fictional worlds.

References Alber, J. 2009. Impossible Storyworlds - and What to Do with Them. StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 1: 79–96.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/stw.0.0008 Alber, J. and Heinze, R. 2011. Unnatural Narratives - Unnatural Narratology. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110229042 Browse, S. 2016. ‘This is not the end of the world’: situating metaphor in the text-worlds of the 2008 economic crisis. In World Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds), 183–202. London: Bloomsbury. Browse, S. 2018. Cognitive Rhetoric: The Cognitive Poetics of Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Croft, W. and Cruse, D. A. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803864

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. Emmott, C. 1997. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fauconnier, G. 1985. Mental Spaces. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fludernik, M. 1996. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. New York: Routledge. Freeman, M. 2014. Cognitive poetics. In The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics, M. Burke (ed.), 313–328. London: Routledge. Friston, K. 2002. Beyond Phrenology: What Can Neuroimaging Tell Us About Distributed Circuitry? Annual Review of Neuroscience 25(1): 221–250. Friston, K. 2005. A theory of cortical responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 360 (1521): 815–836.  ​https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2005.1622 Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gavins, J. 2013. Reading the Absurd. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gavins, J. 2015. Text-worlds. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, V. Sotirova (ed.), 444–457. London: Bloomsbury. Gavins, J. and Lahey, E. (eds). 2016. World Building: Discourse in the Mind. London: Bloomsbury. Gavins, J. and Steen, G. (eds). 2003. Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London: Routledge. ​ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203417737

Gerrig, R. J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Gibbons, A. 2012. Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature. New York: Routledge. Gibbs, R. W. 2002. Feeling moved by metaphor. In Textual Secrets: The Message of the Medium, S. Csabi and J. Zerkowitz (eds), 13–27. Budapest: Eotros Lorand University.



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Giovanelli, M. and Mason, J. 2015. “Well I don’t feel that”: schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom. English in Education 49(1): 41–55. ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12052 Grishakova, M. 2009. Beyond the Frame: Cognitive Science, Common Sense and Fiction. Narrative 17(2): 188–199.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.0.0022 Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold. Harrison, C. and Stockwell, P. 2014. Cognitive poetics. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Cognitive Linguistics, J. Littlemore and J. R. Taylor (eds), 218–233. London: Bloomsbury. Hidalgo-Downing, L. 2003. Text world creation in advertising discourse. CLAC 13: 23–44. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Johnson, M. 2007. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226026992.001.0001 Johnson-Laird, P. N. 1983. Mental Models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and necessity. (Rev. and enl. ed., Library of philosophy and logic). Oxford: Blackwell. Lahey, E. 2016. Author-character ethos in the Robert Langdon novels of Dan Brown: a Text World Theory approach, In World-Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds). 33–51. London: Bloomsbury. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Langacker, R. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001

Lewis, D. 1973. Causation. The Journal of Philosophy 70(17): 556–567. ​ https://doi.org/10.2307/2025310

Mercer, N. 1995. The Guided Construction of Knowledge: Talk Amongst Teachers and Learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Minsky, M. 1975 [1974]. A Framework for Representing Knowledge. In The Psychology of Computer Vision, H. P. Winston (ed.), 211–277. New York: McGraw-Hill. First published as MIT-AI Laboratory Memo 306, June 1974, (31 October 2017). Quendler, C. 2008. Novel Beginnings: Initial Framings as a Historical Category of American Fiction. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 56(4): 337–357. ​ https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2008.56.4.337

Quendler, C. 2010. Interfaces of Fiction. Initial Framings in the American Novel from 1790 to 1900. Wien: Braumüller. Rescher, N. 1999. How Many Possible Worlds Are There? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59(2): 403–420.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/2653678 Ryan, M.-L. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Schank, R. C. and Abelson, R. P. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Simpson, P. 1993. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London: Routledge. ​ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203312612

Stalnaker, R. C. 1976. Possible Worlds. Noûs 10(1): 65–75.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/2214477 Steen, G. and Gavins, J. 2003. Contexualising cognitive poetics. In Cognitive Poetics in Practice, J. Gavins and G. Steen (eds), 1–12. London: Routledge.

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Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw Stewart-Shaw, L. 2017. A Cognitive Poetics of Horror Fiction. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Stockwell, P. 2002. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge. Stockwell, P. 2009. Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Turner, M. 1991. Reading Minds: The Study of English in the Age of Cognitive Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Turner, M. 1996. The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Ungerer, F. and Schmid, H.-J. 2006. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson-Longman. Vandaele, J. and Brône, G. 2009. Cognitive Poetics. A Critical Introduction. In Cognitive Poetics: Goals, Gains and Gaps, G. Brône and J. Vandaele (eds), 1–29. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ​ https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110213379

van der Bom, I. 2015. Text World Theory and Stories of Self. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. van Dijk, T. A. and Kintsch, W. 1983. Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press. Werth, P. 1994. Extended Metaphor: A Text World Account. Language and Literature 3(2): 79–103.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/096394709400300201 Werth, P. 1995a. How to build a world (in a lot than less six days, and using only what’s in your head. In New Essays on Deixis: Discourse, Narrative, Literature, K. Green (ed.), 49–80. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Werth, P. 1995b. ‘World enough, and time’: Deictic space and the interpretation of prose. In Twentieth Century Fiction: From Text to Context, P. Verdonk and J. J. Weber. (eds), 181–205. London: Routledge. Werth, P. 1997. Conditionality as cognitive distance. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science 4: 243–272. Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Whiteley S. 2010. Text World Theory and the Emotional Experience of Literary Discourse. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. Whiteley, S. 2011. Text World Theory, Real Readers and Emotional Responses to The Remains of the Day. Language and Literature 20(1): 23–42. Whiteley S. 2015. Emotion. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Stylistics, V. Sotirova (ed.), 507–522. London: Bloomsbury.

Part 1

Foundations of fictional worlds

Chapter 2

Immersion and emergence in children’s literature Peter Stockwell

Immersion – the sense of attentional involvement and displacement in a fictional world – has been established as an experiential phenomenon in psychology and psycholinguistics, but little focus has been given to the understanding of the nature of the experience itself, especially in relation to literary texts. Most work on immersion as “cognitive flow” has been produced in relation to multimedia settings such as videogames. This chapter draws on naturalistic, non-experimental reader responses to explore the cognitive poetics of literary immersion. In particular, immersion is addressed as an aspect of the developmental literacy of readers, with reference to the different ways that child-readers and adult-readers cast their minds towards fictional characters and emerge emotionally from fictional worlds. Keywords: immersion, emergence, emotion, literacy, The Railway Children, mind-casting, deixis, text-worlds

2.1

Immersion and its correlates

The sense of immersion that many readers feel while experiencing a fictional text has long been recognised as a key feature of literariness. Indeed, the feeling of being involved and absorbed in an other-worldly object has been identified as a definitional effect of art in general; Gombrich (1960) locates original discussions of the phenomenon in ancient Greek debates between representation and mimesis. Most current work on immersion takes its cue from Coleridge’s (1817: Chapter IV) observation of “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith”. Immersion is regarded as an experiential effect that can be intense, self-effacing, and emotionally involving, but which is temporary; it does not affect all readers of the same text in the same way, and the degree of immersion or non-immersion can vary between texts. For these reasons, and even though

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.02sto © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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the phenomenon has popularly been regarded throughout history as genuine and significant, it is only recently that theoretically rigorous approaches to immersion have begun to be developed. Furthermore, work on understanding the development of our capacity for immersion is, as it were, still in its infancy. The richest arena of work on immersion has been conducted in relation to videogaming, specifically with reference to the ideal design feature of “gameflow” (Cowley et al. 2008). In the multimodal environment of screen visuals, sound, and even haptic feedback, the sense of immersion in the portrayed world in the game can be understood as corresponding to real-world activities that can be conducted almost without explicit reflection or self-aware thought. This is the sense of being “in the flow” of a task or activity, intensely focused on it to the exclusion of any other perception, including the effaced perception of being engaged in the activity itself. The notion of “flow” derives from the work of Csikszentmihalyi (1990, 1996), where it is defined as a psychological state of focused concentration that serves to minimise or exclude other distractions. Flow is regarded as a self-motivating effect, with an illusory sense of agency, a skewed sense of the passing of time, and a temporary loss of self-consciousness (see Csikszentmihalyi 2014). Flow can be in evidence in everyday activities such as driving, cooking, playing sports, reading a magazine, listening to or playing music, and so on. In software design and user-interfaces, achieving this level of “cognitive absorption” is a threshold of successful design because it increases the efficacy of the users’ acceptance of the software (Agarwal, Sambamurthy and Stair 1997; Agarwal and Karahanna 2000). In so-called “hedonic software” like videogames, gameflow represents an ideal aspiration in software design because players are likely to find the intensity of the experience more pleasurable and fulfilling (van der Heijden 2004; Sweetser and Wyeth 2005). The field of theatre studies has also produced recent advances in our understanding of immersion, both as a dramatic practice and as a form of theatre theory (Dove 1994; Machon 2013). The origins of “immersive theatre” can be seen as a reaction of theatrical performance to the rise of cinematography in the 1920s, emphasising the physical presence of the audience in the same space as the actors and the staged world (Artaud 1971, and see Jamieson 2007). In the early 21st century, immersive theatre has grown in popularity both within a traditional theatre setting and as mobile performance conducted in different physical locations. Audiences are often involved in the performance either by their simple presence, or by engaging in agency through decision-making and interaction with multimodal and digital technologies (see, for example, the account of the group “Blast Theory” by Gibbons 2014; and also Bell and Ensslin 2011; Bouko 2014). In both interactive theatre and gaming, the aim of designing a multi-modal and multi-sensory experience is to reach a level of immersion, or “cognitive absorption”



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

for the audience or players. Recent advances in virtual reality technology have further enhanced the immersive effect of other-worldly entertainments (Grau 2003; Dyson 2009). In both domains, the effect is primarily one of increasing the personalisation of the theatrical and gaming experience, so that the individual’s own sensoria are implicated in the artwork. However, this increase in the intensity of personalisation is also accompanied by a social aspect that allows the subjective experience to be shared  – either with other present or remote players, or with audience members in the same physical space (see Liptay and Dogramaci 2015). In both gaming and theatre, the immersion is environmental rather than purely symbolic, in the sense that actual visual, auditory, haptic and other perceptual stimuli engage the observer’s body directly, in order then to reference the imagined world. In literary reading, by contrast, the engagement is necessarily more symbolic and representative, in that the physical and material fabric of the book or screen is not usually an element in the immersive mechanism. The cognition of the language of the text generates the sense of absorption. Immersion has been variously discussed in relation to literary engagement, using a variety of more or less synonymous terms. Kuiken, Miall and Sikora (2004) describe the experience of “self-implication” in a fictional world, linking a sense of immersion of the self with a feeling of personal identification (see also Miall and Kuiken 2002). Gerrig (1993) explores the feeling of “transportation” which often occurs with compelling fictional narratives (see also Green and Brock 2000). Hakemulder (2013) describes the phenomenon as “absorption”, drawing on the same liquid metaphor as “immersion” (see also Kuijpers et al. 2014). Ryan (1999, 2001) talks about “imaginative recentring”, within the frame of a worlds-based model of fictionality. Wolf (2004) discusses immersion as “aesthetic illusion” in the Coleridgean tradition (see also Burwick and Pape 1990; Wolf, Bernhart and Mahler 2013). The majority of these studies deal with immersion effects in relation to narrative forms, though Wolf (1998) does also explore the effect arising from lyric poetry. Self-evidently, immersion has a greater opportunity for taking effect given a longer time period over an extended text, such as a fictional narrative; it is more difficult (though not at all impossible) for a reader to be swiftly immersed in a very short poem. Wolf (2017) points out that immersion is a combined outcome of textual patterning, the reading process, and cultural norms and practices. He adds: Aesthetic illusion consists primarily of a feeling, with variable intensity, of being imaginatively and emotionally immersed in a represented world and of experiencing this world in a way similar (but not identical) to real life. At the same time, however, this impression of immersion is counterbalanced by a latent rational distance resulting from a culturally acquired awareness of the difference between representation and reality. (Wolf 2017: § 2)

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For literary reading, then, a systematic account of immersion requires an approach that crosses traditional analytical disciplines, particularly between rhetorical text description and psychological affect. In this chapter, I take such a cognitive poetic approach in order to explore literary immersion. I am also particularly interested here in tracing the developmental literacy of immersion, for the light it can shed on how readerly engagement with a fictional world comes about, and how readers’ enjoyment of the pleasure of immersion seems to increase with practice. Wolf’s “culturally acquired awareness” of fictionality, stated above, is acquired as part of advanced literacy, and as part of the socialisation into literature of child-readers. For reader responses without the complications of an experimental situation, I draw here on parents’ comments on the Mumsnet website forum (  – a highly influential web forum for parents in the UK), and on messages posted by participants in a massive open online course I designed called “How to Read a Mind” (MindMOOC), which altogether had around 60,000 participants. When it comes to research in immersion, almost all investigations that are conducted within experimental or laboratory conditions are flawed, because immersion itself is fundamentally altered in a non-naturalistic setting (see Hakemulder and Kuijpers 2017 for examples and discussions). Using readingcommunity responses avoids this problem. 2.2

The developmental literacy of immersion

In setting out the characteristics of cognitive “flow”, Csikszentmihalyi (2014) provides a set of ten defining features. For each one, correspondences can be made for the sense of immersion in literary reading, as follows: 1. Extreme focus on a task. 2. Loss of self-awareness. 3. Distractions are excluded from consciousness. The primary cognitive mechanism of immersion is the human attentional system. The emphasis on focus in Csikszentmihalyi’s model of immersive flow entails a de-focus or backgrounding of elements that are not attended to. This is the wilfulness in the “willing suspension of disbelief ”, and it requires an openness or readerly disposition at least initially to accept the immersive potential: as Bacon (2009: 273) observes, disbelieving requires more mental effort than believing, which is why Gerrig and Rapp (2004: 267) formulate the phrase as the more active “willing construction of disbelief ”. It is interesting in both Coleridge’s original formulation and later adaptations that it is “disbelief ” in the imagined world that is framed, rather than a positive belief in fictionality. For most neurotypical readers,



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

even during the immersive experience, an ontological distinction is maintained between fiction and reality, however backgrounded this feeling remains during reading itself. The key experience in immersion is the sense of self-effacement, and this neglect of the reader’s physical reality is most often observed by others as a nonresponsiveness to distractions. The reader is “lost in the book”, has been “carried away” by it, and can often only be “brought back” by an insistent naming or tapping on the arm. It is clear that there are physical, embodied manifestations of inner immersion in evidence here. 4. Automatic balance between challenges and skills. 5. Immediate feedback to actions. 6. Merging of action and awareness. “Flow” activities are automatic: so driving a car is a flow activity for experienced drivers, but not for a learner whose skill is not yet up to the challenge. This important point in Csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) model indicates that flow is a developmental cognitive capacity that has both a cultural and a learned aspect. Child-readers might be good at slipping into immersion (as Gopnik [1989] has suggested), but this might be primarily because of their initially more limited capacity for making ontological distinctions unless the text marks them out formulaically (“Once upon a time … and they all lived happily ever after”). Skolnick and Bloom (2006) demonstrate that children can differentiate the binary fiction and their own reality, but are often still forming a capacity for more complex distinctions between related fictional worlds, such as those encountered in adults’ literature. Reading and negotiating complex embedding of ontologies is a skill that is acquired as part of adult literacy (Woolley and Cox 2007), but once acquired, it feels effortless. Immersion in gameflow or in everyday skill-activity involves a sense that the observer has an agency in the immersed world, and that actions completed there have an immediate effect. This is the sensation that the tool that extends the sense of embodiment feels like an organic whole: the car becomes an extension of the driver’s body; the avatar in a videogame becomes the player (see Yamamoto and Kitazawa 2001). In literary reading, though readers can sometimes be observed mirroring bodily movements of amusement, fear, disgust and arousal, for the most part a reader’s actions are virtual rather than physical. Their reading drives the text, in the sense of animating world-building from static lines of print, but all other actions beyond that are imagined in the fictional world. The sense of agency and participation from this level inwards is a matter of stylistic patterning, which for the most part is unnoticed during reading (and only noticed afterwards upon reflective analysis).

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7. Activity becomes an end in itself. 8. No worry of failure. 9. Intrinsic motivation. Immersion, once achieved, tends to be self-sustaining, and in fact often requires a jolt or other positive action to return the reader’s attention to the actual world: I call this “coming round” of consciousness a form of emergence. Immersion can be broken by a distraction in the reader’s environment that is strong enough to overcome the focus of attention, or by a deliberate manipulation of the deictic levels presented in a text. (I will illustrate this with a stylistic example later in the chapter.) A correlate of a sense of immersion, though, is that readers are so absorbed in the fiction that they do not attend to the fabric of the fiction itself while reading. There is, in effect, a readerly faith in the textual momentum, and the process seems generally to be one of feeling the texture of the experience rather than considering texture and textuality explicitly. For the stylistician, switching roles between reading and analysing usually breaks immersion instantly. The immersive characteristic of intrinsic motivation is a recognition of the fact that, once sustained, the pleasure of reading and being in the fictional world is a motivation in its own right. The last element in Csikszentmihalyi’s (2014) set of flow characteristics is: 10. Distortion of the experience of time. It has long been recognised from Proust (1927) to Nell (1988) and Gibbs (2006) that readerly perception of the passing of time is distorted by immersion. Again, this is a sense that is manipulated by stylistic patterning, principally involving focalisation, duration, and the presentation of narrator and character consciousness (as outlined by Genette 1983). In a non-literary context, flow distortion is a matter of not noticing how long the participant has spent being immersed (Chen 2007; van Eck 2010): the “lost weekend” feeling in videogaming. In a literary context, the perception can be characterised as a “Narnia effect”, in the sense that there is a relative disjunction between actual time and imaginary time: in the novels by C.S Lewis (1950, 1955), the immersive experience of reading a fiction is turned into a narratological motif, such that thousands of years pass in the alternative world relative to the text-world of Edwardian and wartime London. Even in those immersive texts in which the time-distortion is not thematised, there are still possibilities for temporal events to be extended or compressed, reiterated or summarised. The fact that such liberties can be taken with a reader’s default sense of duration without breaking immersion suggests that immersiveness itself is a robust process. Nikolaeva (2000) has discussed the thematic manipulation of time in children’s literature. Her work also pioneered the application of cognitive poetics in this



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

arena. Of particular interest here is her observation that the schematic knowledge of children and adults will vary quite significantly, and this will have a major bearing on both the comprehension and the experience of literary reading (Nikolaeva 2014). We are popularly used to thinking of some texts as being too difficult for children, but this is largely a matter of meaning and content, and only sometimes a matter of stylistic complexity. Of course, where the text indexes and requires a certain knowledge schema which the child-reader simply does not have, then the book itself will merely be mystifying or unreadable. In these cases, there is a hard distinction between adults’ and children’s literature (see Arizpe and Smith 2015). However, literacy and literary competence are not only matters of content comprehension, but also a matter of mastering genre-patterns, stylistic techniques, and the textural embedding of worlds and fictional minds such as narrators and characters. These skills are different in novice and expert readers (which is Nikolaeva’s [2014: 19] functional distinction between children and adults), and there is a spectrum of capacity between the two developmental stages of literary competence. Engaging with different features of literariness because of different sets of schematic knowledge will result in variable experiences of immersion in a literary reading. This is particularly so since literary reading itself, of course, must also be a “constitutive schema” (de Beaugrande 1987) in its own right. (The notion of stored knowledge as a “schema” representing information content and structural relationships here derives from the tradition initiated by Schank and Abelson 1977.) Literary immersion is a schema that must be acquired, refined and tuned (Cook 1994), and the structure and content of such an immersion schema can be understood in terms of the ten characteristics set out above. An exploration of how variable richness in this schema might be experienced as different forms of immersion by younger and older readers is the topic of the rest of this chapter. 2.3

Mind-casting and emergence

It is clear, from a cognitive poetic perspective, that immersion is a matter of the textual manipulation of readerly attention. In Stockwell (2009), I outlined a model of attention that was operationalised in stylistic terms. This allowed me to explore the texture of literary reading, treating the stylistic patterns in literary texts as cues for various emotional readerly experiences. Immersion can be understood in these terms as a sustained focus of attention that resists all forms of distraction. Drawing on Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), fictional, imaginary or alternate worlds can be drawn (as in Figure 2.1) as deictic spaces which are created by, for example, modalisations, negations, flashbacks, and so on. Attention can be regarded as a “deictic braid” that links the discourse-world reader with a

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character within one of the embedded worlds. This attentional thread requires the reader to cast their mind inwards, in order to mind-model the character in focus (see Stockwell 2009: 137–44; Stockwell and Mahlberg 2015). Mind-modelling is a capacity which becomes fully developed in adulthood, and allows a full, rich psychologising of other minds, including fictional minds (see Zunshine 2003, 2006). What I might term “mind-casting” is the process by which a participant in a discourse-world projects their own mind into the mind of another participant either at the same or at a deeper world level. Mind-casting along a deictic braid is a pre-requisite for mind-modelling. Mind-casting tends to be end-focused, and thus necessarily involves some degree of self-effacement back in the discourseworld. Immersion often involves a highly focused casting of mind across worldboundaries. These transitions are effected textually by deictic shifts. Discourse world

NEG

MET

Text world FBK DS

MOD deictic braid

World-switches:

negations direct speech modalisations (hypotheticals, beliefs, speculations, etc) metaphor flashback / forward

Figure 2.1  Immersion as deictic deflection across world-boundaries

Beginning-readers do not read alone or silently. The initial novice reader often starts with picture-books which are either enunciated slowly or read aloud to them by an adult (Nikolaeva and Scott 2006, and see Jackson, Chapter 11 of this



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

volume). As literacy develops, children generally progress to illustrated books and then to longer, non-illustrated texts, though these are often still read aloud to them by parents, siblings or carers. In this situation, both the adult and the child share the same physical space, and engage with the same text, though in each case the schematisations brought by adult and child can render different experiences of immersion. For illustration, below is an account of a celebrated passage from the end of Edith Nesbit’s (1906) novel The Railway Children. This is a much-loved book which is often read aloud to children for whom the language is too complex for self-reading. Posts on the parenting website Mumsnet and comments from the MindMOOC-readership suggest that the novel is typically read aloud to children between the ages of seven and ten. After that, children are generally judged to be able to read the novel independently. The story begins with the father of three children being arrested and falsely accused of espionage, and the two girls and boy are taken by their mother out of London to live in the Yorkshire countryside near a railway. The novel has been adapted as a film (in 1970) and stage play (in 2015). Throughout the book, though the narration is generally omniscient, the narrative perspective is often closely associated with the eldest girl, Bobbie. We are presented with her thoughts most often; she appears in almost every scene; and it is her perspective and values that are generally in focus. Bobbie was left standing alone, the station cat watching her from under the bench with friendly golden eyes. Of course you know already exactly what was going to happen. Bobbie was not so clever. She had the vague, confused, expectant feeling that comes to one’s heart in dreams. What her heart expected I can’t tell – perhaps the very thing that you and I know was going to happen – but her mind expected nothing; it was almost blank, and felt nothing but tiredness and stupidness and an empty feeling, like your body has when you have been for a long walk and it is very far indeed past your proper dinner-time. Only three people got out of the 11.54. The first was a countryman with two baskety boxes full of live chickens who stuck their russet heads out anxiously through the wicker bars; the second was Miss Peckitt, the grocer’s wife’s cousin, with a tin box and three brown-paper parcels; and the third– “Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!” That scream went like a knife into the heart of everyone in the train, and people put their heads out of the windows to see a tall pale man with lips set in a thin close line, and a little girl clinging to him with arms and legs, while his arms went tightly round her. (Nesbit 1906: 306–307)

This passage is widely regarded as being highly emotionally charged. Readers have been immersed in the world of the story for 300 pages, and by this stage have invested a great deal of emotional attention.

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Bearwantsmore Tue 14-Jan-14 22:44:28 I cried when I read [the moment when Bobbie’s father returns in] The Railway Children to DD [dear daughter] today and we were in a cafe so everyone could see me sniffling. I had to wipe away the tears when a friend came in!

A further thread of posts also from Mumsnet illustrates what I think are common responses: Quangle Fri 14-Feb-14 16:15:42 Can we talk about the Railway Children - couldn’t get through reading it out loud last night! I’ve always loved it and reading it again to DD reminded me much I love it. It’s beautifully written (though dated, obviously). I love the author’s voice. But bloody hell I could not get through the last two pages. I got through “Oh! My Daddy, my Daddy” but the remaining paragraphs just slaughtered me - Bobbie clinging to her father and them walking hand in hand up to the house and her going in to tell the others. I literally couldn’t get my words out. DCs [dear children] thought I had absolutely gone mad and have barely stopped laughing at me since. Please tell me I’m not the only one. [21 posts follow that agree with Quangle]

Other contributors describe their emotional reactions as “choking up with tears”, “dissolving at the end”, “I will cry at the ‘Daddy, my dady!’ bit”, “I always cry at the end as well”, “sobbed”, “had tears rolling down my face. blush”, and include emoting effects such as “Boo hoooo” and “”. Like Quangle, several contributors, including participants amongst the MindMOOC readers, suggested that adults are more prone to an overt emotional reaction than their children. motherinferior Tue 18-Feb-14 14:46:17 I went to see it on stage - that wonderful production with the real steam train in it. Ever single adult was a sobbing wreck about half-way through the second half just waiting … The kids, obviously, were unmoved. Stoic little buggers.

I would like to argue that the deictic manipulation of viewpoint in the novel is particularly effective in provoking such responses. The fact that a deictic shift is about to take place is signalled right at the start of the passage above, with Bobbie



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

“left standing alone” (static and passive) while “the station cat” is figured into focus with a definite reference, a precise locative (“from under the bench”), and with two indices that the viewpoint has switched away from Bobbie and to the cat (“watching her” and “with friendly golden eyes”). At that point, the narrative voice takes over and directly addresses the reader: “Of course you know already exactly what was going to happen”. This paragraph is where, I think, the different schematic capacities of child and adult cause the immersive experience to diverge. The child-reader has been mind-casting their attention throughout the novel towards Bobbie, and mind-modelling her thoughts and feelings at the other end of the deictic braid. At this point in the novel, the child’s cast of mind is thrown back outwards to their own discourse-world through a direct address: “you know”. This paragraph is a risky narrative strategy with respect to the child-reader, since the return up the deictic braid towards the discourse-world represents an emergence (a de-immersion) from the world of the novel. However, the emergence remains subtly incomplete. The child-reader who is addressed conspiratorially in the paragraph is given schematic knowledge and credit for awareness that they probably do not have: knowing what is about to happen. They are figured as being cleverer than Bobbie, and so the directionality of the mind-cast remains inward to the character rather than outward to the discourse-world. This flattering and suggestion of cleverness is also likely to appeal satisfyingly to a child’s desire for approval. The truth of it is reinforced by generic sentences that have a proverbial flavour: “that comes to one’s heart in dreams”, with the deflection of the specific discourse-world “you” into a more general and vague “one” that applies across all worlds. Similarly, the child-reader here is being modelled as someone who has experienced the feeling of their “body when it has been on a long walk and it is very far indeed past your proper dinner-time”, a simulated experience that the child-reader needs to take on. By contrast, the adult-reader is not directly addressed here, not even in the schematic simulation. An adult reading aloud is even placed in the knowledgeable narratorial position by this paragraph. Furthermore, it is highly likely that the adult-reader really will have the schematic knowledge of what was going to happen next, having probably read the novel previously. The adult is thus not invited towards the same emergence as the child, remaining immersed thoroughly in the world of the novel. The emotional reaction does not seem to diminish on repeated reading, and this sustained adult immersion might offer an explanation for that (see also Chapter 8 of this volume, on re-readings). AlwaysDancing1234 Wed 19-Feb-14 07:41:09 It gets me every time, I know it’s coming, have read the book and seen the film a hundred times but STILL I boo hoo every time! My DH [dear husband] looks

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on with amusement but DS [dear son] ended up crying like me (I felt really guilty then!)

The quality of the immersion is also enriched by some adults’ greater experience, particularly in their parent schema: ohmymimi Fri 21-Feb-14 12:14:27 Gosh, I find “Daddy, my Daddy!” unbearably painful, but I thought it was just me. My wonderful Dad died when I was ten - I would give anything to fling my arms around him again, like Bobby. I still miss him and think of him almost daily, he was glorious; I am 66. MooncupGoddess Fri 21-Feb-14 12:24:19 Oh mimi! I am sorry sad InkleWinkle Fri 21-Feb-14 12:26:23 Oh Mimi so sorry. I wouldn’t even attempt to read it out loud!

Clearly the implication of self will differ between this response and the most common children’s responses, because of the likely difference in schema-knowledge. In the third paragraph of the excerpt from The Railway Children, the emotional climax is delayed by the extreme specificity in the description of the people who got off the train. The paragraph begins with a sense of precision (“three people”, exactly “11.54”), and the clauses take every possible opportunity for prolix pre-modification, and almost endless post-positioned prepositional phrases. For the child-reader, already cast towards the mind of Bobbie, these are her precise perceptions – some of the lexis (“baskety”) and the familiarity of “Miss Peckitt” are hers. The ellipsis, for the child-reader, is Bobbie’s breath being caught. For the adult-reader, who has been in sustained immersion and closely aligned with the narrative voice, the delay increases the suspense, and the description might seem entirely narratorial. This is broken, however, by the ellipsis, which for both readers marks a sharp deictic shift. The free direct speech form of “‘Oh! my Daddy, my Daddy!’”, without reporting clause, with exclamations, and with personal possession and endearment naming, all serve deictically to allow Bobbie to speak autonomously of the controlling narrator. The child-reader, partly emerged, is instantly back there on the platform. The adult-reader, too, is shifted out of the narratorial alignment. Both adult and child end the passage in the same deictic centre as the observing bystanders: the



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

indefinite reference of “a tall pale man” and “a little girl” encodes a deictic position in which father and daughter are unfamiliar and newly seen. The moment of greatest intimacy is a private one for the characters, and even the omniscient narrator is reduced to the same external observation as everyone else. The artfulness of this passage from the novel is to engineer both child-reader and adult-reader into the same shared deictic position, in spite of the fact that they arrive there from different places on the basis of their different schematic capacities. 2.4

Immersion, emergence, emotion, resonance

The differently textured experiences of child- and adult-readers of this key passage in The Railway Children can be accounted for in terms of the different attentional deictic journeys each makes in terms of their immersion and emergence. Several comments in both the Mumsnet and the MindMOOC reading communities suggest that the passage evokes tears more often in adults than in the children being read to, and it seems plausible to me that it is the much richer parent schema being run by the adults that is largely responsible for this. Throughout the novel, the degree, directionality and intensity of the mind-casting required by adult and child are subtly different: each is positioned differently in relation to Bobbie and the narratorial voice. “I wish something would happen,” said Bobbie, dreamily, “something wonderful.” And something wonderful did happen exactly four days after she had said this. I wish I could say it was three days after, because in fairy tales it is always three days after that things happen. But this is not a fairy story, and besides, it really was four and not three, and I am nothing if not strictly truthful. (Nesbit 1906: 297)

Here, the likely literary competence of the child-reader is built into the narratorial design, in order to increase the sense of authenticity for the child. For the adultreader, schematically more distanced from fairy stories, this narratorial intervention is perhaps more likely to evoke a sense of the narrator’s mind, or the authorial demeanour of this extrafictional voice. For both, there is evidently an emotional consequence, but the focus and feeling of that experience is variable. Emotional engagement requires at least some degree of immersion. The sense of self being transported into a fictional world is often articulated in terms of the emotional investment that a reader has made in a fictional scenario, and the degree to which the text controls or compels a reader to become engaged (see Stockwell 2009 for these three metaphorical frames on reading). Of course, the quality of the writing is also a major factor. Certain texts – which are often disparagingly termed “escapist”  – are highly effective in offering readers certain types of immersion,

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without necessarily involving a deep emotional engagement. Similarly, those texts which are typified as “tear-jerkers” are again regarded disparagingly for their manipulative-ness or exploitative nature. The relationships are not clear cut between the following textural features: a high degree of immersion; a text which is compelling; a sense of escapism; a feeling of intense emotional engagement; and an evaluation of the quality of the writing. Describing these relationships rigorously awaits further research, though it seems to me that analysis built on the scaffold of Text World Theory offers the most promising grounding. Another key question lies in the oddity of metafiction. It might reasonably be expected that metafictional features in fiction should break the frame of immersion and force an emergence from the fictional world. However, in fact both the Mumsnet and MindMOOC readers cite many examples of novels which they regard as emotionally highly involving: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, among many others, all of which are classic metafictions. These are novels in which the narrator or a character explicitly and apparently self-consciously breaks out of their initial text-world, in order to address the reader in the discourse-world. If immersion relies on a sustained maintenance of attention at the deep world level, then metafiction ought to create a jarring sense of emergence. This does not seem to be the case. Indeed, some of the novels which the reading groups cite are mentioned precisely because of their emotional involvement. It may be that the crucial factor of agency is at play in these immersions (from Csikszentmihalyi 2014, above). Murray (1998) describes the key aspects of deep engagement as being immersion, leading to a sense of agency, which finally leads to a feeling of readerly transformation. It may be that we need to describe a level of flow which involves not only immersion but a fully-engaged sense of readerly agency: a sense of emotional investment additional to mere attentive absorption. (Immersion is in itself complete, so I hesitate to distinguish shallow immersion from a deeper agentive immersion, but this is essentially the key point here). The Railway Children ends with a metafictional move, which also thematises the novel’s final emergence: And now I see them crossing the field. Bobbie goes into the house, trying to keep her eyes from speaking before her lips have found the right words to “tell Mother quite quietly” that the sorrow and the struggle and the parting are over and done, and that Father has come home. I see Father walking in the garden, waiting – waiting. He is looking at the flowers, and each flower is a miracle to eyes that all these months of Spring and Summer have seen only flagstones and gravel and a little grudging grass. But his eyes keep turning towards the house. And presently he leaves the garden and goes to stand outside the nearest door. It is the back door, and across the yard the



Chapter 2.  Immersion and emergence in children’s literature

swallows are circling. They are getting ready to fly away from cold winds and keen frost to the land where it is always summer. They are the same swallows that the children built the little clay nests for. Now the house door opens. Bobbie’s voice calls: – “Come in, Daddy; come in!” He goes in and the door is shut. I think we will not open the door or follow him. I think that just now we are not wanted there. I think it will be best for us to go quickly and quietly away. At the end of the field, among the thin gold spikes of grass and the harebells and Gipsy roses and St. John’s Wort, we may just take one last look, over our shoulders, at the white house where neither we nor anyone else (Nesbit 1906: 308–309) is wanted now.

The switch to the present tense is the clearest indication here that a deictic shift has occurred: the author/narrator is apparently speaking directly to the reader as a co-participant at the discourse-world level. Though we are first in Bobbie’s mind, and then in the father’s, with both viewpoints deflected through the narratorial omniscience, we are step-by-step pushed to emerge from the fictional world. Bobbie has agency only through her thoughts. Father has agency only in his looking and thinking. The birds have more potential agency than either, and in preparing to fly away from the setting they prefigure the ending of the novel. Even when Bobbie speaks, it is merely her “voice” that “calls”, and “the house door opens” as a supervention predicate, as if all by itself. The final emergence involves a withdrawal of agency from the reader. Father “goes in”, and then the narratorial “I” joins in a readerly “we”, separate from the fictional characters. In the film version, Bobbie leaves her father and mother in the cottage and walks away; in the text, I think that Bobbie remains inside with them: the deictic directionality of “come in”, and the narratorial movement away across the field suggests that the final “we” marks a separation between the fictional character minds on one side and the narrator and readers on the other. The removal of agency from the reader at the end of The Railway Children is the textual mechanism for emergence. Finally, there is a point here to be observed about developmental literacy. Emergence is the opposite of immersion, and needs to be learned in the same way that engagement with a fictional world develops in the child-reader. Gopnik (1989) suggests that the point at which the child no longer needs the formal pragmatics of narrative endings (“and they all lived happily ever after”) occurs before the need for losing formal openings (“Once upon a time” / “Once there was a  …”). It seems, then, that the child persists in needing a cue to adopt a story-stance, but learns quickly how to recognise that a story has finished and the everyday discourseworld has been resumed. Of course, the notion that a fictional narrative can have a moral, or a significance for the discourse-world is encouraged by this incomplete

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closure  – and this sense that literary texts can have a persisting power beyond their endings becomes one of the hallmarks and values of literature itself. Fictional texts, as in the final passage above, often replace a formulaic ending with a more subtle withdrawal from the immersive world, and this incomplete emergence is one factor in the evocation of a sense of resonance, or persisting emotional echo, for readers beyond the end of the reading.

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Agarwal, R., Sambamurthy, V. and Stair, R. 1997. Cognitive absorption and the adoption of new information technologies. In Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, L. Dosier and J. Keys (eds), 293–297. Statesboro: Office of Publication and Faculty Research Services in the College of Business Administration at Georgia Southern University. Arizpe, E. and Smith, V.(eds). 2015. Children as Readers in Children’s Literature: The Power of Texts and the Importance of Reading. London: Routledge. Artaud, A. 1971. Collected Works of Antonin Artaud (trans. V. Corti). London: Calder and Boyars. Bacon, H. 2009. Aesthetics and the experience of re-experience. In Narration and Spectatorship in Moving Images, J. D. Anderson and B. Fisher (eds), 260–276. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Bell, A. and Ensslin, A. 2011. “I know what it was. You know what it was”: second-person narration in hypertext fiction. Narrative 19(3): 311–329.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2011.0020 Bouko, C. 2014. Interactivity and immersion in a media-based performance. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 11(1): 254–269. Burwick, F. and Pape, W.(eds). 1990. Aesthetic Illusion: Theoretical and Historical Approaches. Berlin: de Gruyter.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110884937 Chen, J. 2007. Flow in games (and everything else). Communications of the ACM 50(4): 31–34. ​ https://doi.org/10.1145/1232743.1232769

Coleridge, S. T. 1817. Biographia Literaria. Rest Fenner: London. Cook, G. 1994. Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cowley, B., Charles, D., Black, M. and Hickey, R. 2008. Toward an understanding of flow in video games. Computers in Entertainment 6(2) (July). Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. Csikszentmihalyi, M. 2014. Flow and the Foundations of Positive Psychology: The Collected Works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Volume 2). Dordrecht: Springer. de Beaugrande, R. 1987. Schemas for literary communication. In Discourse: Aspects of Cognitive and Social Psychological Approaches, L. Hàlàsz (ed.), 49–99. Literary Berlin: de Gruyter.



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Dove, T. 1994. Theater without actors – immersion and response in installation. Leonardo 27(4): 281–287.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/1575994 Dyson, F. 2009. Sounding New Media. Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Genette, G. 1983. Narrative Discourse. New York: Cornell University Press. Gerrig, R. J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gerrig, R. J. and Rapp, D. 2004. Psychological processes underlying literary impact. Poetics Today 25(2): 265–281.  ​https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-25-2-265 Gibbons, A. 2014. Fictionality and ontology. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley (eds), 408–423. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237031.031

Gibbs, R. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gombrich, E. H. 1960. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Oxford: Phaidon. Gopnik, M. 1989. The development of text competence. In Text and Discourse Connectedness, M. -E. Conte, J. S. Petofi and E. Sözer (eds), 225–244. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ​ https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.16.20gop

Grau, O. 2003. Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Green, M. C. and Brock, T. C. 2000. The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79(5): 701–721. ​ https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.5.701

Hakemulder, F. 2013. Travel experiences: a typology of transportation and other absorption states in relation to types of aesthetic responses. In Wie gebannt: Aesthetische Verfahren der affektiven Bildung von Aufmerksamkeit, J. Luedke (ed.), 163–182. Berlin: Freie Universitat. Hakemulder, F. and Kuijpers, M. (eds). 2017. Narrative Absorption. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ​ https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.27

Jamieson, L. 2007. Antonin Artaud: From Theory to Practice. London: Greenwich Exchange: London. Kuijpers, M., Hakemulder, F., Tan, E. and Doicaru, M. 2014. Exploring absorbing reading experiences: developing and validating a self-report scale to measure story world absorption. Scientific Study of Literature 4(1): 89–122.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.4.1.05kui Kuiken, D., Miall, D. S. and Sikora S. 2004. Forms of self-implication in literary reading. Poetics Today 25:(2): 171–203.  ​https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-25-2-171 Lewis, C. S. 1950. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. London: Geoffrey Bles. Lewis, C. S. 1955. The Magician’s Nephew. London: Bodley Head. Liptay, F. and Dogramaci, B. (eds). 2015. Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media: Studies in Intermediality. Leiden: Brill.  ​https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004308237 Machon, J. 2013. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.  ​https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-01985-1 Miall, D. S. and Kuiken, D. 2002. A feeling for fiction: becoming what we behold. Poetics 30: 221–241.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(02)00011-6 MindMOOC. 2016. How to Read a Mind. FutureLearn / University of Nottingham [online course, no longer publicly accessible]. Mumsnet (established 2000) Mumsnet – The UK’s Most Popular Parenting Website (January 2017).

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Peter Stockwell Murray, J. 1998. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nell, V. 1988. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1ww3vk3 Nesbit, E. 1906. The Railway Children. London: Wells, Gardner, Darton. Nikolaeva, M. 2000. From Mythic to Linear: Time in Children’s Literature. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Nikolaeva, M. 2014. Reading for Learning. Cognitive Approaches to Children’s Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.3 Nikolaeva, M. and Scott, C. 2006. How Picturebooks Work. London: Routledge. Proust, M. 1927. A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (7 vols, 1919–1927). Paris: Gallimard. Ryan, M. -L. 1999. Immersion vs. interactivity: virtual reality and literary theory. Substance 28(2): 110–137.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/sub.1999.0015 Ryan, M. -L. 2001. Narrative as Virtual Reality: Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Music. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Schank, R. C. and Abelson, R. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Skolnick, D. and Bloom, P. 2006. What does Batman think about SpongeBob? Children’s understanding of the fantasy/fantasy distinction. Cognition 101(1): B9–18. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.10.001

Stockwell, P. 2009. Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stockwell, P. and Mahlberg, M. 2015. Mind-modelling with corpus stylistics in David Copperfield. Language and Literature 24(2): 129–147.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947015576168 Sweetser, P. and Wyeth, P. 2005. GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games. Computers in Entertainment 3(3) (July). van der Heiden, H. 2004. User acceptance of hedonic information systems. MIS Quarterly 28(4): 695–704.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/25148660 van Eck, R. (ed.). 2010. Gaming and Cognition: Theories and Practice from the Learning Sciences. Hershey: Information Science Reference.  ​https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61520-717-6 Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. Harlow: Pearson. Wolf, W. 1998. Aesthetic illusion in lyric poetry? Poetica 30: 251–289. Wolf, W. 2004. Aesthetic illusion as an effect of fiction. Style 38: 325–351. Wolf, W. 2017. Illusion (aesthetic). In The Living Handbook of Narratology, P. Hühn, J. Pier, W. Schmid and J. Schönert (eds). Hamburg: Hamburg University Press. (January 2017). Wolf, W., Bernhart, W. and Mahler, A. (eds). 2013. Immersion and Distance: Aesthetic Illusion in Literature and Other Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Woolley, J. D. and Cox, V. 2007. Development of beliefs about storybook reality. Developmental Science 10: 681–693.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00612.x Yamamoto, S. and Kitazawa, S. 2001. Sensation at the tips of invisible tools. Nature Neuroscience 4: 979–980.  ​https://doi.org/10.1038/nn721 Zunshine, L. 2003. Theory of mind and experimental representations of fictional consciousness. Narrative 11: 270–291.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.2003.0018 Zunshine, L. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

Chapter 3

A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory Benedict Neurohr

Text World Theory offers a beneficial tool for the analysis of texts and the structures of fictional worlds. A significant and fascinating topic is the cognitive and psychological reality behind the text-world structures identified by an expert researcher of literature and if they are experienced when read by a given individual for pleasure. Using a neurological model of perceptual processing called Predictive Coding, this chapter sets out to examine how a text might be processed in real time by a reader. This process must also be sensitive to readers’ prior knowledge in keeping with Text World Theory, and whether it is the first time the text is read or not. It will be shown that while the analyses provided by Text World Theory are valid and useful for describing fictional constructions, it is possible to be even more precise when describing the formation of text-worlds in a real-time reading process. Keywords: Text World Theory, Predictive Coding, predictive model, error signal, processing, cognitive linguistics

3.1

Introduction

Text World Theory is a well-developed and useful tool for the analysis of texts. The current theory, developed by Gavins (2007), offers a nuanced account of how texts must be represented by a reader through a multitude of conceptualisations, called text-worlds. Each world is mentally brought about by a reader in response to textual cues which in fictional literary texts often require the reader to consider multiple layers of realities, counterfactuality or possibility. Text World Theory is also sensitive to the reading process and the fact that information about the textworlds is gained incrementally, word by word as a reader progresses through the text. This chapter assumes that Text World Theory is essentially correct, but that it can profit from also taking into account a cognitive process which has in recent

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.03neu © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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years become an accepted and powerful paradigm in neuroscience: Predictive Coding. Applying the concept of Predictive Coding to an analysis of how readers might process text in real time allows for a more precise description of how textworlds are shaped incrementally, what nature of knowledge and predictions go into a reader’s interpretation of a text’s meaning, and how complete a representation of a text-world may be at any given time. While Text World Theory has traditionally not dealt with theories of the brain or of specific biological factors, I believe that Predictive Coding offers a good fit for an interdisciplinary addition. This is because the principle behind Predictive Coding does not deal purely with brain activity in specific regions, but with mechanisms of brain activation, and of making sense of stimuli and the world. Without the need to begin plotting where in the brain a specific conceptualisation is processed, it can instead offer a good principle of how certain inputs such as literary texts might cause the brain to respond. The mechanism behind these responses can in turn be matched to the way we make sense of texts through textworlds. I firmly believe all mental activity, including the evocation of text-worlds, has its basis in an activity in the brain, even if it is not possible yet to explain exactly how one leads to the other. In the following, Predictive Coding will be explained in more detail, contrasted to Text World Theory, and then applied to a small extract of text alongside a text-world analysis. The outcomes of this analysis are then discussed, showing how Text World Theory naturally harmonises with a Predictive Coding approach to give an objective anchor to subjective reading experiences. 3.2

Predictive Coding

Predictive Coding is based upon the belief that brains are “essentially prediction machines” (Clark 2013: 181). This follows from a visionary insight by Helmholtz (1962) who suggested that in order to perceive objects in the world, prior knowledge is used by the brain (Clark 2013: 182; Friston 2005: 815). The brain is organised into modules with interconnections between the dense clusters, which are also called “rich-club hubs” (Park and Friston 2013: 1238411–12). The modules themselves are thus assumed to perform highly specialised functions, while activations across different modules integrate the functions into a more complex process. As more modules become active simultaneously and exchange information between rich-club areas, more contextual information becomes available to each module, allowing the process itself to become more specialised by aiding the function of individual modules. This suggests that the purpose of this organisational scheme is a structural hierarchy (Park and Friston 2013: 1238411–1) in which we may identify



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

higher and lower areas, with connections running both “forward” from lower to higher areas and “backward” from higher to lower areas (Friston 2005: 817, 2002: 224). Both represent distinct populations of neurons sending signals along the forwards and backwards connections (Friston 2005: 829), as neurons within a given layer of the brain follow the principle of functional polarity and only send and receive signals in one direction. Interneurons may also send signals “sideways” to other neurons within their layer; however, no neuron sending a signal forward can also send a signal backward (Squire 2008: 20). The nature of the backward and forward connections is asymmetrical, with backward connections in some areas outnumbering forward ones by 10 to 1 (Friston 2005: 817). In line with the idea that the brain is a prediction machine, it can be said that one of its most important functions is to infer what is going on in the world around it. It achieves this inference by continually forming predictions, in the form of models which aim to represent the possible causes of incoming sensory information (Friston 2005: 819) and offer predictions about the underlying causes of future sensory information (Clark 2013: 183; Park and Friston 2013: 1238411–16). Note that in the Predictive Coding literature, they are called generative models due to the fact that the brain generates a prediction which is then tested against incoming sensory signals. To be consistent with my own usage in other contexts and to avoid misunderstandings with the term “generative”, they will be referred to as “predictive models” for the remainder of the chapter. While forward connections deliver signals from sensory organs, predictive models are propagated through backward connections to represent the causes of the signals. The overall aim is to attempt to match the predictions of the model to the sensory signals. Whenever a predictive model fails to accurately match the sensory signal, this produces an error. Errors, or error signals, are the remainder of a sensory input which has not yet been explained by a prediction, and will be sent further up the hierarchy until a prediction can be produced which can explain the error. This might occur for example when we are surprised by an object that enters our field of vision, and we experience unanticipated noises or smells, or when an object behaves unexpectedly, such as the refraction of a stick held onto water making it appear as if it bends rather than remaining straight. The aim is for both forward and backward connections to relay the same signal thus cancelling out any errors, often referred to as “explaining away” the incoming signal (Clark 2013: 187). If an error or otherwise unexplainable signal persists but cannot be matched by a prediction, it may also be filtered out and ignored by the brain in a process known as “repetition suppression” (Summerfield et al. 2008). The usefulness of this process lies in making recognition of sensory inputs far more efficient than having to rely only on forward information. While the brain is able to associate causes to certain patterns of sensory information, many situations

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are “ill-posed”, making it impossible to estimate causes from input alone, as in occlusion. When an object is occluded by another, there is no sensory information about the occluded parts (Friston 2005: 820). This produces no error, as there is no additional information to explain away, but rather a lack of information altogether. Instead of a lengthy and fundamentally impossible process of attempting to discern what the object might be, predictive models make use of “priors” (Friston 2005: 821), that is, previously stored information about sensory inputs which can be used to predict immediately what the occluded information contains. The consequence of the predictive mechanism and the use of error feedback within the brain is that in fact no raw empirical signals are processed, but that perception from a subjective standpoint represents our brain’s very best hypothesis of what is causing us to receive the sensory information we do (see Hohwy 2007: 323). Put literally, something like our visual and haptic perception of seeing and touching an object is the brain’s translation of our belief that there is such an object which causes our sensory nerves to react. This mechanism allows for an elegant explanation of how the brain solves the problem of representing an outside world through indirect evidence, while limiting processing power by predicting input. More importantly, it allows us to explain how our perception works while allowing for the fact that we can be fooled, come to wrong conclusions, hallucinate or have any other number of things go wrong even in a perfectly healthy and wellfunctioning brain. Predictive Coding has been studied most extensively in visual perception where it can be used to explain phenomena such as binocular rivalry (Hohwy, Roepstorff, and Friston 2008; Jack and Hacker 2014), error signals and surprise in the fusiform face area responsible for facial recognition (Egner, Monti, and Summerfield 2010), repetition suppression (Summerfield et al. 2008), and perceptual decision making (Rahnev, Lau, and Lange 2011), to name but a few. Binocular rivalry, for example, is the phenomenon which occurs when a person is given two unique visual stimuli for the left and right eye, resulting in the participant seeing one of the stimuli quite clearly for several seconds, then the other, with switches between both occurring for as long as a participant looks at the stimuli (Jack and Hacker 2014: 6423). There is a wealth of conflicting research in regards to the causes of this phenomenon. Predictive Coding can be used to describe the switches of perception, by positing that two predictive models which explain the input signals equally well vie for conscious attention. Both predictions are matched to the error one after another with neither being preferable over the other (see Hohwy, Roepstorff and Friston 2008).



3.3

Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

Predictive Coding, texts and text-worlds

Regarding text comprehension, Predictive Coding can be used to add to and clarify certain aspects of Text World Theory (Gavins 2007; Werth 1999). An important feature of the current theory is incrementation, a conceptual process in which rather than text-worlds somehow being constructed as wholes, information is added to a reader’s mental representation of the text in incremental steps (Gavins 2007: 21). Knowledge in this view is not simply gained and stored, but actively used to build inferences and to understand new experiences in terms of existing knowledge, while also benefitting from new experiences (Gavins 2007: 24). This description requires no alteration to fit into the framework of Predictive Coding. Prior knowledge, in the form of priors from long-term memory as well as current predictive models, captures the dynamics of utilising contextual clues together with current input. Using errors enables participants to pinpoint how the predictive model must be adapted to the current situation. This error adaption allows the incrementation of shared knowledge to happen efficiently. The most important question which could be answered by Predictive Coding is how exactly the principle of “text-drivenness” works. This principle states that the text determines which parts of a reader’s prior knowledge must be activated in order to understand it (Gavins 2007: 29). From the Predictive Coding perspective this principle is partially valid. It represents a reciprocal process, as the priors and original predictive models dictate which linguistic structures constitute an error in the first place. Thus, the activation of knowledge structures is negotiated between the expectations of a reader and the text, subject to the availability of the reader’s existing background knowledge. While under optimal circumstances the text will successfully drive most of a reader’s adaptation, in practice it is likely that textual cues may go unnoticed or fail to elicit the error signals they may cause in another reader. The crucial way in which text-drivenness operates is through the causation of world-building and world-switches. Deictic terms such as pronouns, locatives, spatial adverbs and verbs of motion are “world-building elements” which act together with specific knowledge frames to situate agents and objects within a text-world (Gavins 2007: 36–38). When a text introduces elements that belong to a different spatial, temporal, or deictic zone, we may speak of a “world-switch” (Gavins 2007: 48–49). The relationship between world-building and world-switching is very important, especially in the attempt to fully merge Predictive Coding into the framework of text-worlds. Text World Theory represents an ongoing process of conceptualisation, in which the distinctions we might make between worldswitches and world-building are largely descriptive rather than pointing to truly separate processes. When analysing these processes in terms of predictive models,

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the same holds true as both must be considered types of error signals, because both represent a change from the previously represented text-world, which would have taken the form of an accepted predictive model. We can however differentiate between the kinds of errors caused by the different elements, just as Text World Theory may distinguish between the products of the process as being a more detailed existing text-world or an entirely new one. This alignment between both theories allows a good fit of the Predictive Coding process to how we might describe world-building or -switching in real time within Text World Theory. Text-worlds represent whole structures which are theorised by a researcher to reflect the interplay of text and reader once all of the information offered by a text has been made available. Both predictive models which align with world-building and world-switching are built up of many smaller stages, each integrating further information as it is gleaned from the text. Predictive models form real-time, predictive understanding which is incremental and more reader-driven, in the sense that a reader’s brain is actively producing predictions to explain and react to the input of what is read. This produces an organic loop of input and predictions which could also be conceptualised in terms of textual input feeding back into the reader’s knowledge directly, as described by Lahey in Chapter 4 of this volume. Predictive Coding offers a framework for charting exactly how the process of real-time reading might work as text-worlds are constructed piece by piece from world-building elements, and how readers correctly identify those elements which may lead to a world-switch. If knowledge use and the shaping of the discourseworld between reader and text is incremental, then text-worlds must also have an incremental and fragmentary nature and be represented by a reader in sections, gradually building up a body of more detailed background knowledge as more information from within the text becomes available. An analysis using a Predictive Coding approach can offer a way to exhibit the process of incremental understanding, and give a good indication of how real-time processing might look. In the next section a textual extract from Brandon Sanderson’s Words Of Radiance (2014) will be examined, first by using a Text World Theory approach, then a Predictive Coding approach. The two analyses will then be compared. 3.4

A text-world analysis

The extract chosen is from the fantasy novel Words Of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson. It takes place in the fictional world of Roshar, in which gemstones mined from the earth possess magical qualities which skilled individuals may exploit. Over time, an entire industry similar to our industrial revolution forms around the use of gemstones as an analogue to steam power and electricity. The



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

extract was chosen because it contains an interesting fantasy trope as well as several intricate linguistic features in only three short lines, which make it highly useful for a fine-grained analysis. It is as follows: Extract 3.1 “If you split a fabrial gemstone in a certain way,” Navani said, “you can link the two pieces together so they mimic each other’s motions. Like a spanreed?” “Ah, right,” Adolin said. (Sanderson 2014: 416)

When split up into text-worlds, Extract 3.1 leads to the creation of three distinct text-worlds and an epistemic modal-world. Text World 1 is the story world in which the two enactors of this extract are having a conversation, reported in a narrative recent past. The second text-world is created by the direct speech of the first character, Navani, as the direct speech is a switch from simple past into the present. The modal-world is created by the conditional “if ” within Navani’s speech. The third text-world is created through a direct speech agreement by the second character mentioned, Adolin. This can be represented as in Figure 3.1: Text World 2

EPS

Epistemic Modal-world 1

Text World 1

Time: Present

Time: Recent past World

Enactors: Navani

Enactors: Navani

Switch

Direct speech

Objects:

Enactors: World Switch Navani

Text World 3

Adolin

Time: Present

Fabrial gemstone Time: Present

Pieces linked

split into halves mimic motions

Like a spanreed

Enactors: Adolin Direct speech

Figure 3.1  A text-world analysis of Extract 3.1

Text World 1 indicates the narrative situation of both speakers. They exist in the simple past as enactors who are both present at an unknown location and conversing. The switch to Text World 2 must be made as Navani’s direct speech begins and describes a conditional. This creates an epistemic modal-world as the conditional “if ” signals a theoretical situation remote from the actuality of the narrative. Navani describes to the other character that by splitting a certain gemstone she calls “fabrial” in a certain way the pieces may be linked, although not re-attached,

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so as to make them imitate each other’s motions. She also compares this to another item, a “spanreed”, which is a magical form of communication used within the novel, consisting of two individual reeds of paper connected to a gemstone. No matter how far apart, anything written on one sheet will appear on the other. Since I am focusing only on this extract, I will treat it as if I do not know what a spanreed or a fabrial gemstone are. Text World 3 is evoked by the direct speech reply of the second character, Adolin, who acknowledges Navani’s conditional. What I will argue in the following is that this text-world analysis, while correct, does not show how one would arrive at the final text-world constellation while reading and does not reflect the acts of inference necessary to establish the diegesis in which both characters exist. 3.5

A Predictive Coding analysis

Predictive processing does not start from a clean slate, but assumes that some processing has occurred even before reading, just as Text World Theory is sensitive to readers’ pre-existing discourse-world knowledge (see Chapter 1, Section 1.2.2). At the time of reading I am aware that the extract is from a fictional novel and that certain narrative conventions are likely to hold, such as the heavy use of counterfactual and fictional objects, fictional characters and world rules, as well as a focus on elements of style and choice of words rather than facts or accuracy (Zwaan 1994). The following analysis will treat Extract  3.1 in terms of sections which could elicit heuristically unique predictive models, the first of which is this line: “If you split a fabrial gemstone in a certain way,” 

(Sanderson 2014: 416)

The new predictive model is based around the interpretation that this line is direct speech, based on the quotation marks surrounding the “if ” clause. As discussed in Section 3.2, processing involves simultaneous signals being sent forwards and backwards. Due to the graphical difficulty in representing signal simultaneous forward and backward flow, all graphical representations will instead signify the fact that errors are sent from “lower” hierarchical layers, while predictions are sent from “higher” ones, thus placing them below and above the sequence of words. “Lower” layers are equal to less interconnected stages of the overall hierarchy of brain processes, involving few or only one brain area(s), usually the area in which the sensory signal is first received, while “higher” layers are equal to more complex layers across many brain areas. Distinguishing between them is also useful, as sensory signals and error signals are sent from lower to higher via forward connections, while predictions are sent from higher to lower layers via backward connections. In Figure 3.2, bold arrows indicate the direction of real-time reading



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

and processing, and thin ones indicate the accompanying signals: the error signal is compared back to an original predictive model, while activated prior knowledge is used to update or form a new predictive model. Prior knowledge Predictive Model 1

“If …

Predictive Model 2

Error

Figure 3.2  Errors in Predictive Model 1 leading to Predictive Model 2

Immediately, the presence of inverted commas creates a departure into direct speech and an error within the expectation of reading text. Indications of narration and who is speaking only come later. This error forms a predictive model of encountering direct speech, which is only possible because of the reader having knowledge of the symbols, and knowledge of how direct speech is represented. In agreement with Text World Theory, the deictic shift of receiving the direct speech of another individual, together with the spatial and temporal shift to the events being described necessitate a new predictive model. With this knowledge activated, other expectations are defaulted: speech must be performed by a speaker and it is in the present time because the tense is. This predictive model aligns with the formation of Text World 2 as shown in Figure 3.1, only differing in the fact that it would not be possible to know who is speaking yet at this point in the reading process. All that a reader knows is that speech is being conveyed, but not by whom. The information must be gained by reading on. It is also interesting to note that in a Text World Theory account, Text World 1 should hold the highest position in the hierarchy, displaying the world-switches to Text Worlds  2 and 3 and the epistemic modal-world as occurring from this “primary” world. For an actual reading process, this is not the case, as the reader is not told of the existence of the two characters or any discourse between them until after the first portion of direct speech has been relayed. Text World 2 is therefore the first world encountered by the reader, who can only predict but not know that Text World 1 even needs to be represented. Using Text World Theory, we could say that the presence of the direct speech, as well as the embedded address “you” form an “empty text-world” (Lahey 2004). The empty text-world represents the inferred diegesis in which the speaker and the addressee are located, giving a basis for the immediate switch to the sub-world of direct speech that is Text World 2. It is otherwise “deictically empty” as there is no textual information as to who

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speaker or addressee are or where or when the speech act takes place (cf. Lahey 2004: 26–27). Using Predictive Coding, this step can be omitted, as we can easily incorporate the inference of both speaker and addressee within Predictive Model 2 from Figure 3.2. This is because by definition they seek to explain and rationalise the input, therefore necessitating an expectation of the diegesis and the speaker. Because the predictive models accumulate and can in turn serve as immediately accessible background knowledge for one another, the diegetic background containing speaker and addressee is preserved in each successive predictive model. Prior Knowledge + Expectations

Predictive Model 2

You

split a fabrial gemstone

in a certain way,

Error

Figure 3.3  Error feedback and expectations between Predictive Model 2 and input

A number of errors now fill in the predictive model through the contents of the speech. The use of “if ” suggests it is a conditional, which means that whatever follows is counterfactual, being described in terms of a spatial and temporal location which are not actual and not necessarily defined. Any actions and events described as occurring within the counterfactual space must however be understood in terms of imagining the real world and changing it into the non-factual one (for a more detailed discussion, see Sanford and Emmott 2012: 45–71). The counterfactual space is now filled with further information, without leaving the spatio-temporal confines in which it began, allowing it to have world-building effects as seen in Figure 3.3. While Text World Theory portrays the conditional as eliciting a switch from a text-world to an epistemic modal-world, I choose not to make any terminological distinction because the ontological difference which exists between the epistemic modal-worlds and other worlds is contained within the predictions made by the model itself. The predictive model always acts in such a way as to optimally predict and explain the inputs coming from forward connections, while minimising errors. While the issue of whether specific neurons may be firing or not may be answered objectively, the question of when exactly a predictive model has successfully “explained” an input is rather more subjective, and depends on individual differences. In this case, different readers may read the conditional as ontologically



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

distinct from the rest of the text-worlds, and only true for Navani. Someone may alternatively interpret the conditional as being true within all text-worlds of the story, but only conditional because Navani is explaining a general principal. Some may even accept that if fabrial gemstones existed in reality, the conditional would also hold in reality. Such interpretations cannot be easily universalised, and do not need to be. What is universal is the brain activity involved, which in this case is no different to any other prediction and error process. The next word in the segment (“you”) indicates an address. “Split a fabrial gemstone” is at this stage likely to elicit mostly an error signal, as no previous information of what it is or what splitting one entails is available. There is an element of possible fulfilled expectation, as an action is implied by the use of “you”, signalling that there is human agency involved in the act of the “split”, rather than in any natural splitting. “Split” is therefore likely to be interpreted as a material intention process (Gavins 2007: 56), and it is up to the reader to interpret it using previous knowledge. The word itself has many possible meanings, making it difficult to predict an exact meaning at this point, although an initial constraint is that as a material intention process, the method of splitting is one performed by an agent rather than a natural cause or coincidence. Next, “fabrial gemstone” will need to be updated in the predictive model through error. To interpret this I must decide, without any contextual information, whether to understand this as meaning that any kind of gemstone can become a “fabrial gemstone” or whether this is a name for one particular kind. The language of the segment does not provide the necessary information to disambiguate this, making both interpretations equally likely. Whichever interpretation “wins” the neural activation is incremented, giving an outcome similar to what is understood as a “construal” in cognitive grammar and linguistics (see Langacker 1986, 2009; Croft and Cruse 2004; Harrison and Nuttall: Chapter 8 of this volume). Out of the potential meanings activated by each linguistic unit, one is chosen and predicted against the current context within the predictive model. Because of the limited nature of the information available in Extract 3.1, the reader’s predictive model may get it wrong and will be subject to being corrected if future errors make this apparent. Neither the adjective “fabrial,” nor “fabrial gemstone” as a whole had a known meaning to me before reading. Rather than accepting a predictive model including an unknown, the most likely action within the Predictive Coding framework is to match anything that might be associated with input from the error signal, activating whatever actual knowledge the reader has about gemstones. In the Text World Theory analysis, how exactly a given reader would interpret this using specific personal knowledge is unclear, as the direct speech world and the epistemic modal-world containing the phrase (Figure 3.1) are associated with the speaker Navani, who knows what it means. For myself and presumably most readers of this

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extract in isolation, this knowledge is not available, and the predictive model used to understand will instead use whatever knowledge of gemstones is available to him or her. The predictive model is matched to the error signal using this knowledge, explaining the ambiguous gemstone away as a diamond, for example, or whatever other kind of gemstone the reader may know best. The efficiency of this process lies in our ability to resolve ambiguities very quickly while being open to correction at later stages, if other errors are introduced. The reader’s knowledge of real gemstones can be used further to refine the predictive model, as it constrains the material intention process of splitting a gemstone, performed by an agent. This process works even if the reader suspects that something unlike a real diamond is meant by the words “fabrial gemstone”, as long as the predictive model appears to match the error. The somewhat radical amendment to the idea of linguistic meaning construal as proposed by Langacker (1986), or Croft and Cruse (2004), is that a construal does not necessarily reflect what a word means or even what a reader firmly believes it to mean, but simply the best fit of meaning at the time. This creative combination of new and existing knowledge gained from a text can occur on a much larger scale in fiction (see Chapter 4 of this volume), and it may be the process at the core of how fiction is able to change some readers’ perceptions. The gemstone in question is not split in any given fashion, but “in a certain way”, which modifies the previous segment even further by adding a qualification to the verb of the statement. What exactly this “certain way” is remains unknown, but its mention foregrounds the importance of the method. My predictive model at this stage was already constrained to an agent splitting a gemstone, something which I do not have much specific knowledge of. The “certain way” can be interpreted via an assumption about the nature of the method, possibly based on knowledge about how actual gemstones might be split. It can also be left abstract, simply inducing the inference that a certain method is needed and that other possible methods are not the correct ones. If a reader has any experience of how human agents actually split gemstones, it is likely that this understanding is activated to explain the textual information by structuring the predictive model around it. This use of related real-world knowledge will be usefully applied whether it was intended within the text or not, a consequence of Predictive Coding which is also discussed in Text World Theory (Gavins 2007: 59–60). When comparing the current predictive model to Figure  3.1, we can see that Epistemic Modal-World 1 has been partially filled in now with information regarding splitting a gemstone and the certain method for doing so, but I still lack the information of who is speaking, along with the rest of the objects mentioned there. The modal-world is in an incomplete state, and must remain so as a new portion of text interrupts the predictive model. The next segment which will be processed is the following, with the relevant portion underlined:



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

“If you split a fabrial gemstone in a certain way,” Navani said,  (Sanderson 2014: 416, my underlining)

The next segment (“Navani said”) suggests a move from the counterfactual scenario of the speech to the diegesis. “Navani” is the subject of the verb “said” and is most likely to be a name, as there is no pronoun preceding it and it is capitalised as a proper noun. The verb is in the past tense, situating the speech act and the speaker in the temporal past and an unknown location. Instead of just prior knowledge, this time the previous predictive model itself becomes a prior. Due to the linguistic awareness of the reader, the verb “said” is understood to relate to the speech act that formed Predictive Model 2 in Figures 3.2 and 3.3. The new Predictive Model incorporates the knowledge that the speech in the previous model was performed by the newly named character. More importantly, previous experience of textual conventions is likely to cause a reader to consider this “x said” construction to be evidence of authorial narration, situating the speech act not just in the past, but finally evoking the diegetic level of the story in which Navani is speaking, which corresponds to Text World 1 from Figure  3.1. This switch between predictive models is shown in Figure 3.4. Prior Knowledge

Predictive Model 2

Predictive Model 2

Navani said,

Predictive Model 3

Error

Figure 3.4  Errors leading from Predictive Model 2 to Predictive Model 3

The spatio-temporal setting is that of the actual narration. This predictive model is responsible for Text World 1 from Figure 3.1. At this point, however, only one of the enactors contained within it is known and, as the Predictive Coding analysis so far has shown, the world-switch was not from Text World 1 to the speech representation of Text World 2, but in fact the other way around, as the speaker is only identified after a portion of direct speech has been conveyed. As indicated by a comma rather than a period, the sequence continues, but is broken up by another error, as once again quotation marks appear together with an address:

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“If you split a fabrial gemstone in a certain way,” Navani said, “you can link the two pieces together so they mimic each other’s motions. Like a spanreed?”  (Sanderson 2014: 416, my underlining)

As before, the beginning of quotation marks signals the beginning of direct speech. Since there has not been a period or other sign of final punctuation, the first word is also not capitalised, suggesting continuity from previous predictive models. The resulting error dictates a new one, using both previous predictive models as priors. The reader can infer that this begins the continuation of the previous speech. The inference that “you” refers to a general statement is recovered from Predictive Model 2, while the reader still knows from Predictive Model 3 that the inferred speaker called Navani is the one producing this speech. Predictive Model 2

Predictive Model 3

Predictive Model 3

“You…

Predictive Model 4

Error

Figure 3.5  Error leading from Predictive Model 3 to Predictive Model 4

The following errors also require knowledge gained from the previous predictive models. When processing the errors in this sequence, information from the previous speech fragment which led to Predictive Model 2 is needed. The reader can quite easily integrate the prior model to deduce that “the two pieces” refer to the gemstone which was hypothetically split. These pieces are then linked together somehow. Understanding this part is likely to be more difficult and remain quite abstract, as “link” can have various meanings ranging from literal connections in the form of installing other objects between them to merely conceptual ones. The reader has to leave the interpretation of “link” open and accept a fairly abstract meaning, as there is no further information. It is possible to make some inferences based on the next segment of the extract, however, as “so they mimic each other’s motions” has some implications for the intended meaning. There would be no obvious reason for anyone to describe the process of putting the halves back together into a single gemstone, which led me to infer that the link is significant because it works while the halves are apart, possibly at some distance



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

Predictive Model 2

Predictive Model 4

can link the two pieces together

Prior Knowledge

so they mimic each other’s motions.

Like a spanreed?”

Error

Figure 3.6  Error feedback and expectations between Predictive Model 4 and the text

from each other. Unlike the act of splitting it, it is unlikely for any reader to have any potential knowledge about such a process, making a construal more difficult and a simulation unlikely, although readers may well add imagined information to invent a process of their own alongside the textual input. The next section, “Like a spanreed?” cannot easily fit a prior predictive model and requires activation of further knowledge. It is a comparison between the described process and a “spanreed” presumably to help the listening character understand the explanation. For the reader, this is unfortunately not very helpful without having other parts of the text available. Rather than having to understand fully everything an author might understand about the fictional object, Predictive Coding suggests that in the context of processing the text it is enough to register what was communicated without it containing a perceived contradiction. This works so long as the predictive model can contain some level of explanation, that is “a happened because of b”, even if we do not know or understand exactly why this may the case, but it breaks down if the explanation conflicts with another causal relationship given within the text, or if a reader has some prior knowledge which contradicts the text. In this case, my predictive model could successfully explain this input by noting that there is an object, called a spanreed, which behaves similarly to the description of a fabrial gemstone. Since I possessed no prior knowledge to contradict that this was true, it formed an acceptable representation until further information could be gained. This step completes a predictive model containing the entire conditional of Navani’s direct speech as given in the extract. The information is spread across Text World 2 and the Epistemic Modal-World 1 as seen in Figure  3.1. The interesting asymmetry here is that the incremental nature of this knowledge has spanned multiple predictive models but is ultimately contained in one representation, while it remains two separate types of text-worlds. With this model in place, another error occurs, introducing another segment of direct speech:

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“If you split a fabrial gemstone in a certain way,” Navani said, “you can link the two pieces together so they mimic each other’s motions. Like a spanreed?” “Ah, right,” (Sanderson 2014: 416, my underlining)

This error, caused by a new set of exclamation marks, immediately leads to a new predictive model, as the information of it being speech and what the speech contains are given in a concise way and likely to be recognised very quickly against conventional speech patterns as well as prior predictive models. By recognising that this is speech, the reader can easily integrate this segment itself, “Ah, right,” as an agreement or acknowledgement in the new predictive model, as seen in Figure  3.7. The prior predictive models are evoked to infer what is being agreed to: the previous speech of Navani represented by Predictive Models 2 and 4, along with Predictive Model 3 which identified Navani as speaker. The implication of this agreement in Predictive Model 5 is that it must belong to another speaker, which also becomes a prediction of the new predictive model. Strictly speaking within a Text World Theory approach this could lead to another empty text-world, or a world repair of the initial empty text-world of the diegesis of this extract, in which the first speaker is now known, and there is confirmation of an addressee who in turn also speaks, but still no further information about their relationship. This empty text-world is still short of the actual Text World 1 which represents this diegetic level in Figure 3.1. The speech evokes Text World 3 from Figure 3.1, but does not yet include information about who the speaker is, only the expectation that there is one. This expectation is promptly fulfilled by the next two words. Prior Knowledge

Predictive Model 4

PM 2

PM 3

PM 4

“Ah, right,

Predictive Model 5

Error

Figure 3.7  Errors leading from Predictive Model 4 to Predictive Model 5

As the speech ends, the speaker is identified, but the spatio-temporal setting shifts back into the past with the verb “said.” Predictive Model 5 can be used to quickly link the previous speech to “Adolin” as speaker and Predictive Model 3 can be used to infer that this is an instance of the same narration style identified before. This

Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory 49



information finally completes both Text World 1 and Text World 3 in Figure 3.1, by supplying Adolin as enactor in Predictive Model 6, as seen in Figure 3.8. Predictive Model 3

Predictive Model 5

Predictive Model 5

Adolin said.

Predictive Model 6

Error

Figure 3.8  Errors leading from Predictive Model 5 to Predictive Model 6

3.6

Conclusion

When Extract 3.1 from Sanderson’s Words Of Radiance has been fully read, the reader has had access to the same information as originally displayed in Figure 3.1. Due to the incremental nature of how this information was acquired, along with the switches in predictive models needed, the text-worlds depicted in Figure 3.1 do not correspond perfectly to the actual mental states or representations of the predictive models of a reader at any given stage. As such, switches between predictive models do not align with the world-switches proposed by the Text World Theory analysis, but take a quite different path between the text-worlds. While Text World 1 does represent the matrix text-world, anchoring all speech and characters within it, this knowledge has been constructed in a different order during my reading. The entry point for this particular extract was in the direct speech of Text World 2 of Figure 3.1. Only half of the information was initially available from the speech itself, before being interrupted by narration, signalled by “Navani said”. Only at this point is the reader made aware of who is speaking. This process is quick; reading the entire extract would take most readers a few seconds at most. In those seconds, an extraordinary number of inferences, knowledge activations and suppression of errors occur. Because the information which ultimately makes up Text World 2 is given in such a short span of text, it can easily be retained and there is no reason to assume a reader would be confused or in doubt that the entirety of Navani’s speech makes up one logical construct. The resulting path taken through the predictive models discussed in the chapter can be compared as in Figure 3.9. The initial predictive model which precedes

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reading is replaced with one which incorporates elements of Text World  2 and Epistemic Modal-World 1 from Figure 3.1 as discussed in Section 3.3. At this point I was aware that there was a speaker, but not who it was, and of the first half of the conditional in the speech. The next predictive model, caused by a break within the direct speech into a short authorial narration reporting the speaker, corresponds to a partial Text World 1, situating the speaker in my mind and in the diegesis. Predictive Model 4 returns to the direct speech and the embedded conditional, completing Epistemic Modal-World 1. This is followed by a transition directly into another segment of direct speech, with another unknown speaker. While it would it be possible to initially assume that it could be Navani speaking again, my background knowledge caused me to assume that this was a new speaker, which led to an incomplete version of Text World 3. Finally, the speaker is named as Adolin within the extract, causing the final Predictive Model 6, which contains Adolin as speaker of the utterance and character within the story world, which completes both Text World 1 and Text World 3 as seen below in Figure 3.9. PM 1

PM 2

PM 3

Reading begins

Text World 2

Epistemic Modal-world 1

Time: Present Enactors: ?

Objects: Fabrial gemstone split into halves

Text World 1 Time: Recent past Enactors: Navani Epistemic Modal-world 1

PM 4

Objects: Fabrial gemstone split into halves;

Text World 2 Time: Present Enactors: Navani

Pieces linked, mimic motions; Like a spanreed PM 5

Text World 3 Time: Present Enactors: ?

PM 6

Text World 1

Text World 3

Time: Recent past Enactors: Navani, Adolin

Time: Present Enactors: Adolin

Figure 3.9  Step-by-step comparison of the processing order of predictive models and equivalent text-world increments



Chapter 3.  A predictive coding approach to Text World Theory

Of particular significance is the fact that while Text World 1 could be considered the “matrix text-world” in the Text World Theory analysis, it is in fact only completed by the very last step of the reading process. Instead of a partial text-world construction, there could also have been a series of empty text-worlds (see Lahey 2004) accounting for the empty diegetic level before both characters are given. The Predictive Coding account, however, automatically updates this level as characters and diegetic levels are revealed. While the final analysis using Text World Theory contains a full text-world here, it is established in a different order than the directions of world-switches imply. I suggest that this is a quite common occurrence as stories are read and understood incrementally, and that the assumption of there being a central text-world must be maintained by a reader long before the text is able to fully develop it. That is, there is just as much, if not sometimes more, reader-drivenness than text-drivenness involved in real-time reading, whereby a reader interprets textual elements based on personal knowledge of story structure and inference rather than on what the text may signal. An open question remains whether or not predictive models and full textworlds are factually the same kind of mental representations, or if perhaps predictive models only represent the incremental fragments which ultimately make up a more complex mental representation of the text-world as such. There are, however, often minor variations or idiosyncrasies across actual readers’ interpretations of text-worlds, which Predictive Coding can aptly explain.

References Clark, A. 2013. Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Science 36(3): 181–204. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12000477

Croft, W., Cruse, D. A. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. New York: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803864

Egner, T., Monti, J. M., and Summerfield, C. 2010. Expectation and Surprise Determine Neural Population Responses in the Ventral Visual Stream. Journal of Neuroscience 30(49): 16601–16608.  ​https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2770-10.2010 Friston, K. 2005. A theory of cortical responses. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 360(1521): 815–836.  ​https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2005.1622 Friston, K. 2002. Beyond Phrenology: What Can Neuroimaging Tell Us About Distributed Circuitry? Annual Review of Neuroscience 25(1): 221–250. ​ https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.25.112701.142846

Garrod, S., Gambi, C. and Pickering, M. J. 2014. Prediction at all levels: forward model predictions can enhance comprehension. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29(1): 46–48. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/01690965.2013.852229

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Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. 2013. Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. 4th edn. London: Routledge. von Helmholtz, H. 1962. Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics, Volume 3, J. P. C. James P. C. Southall (ed). New York: Dover. Hohwy, J. 2007. Functional Integration and the Mind. Synthese 159(3): 315–328. ​ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9240-3

Hohwy, J., Roepstorff, A., and Friston, K. 2008. Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: An epistemological review. Cognition 108(3): 687–701. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.05.010

Jack, B. N. and Hacker, G. 2014. Predictive Coding Explains Auditory and Tactile Influences on Vision during Binocular Rivalry. Journal of Neuroscience. 34(19): 6423–6424. ​ https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1040-14.2014

Lahey, E. 2004. All the World’s a Subworld: Direct Speech and Subworld Creation in ‘After’ by Norman MacCaig. Nottingham Linguistic Circular 18: 21–28. Langacker, R. W. 2009. Investigations in Cognitive Grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ​ https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214369

Langacker, R. W. 1986. An Introduction to Cognitive Grammar. Cognitive Science 10: 1–40. ​ https://doi.org/10.1207/s15516709cog1001_1

Lewis, D. 1973. Causation. The Journal of Philosophy 70(17): 556–567. ​ https://doi.org/10.2307/2025310

Park, H.-J. and Friston, K. 2013. Structural and Functional Brain Networks: From Connections to Cognition. Science 342: 1238411.  ​https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1238411 Rahnev, D., Lau, H. and de Lange, F. P. 2011. Prior Expectation Modulates the Interaction between Sensory and Prefrontal Regions in the Human Brain. Journal of Neuroscience 31(29): 10741–10748.  ​https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1478-11.2011 Rescher, N. 1999. How Many Possible Worlds Are There? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 59: 403–420.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/2653678 Sanderson, B. 2014. Words of Radiance: The Stormlight Archive Book Two. London: Gollancz. Sanford, A. J. and Emmott, C. 2012. Mind, Brain and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139084321 Squire, L. R. (ed). 2008. Fundamental Neuroscience. 3rd edn. Burlington, MA; London: Academic Press. Summerfield, C., Trittschuh, E. H., Monti, J. M., Mesulam, M.-M. and Egner, T. 2008. Neural repetition suppression reflects fulfilled perceptual expectations. Nature Neuroscience 11(9): 1004–1006.  ​https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2163 Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Zwaan, R. A. 1994. Effect of Genre Expectations on Text Comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology 20(4): 920–933.

Chapter 4

World-building as cognitive feedback loop Ernestine Lahey

Text World Theory (Gavins 2007; Werth 1999) has traditionally assumed a unidirectional model of knowledge transmission from discourse-world to text-world. In this chapter I follow Troscianko (2017) to suggest that worldbuilding in discourse occurs within a cognitive feedback loop in which existing knowledge is applied toward the construction of a text-world network, and new information feeds from this network back into the minds of readers. In what follows, I demonstrate the utility of a feedback-loop approach in accounting for knowledge accrual in discourse through a case-study analysis of Canadian author Sheldon Currie’s (1995) novella The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum. I argue that Currie’s rhetorical positioning of the reader as the recipient of a highly politicised subtext at two levels of the discourse results in the incorporation of new or modified knowledge into a reader’s knowledge base. Keywords: Canadian literature, cognitive feedback loop, Sheldon Currie, discourse-worlds, knowledge, Text World Theory, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, world-building

4.1

Introduction

Text World Theory (Gavins 2007; Werth 1999, and see Chapter 1 of this volume) holds that whenever we engage in discourse, we build up a network of mental representations or “worlds”, each corresponding to a distinct ontological level of the discourse. The “outer” layer of any text-world network is the discourse-world, the immediate situation in which the discourse takes place. The act of discourse that takes place in the discourse-world results in the formation of the second layer of the network – the text-world, which is the deictic and epistemic zero-point and default reality space of the discourse. Departures from the text-world can be triggered by spatio-temporal shifts or modalised expressions, resulting in the formation of linked or embedded deictic and modal-worlds, which together represent the third level of a text-world network. https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.04lah © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Text World Theory treats the three levels of a text-world network as contingent: the discourse-world is the proto-world for a network, giving rise to the text-world, which is the source space for the construction of further deictic and modal-worlds. The world-building process is thus conceptualised as unidirectional: the discourseworld provides the input for a text-world network, which serves as output of the world-building process and endpoint for the information and knowledge activated through it. However, and as I have proposed elsewhere (Lahey 2016), there is good reason to assert that world-building is a cyclical mechanism. Discourse participants do not just build worlds; they are partially built by them. Knowledge is not only applied in world-building, but accrued through it, inflecting the thought and behaviour of discourse participants long after the discourse has ended. This chapter focuses on knowledge acquisition as an outcome of worldbuilding in fiction reading. As I discuss further below, there is a large body of research which suggests that readers learn from their engagements with fiction, taking on new information from fictional texts, even when this clashes with their pre-existing knowledge (see Rapp et  al. 2014 on how readers incorporate inaccurate general knowledge into their knowledge base). I consider how this research fits with Text World Theory’s treatment of participant knowledge, arguing that while it recognises the potential for participants to gain knowledge from fictional discourse, thus far this potential has not been adequately explored. I propose that world-building is best characterised as a cognitive feedback loop in which information feeds both into and out of the text-world network. I go on to illustrate the explanatory power of a feedback-loop conceptualisation of world-building especially for explicitly “social” narratives, providing a case-study analysis of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, a 1995 novella by Canadian writer Sheldon Currie. I show how Currie exploits the cognitive effects of several stylistic features, but especially point of view and metonymy, in forcing his readers to build a text-world that inevitably feeds back into their discourse-world in the form of new or modified knowledge. Finally, I conclude with a consideration of the implications of the cognitive-feedback loop approach for future work in Text World Theory. 4.2

Knowledge in Text World Theory

For Werth, discourse involves a joint attempt to negotiate a “common ground” (CG) (Clark and Marshall 1981; Clark et al. 1983), the totality of the information which the discourse participants accept as relevant for the current discourse (Werth 1999: 119). The CG is comprised of two types of information – propositions, either expressed explicitly by the discourse, or entailed by these; and information from a participant’s existing background knowledge:



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

[T]he text itself consists of a set of propositions {P}. But these propositions have many notional links with other propositions which are unexpressed, but nevertheless present. Some of them {PE} are more or less directly connected with the expressed propositions as entailments. Others {PK}, probably the majority, are pragmatically connected in that they relate the propositions actually expressed {P} to speaker and hearer knowledge {KS} and {KH}. All of these notional links constitute, at the start of the discourse, areas of ‘potential relevance’ to the propositions of the text, and as the text proceeds, some of the areas are actually activated by the text, while others are not. (Werth 1999: 48)

The following schematisation, adapted by Gavins (2001) from the original manuscript for Werth’s Text Worlds, visualises the relationship between propositions and knowledge:

{K}

{Ks}

{P}

{Kh}

{Pe}

{Pk}

CG

Figure 4.1  Knowledge in the discourse-world (Gavins 2001: 82)

At the start of any discourse, {P} is very limited, perhaps as small as a single proposition. However, and as a result of the limited nature of {P} at this stage, the background knowledge base that might be relevant to the discourse {PK} is very large. As more propositions are added to the CG, the boundaries of the fictional world specified by the discourse become ever more circumscribed, and the scope of {PK} necessary for making sense of the discourse becomes increasingly narrowed. Underlying Text World Theory’s account of the mechanisms involved in knowledge retrieval as outlined above is the assumption that the relationship between textual prompt and recipient knowledge is unidirectional: textual input “pass[es] through the filter of recipient knowledge” and comes out the other end as the construction or elaboration of one or more worlds (Werth 1999: 48). The entire

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network of worlds that results from a given discourse is the output of this linear process, as well as the end-point of the knowledge that is activated in discourse. We might schematise this account of world-building as in Figure 4.2. DISCOURSE WORLD

Meaning construction S

H

{Ks}

{Kh}

{P}

{Pe} {Pk}

TW NETWORK

Figure 4.2  World-building as a unidirectional process

Current Text World Theory has only recently begun to address the potential for a backflow of information from the text worlds of a discourse into the minds of discourse participants (see, e.g., Canning 2017 and Lahey 2016). This is despite the fact that there is now overwhelming evidence to support the thesis that readers acquire knowledge through reading, including fiction reading. A comprehensive survey of this work is beyond the scope of this chapter, but key publications include pioneering work by Gerrig (1993: 196–242) on narrative transportation and persuasion; empirical research by Miall and colleagues on self-implication and its influence on self- and world-knowledge (Kuiken, Miall and Sikora 2004; Miall and Kuiken 2002); work by Oatley, and Oatley and Mar on simulation and reader knowledge (Mar and Oatley 2008; Oatley 2011, 2017); and studies by De Graaf et al. suggesting a correlation between identification with fictional characters and changes in reader attitude and belief (De Graaf et al. 2009, 2012). Furthermore, and significantly for my arguments here, there is now considerable research in linguistics supporting the “predictive brain” hypothesis (see e.g. Clark 2013), which holds that reader expectations about everything from morphosyntactic structures to narrative probability play a key role in the online processing of discourse (see, e.g., Altmann and Steedman 1988; Kukkonen 2014, 2016; Chapter 3 of this volume). Elsewhere (Lahey 2016: 48), I have suggested that Text World Theory not only neglects the backward projection of information from the text-world, but that in



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

its current articulation it also does not predict this capacity. However, it is clear that insofar as propositions get incremented into participants’ mutual knowledge via the interface of the CG, movement of information from the discourse situation (though not the text-world or one of its dependent worlds) into the mind of a reader is attested in Text World Theory. Furthermore, Werth’s discussion of the architecture of the conceptual system includes the proposal that the historically ill-defined term “frame” (Fillmore 1982, 1985) can best be understood as a distillation from patterns of text-worlds (Werth 1999: 51,112). This suggests that Werth sees text-worlds as potential vehicles for the establishment of more permanent knowledge structures. Nevertheless, current Text World Theory lacks anything like an extended account of this process, and Werth never makes the rhetorical leap from suggesting that text-worlds consolidate as frame knowledge to an explication of a mechanism in which the potential for text-worlds to partially construct their containing discourse-worlds (by altering participant knowledge in them) is made manifest. However, as I have previously argued, such a potential is almost certainly realised in readers’ mind-modelling of authorial discourse participants (Lahey 2016: 46–48). As I will argue below, it is also manifest in readers’ processing of discourse subtexts. 4.3

World-building as cognitive feedback loop

The concept of the “feedback loop” has its origins in systems theory, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of complex systems which is used to explain interactions between interrelated phenomena (Bertalanffy 1969). A feedback loop occurs when a system’s output is routed back into the same system as input. Feedback may be positive or negative, resulting in disequilibrium or equilibrium, respectively. Positive feedback creates a “vicious circle” effect, with the disequilibrium becoming steadily greater so long as the loop remains active. Processes of climate change provide useful examples of how positive feedback works. For instance, ice on the earth’s surface helps the earth to maintain thermal homeostasis by reflecting sunlight back into space. But as the earth gets hotter and ice begins to melt, this self-regulating capacity is diminished. The result is disequilibrium: the earth warms even further. The thermodynamics of the human body provides a good example of negative feedback. When humans become too warm, sweating helps to bring body temperature back down, re-establishing homeostasis. The notion of the feedback loop has applications within a variety of disciplines including engineering and technology, biology, earth sciences, economics, sociology, education and psychology. It has also been applied to the study of literary reading by Stockwell (2009), who uses the notion to explain how reading can

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result in empathy (see also Canning 2017: 174). More recently it has been used by Troscianko (2017), whose work focuses on the impact of fictional reading on the thoughts, emotions, perceptions, physical states and behaviours of readers living with an eating disorder. Troscianko draws on research from cognitive behavioural therapy (Fairburn 2008) in suggesting that the pathology of eating disorders can be explained in terms of a series of mind–body feedback loops in which positive feedback from both “internal” (cognitive) and “external” (physical or behavioural) inputs results in a continued worsening of the illness. In a healthy person, these inputs work in tandem to maintain the equilibrium of a healthy body and a healthy attitude to one’s body. A slight increase in weight (physical process) may lead to dissatisfaction about one’s appearance (thoughts and feelings; self-perception), and thus prompt a person to make slight dietary changes (behaviour), eventually resulting in weight loss (physical process). Once equilibrium is restored, eating and exercise habits will return to normal. However, for a person living with anorexia nervosa, efforts to control or lower weight may lead to obsessive thoughts or preoccupations about food, which can in turn cause the person to restrict their food intake even further (Troscianko 2017: 172). Social and cultural factors also play a role, with outside influences contributing to separate loops which inform these internal mind–body feedback processes. Of particular importance for Troscianko’s arguments are findings which suggest that exposure to external body-related stimuli, such as images in the media which promote a thin-ideal, can fuel negative thoughts and feelings about one’s own body, setting off a cycle of damaging feedback. Troscianko’s starting point for her research is the hypothesis that fiction reading has the capacity to activate or reinforce mind–body feedback loops in readers with disordered eating. Her research, conducted in cooperation with the UK eating disorder charity Beat, aimed to discover the relationships between people’s (reported) perceptions of their reading habits and preferences, and their mental health, with a particular focus on eating disorders. Data was gathered by way of online surveys containing both quantitative (forced-choice) and qualitative (free-choice) questions. More than eight hundred respondents took part in the survey. Troscianko’s (2017) publication, which I focus on here, deals only with the qualitative data, presenting a close reading analysis of responses to the free-choice portion, in which respondents were asked to elaborate on themes covered in the forced-choice section. The survey questions invited respondents to reflect on the effects of reading on their thoughts and feelings, (self)perceptions, behaviours, and physical processes or states (e.g. weight gain or loss). There was also an open question inviting respondents to report “anything else they would like to share” about their reading habits or how they relate to the respondents’ thoughts, feelings, behaviours or perceptions (Troscianko 2017: 178).



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

Troscianko’s analysis of the comments provided in the free-choice section of her survey revealed ninety-seven responses (from seventy-one unique respondents) which suggested some type of feedback loop to be operating between the respondents’ reading habits and the progress of their eating disorder. Troscianko categorises the feedback loops into nineteen distinct types, reflecting the fact that the precise nature of the pathways between thoughts and emotions, behaviours, physical states and perceptions in any given situation is highly idiosyncratic. For instance, for some respondents, reading reportedly led to low self-esteem, which in turn triggered an exacerbation of eating disorder behaviours, which in turn led to more reading about eating disorders (Category 6, Troscianko 2017: 180); in this loop behavioural input (reading) influences thoughts and emotions/perceptions (low self-esteem), which stimulates a repetition of the initial behaviour (more reading of literature in which an eating disorder is depicted). In other cases, respondents report an emotion (e.g. feeling low) as the initial input in a feedback loop, followed by a behaviour (reading), resulting in an improvement or a worsening of the emotional state (Category 1, Troscianko 2017: 179). Most of the feedback loop types identified by Troscianko are attested in her data by only one response (only nine were classified as belonging to more than one category). Troscianko makes no claims for the generalisability of the categories she identifies, which serve more as descriptors of the loop pathways in each case. However, all of the feedback loops identified by Troscianko suggest a causal relationship between fiction reading and other internal (thoughts, feelings, perceptions) and/or external (behaviour, physical state/process) inputs and thus clearly indicate the role of fiction reading in respondents’ perceptions of the progression of their illness. The feedback loop model provides a mechanism through which Text World Theory’s architecture can be made to more explicitly account for the learning that occurs whenever readers engage in fictional reading (see Figure 4.3 below). For Troscianko, all reading involves predictive processing and results in feedback loops (2017: 188). The “predictive brain” of the reader brings expectations based on existing knowledge to the discourse situation. Throughout the discourse process the reader is then confronted with information that either confirms or clashes with these expectations. Where the incoming information aligns with these expectations, these will be reinforced; this situation represents a positive feedback loop, since the force of the reader’s incoming expectations, and the knowledge, beliefs and attitudes underlying these, is strengthened by the discourse. Where a discourse challenges existing expectations, the reader may adjust or reject existing schemas. In this case a negative feedback loop is created because the existing knowledge of the reader is modulated by contrasting information in the discourse. The reading process is thus not only a dynamic process of knowledge activation, but simultaneously a process of knowledge accrual and consolidation.

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DISCOURSE WORLD

Meaning construction S

H

{Ks}

{Kh}

{P}

{Pe} {Pk}

TW

Figure 4.3  World-building as a cognitive feedback loop

There is nothing new in the argument I make above regarding the capacity for literary discourse to influence reader knowledge. Schema theory, a canonical theory in stylistics, recognises that participation in discourse can lead to schema refreshment (in which knowledge structures are modified in light of new information) or reinforcement (in which schematised knowledge is preserved or confirmed) (Semino 1997). However, what I suggest here is that the refreshment or reinforcement of existing knowledge structures can be explained through reference to a feedback loop model. In the following section I demonstrate the utility of the feedback loop approach as integrated within the Text World Theory model, through case-study analysis of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, a novella by Canadian author Sheldon Currie. 4.4 The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum is a 1995 novella by Canadian author Sheldon Currie which began life as a (1975) short story and has since been adapted for film, radio and stage. The narrative recounts the story of I-narrator Margaret MacNeil, a young woman of Catholic-Scottish descent living in the coal mining town of Reserve Mines on Cape Breton Island, in the eastern province Nova Scotia, Canada. Set in the 1940s, when coal production in the region was at its height, The Glace Bay Miners Museum provides a sharp critique of the mining industry



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

through its depiction of the tragic loss of all the male members of Margaret’s family to mining-related deaths. The book’s final chapter, which is the focus of my discussion below, sees the narrative climax of the story, in which Margaret dismembers the bodies of her dead husband, brother and grandfather, preserving select parts of their corpses for display in a macabre makeshift museum. The title of the book is at once an allusion to this museum and to the real-life Cape Breton Miners’ Museum in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum is a patently ideological book, providing a critical assessment of some of the most salient problems faced by Cape Breton Islanders during the last century. First, the book serves as a critique of industrial capitalism, and of the impact of coal mining in the Cape Breton region. Second, the book functions as a lament for the decline of Cape Breton culture, traditionally defined by its strong ties to the linguistic and musical traditions of Scotland. Finally, Currie’s allusion in the title of the book to a real-life miners’ museum in the region points to a third critique, concerning the role of a tourist-driven heritage industry in the preservation of culture on the island (Hodd 2008). Here I attend to the final chapter of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, in which Margaret’s gruesome act of mourning and protest is depicted, and in which much of the rhetorical force of the narrative can be located. At this point in the novel, Margaret’s husband Neil and her younger brother Ian have just been killed in a mine accident. Their bodies have been brought to the surface as Margaret arrives at the pit. Margaret insists that they be taken to her mother’s house for cleaning. The reader has been primed earlier in the narrative to not find anything unusual in Margaret’s request to care for her relatives’ bodies (see Toolan 2009: 171 on priming in relation to narrative surprise). Through an extended flashback in the book’s second chapter, the reader has learned of the death in an earlier accident of Margaret’s father and older brother Charlie-Dave, and of how at that time Margaret cleaned the men’s bodies in preparation for their wake and burial. The surprise and shock of the book’s ending relies on an abrupt disruption of readers’ expectations as conditioned by this earlier episode. The near absence of markers of deontic modality in the passages in which Margaret describes her mutilation of the bodies only adds to the disconcerting atmosphere (understood here as the reader’s sense of the mood evoked by a fictional world; see Stockwell 2014) of the book’s final scenes, in which no narratorial judgement of Margaret’s actions is provided. So he took them down to Mama’s and they carried them in and put one on Mama’s bed and one on the couch in the kitchen. I knew what to get. I saw Charlie Dave keep a dead frog for two years when he was going to school. I went to the Medical Hall and got two gallons. [ ... ]

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To make matters worse, my grandfather was left alone all that time. He died. Choked. I took his lungs. It wasn’t so much the lungs themselves, though, I think they were a good thing to take, though they don’t keep too well, especially the condition he was in, as just something to remind me of the doctor who told him he couldn’t get compensation because he was fit to work. Then I took Neil’s lungs because I thought of them connected to his pipes [bagpipes] and they show, compared to grandfather’s, what lungs should look like. [ ... ] I took Neil’s tongue since he always said he was the only one around still had one. I took his fingers too because he played his pipes with them. I didn’t know what to take from Ian so I took his dick since he always said to Neil that was his substitute for religion to keep him from being a pit pony when he wasn’t drinking rum or playing forty(Currie 1995: 125–27) fives.

Margaret’s mother, who has been away visiting a relative, returns home to discover Margaret in the process of dismembering the bodies, and leaves the house in horror. Margaret places the jars in a trunk, to which she adds other relics – her grandfather’s notebooks, a deck of cards, a half-finished bottle of rum, Neil’s church missal and some photographs. She takes the trunk to a friend’s house and instructs the friend to not look inside. Then she packs a suitcase and waits for the police to come and take her to the local psychiatric hospital, an inevitability which is presented in the same style of resolute matter-of-factness that typifies the rest of her account. Following her release from the psychiatric hospital, she returns to her friend’s house, and they set up her museum. The passage in which their preparations are depicted provides the second and final narrative surprise of the book, enacted stylistically through a shift in point-of-view from first- to second-person perspective: Marie came over with the suitcase and we had a cup of tea and she helped me set things up. We had to make shelves for the jars. Everything else can go on tables and chairs or hang on the wall or from the ceiling as you can see. Marie is very artistic, she knows how to put things around. I’m the cook. We give tea and scones to anyone who comes. You’re the first. I guess not too many people know about it yet. A lot of things are not keeping as well as we would like, but it’s better than nothing. Perhaps you could give us a copy of your tape when you get it done. That might make a nice item. It’s hard to get real good things and you hate to fill up with junk just to have something. (Currie 1995: 130)

Much of the ideological subtext of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum is realised through a series of linked metonymies in which Margaret’s artefacts serve as the vehicles. Metonymy is a figure of thought in which one concept is used to refer to another concept within the same domain (see Kövecses 2010; Radden and Kovecses 1999). Classic examples of surface-level linguistic metonymy involve the use of a word or group of words, the referent of which is associatively linked to



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

another entity or concept – the metonymic target. In “the kettle is boiling”, for instance, we understand because of how kettles are used that it is not really the kettle that is boiling, but the water inside it (Littlemore 2015: 4). In this way metonymy does not so much create associations between concepts (as novel conceptual metaphor does), as draw on existing ones, some of which may be culturally specific (Tilley 1999: 5–6). The metonymies in the final scenes of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum are material rather than linguistic (Hunter 2015: 211; Wall-Randall 2008: 268). Objects, not words, point the reader to the relevant domains of knowledge or experience, with Margaret assisting the reader in determining what these relevant domains are by motivating in each case her choice of body parts. Margaret’s description of her actions is, for her, literal; at the level of the text-world, Margaret’s actions are function-advancing, moving the narrative forward (Werth 1999: 57). However, at level of the discourse-world the linked metonymies established through Margaret’s selection of the various objects for her museum communicate a subtext in which the overarching ideological concerns of the novella are summarised (Pankhurst 1999; Riffaterre 1990: 20–28; Werth 1999: 323). In many cases, the body parts Margaret selects are involved in multiple metonymic connections. The diseased lungs of Margaret’s grandfather, for instance, stand for his suffering and eventual death from “black lung”, a respiratory disease caused by a gradual accumulation of coal dust in the lungs. But Grandfather MacNeil’s lungs do not only signify his own suffering; by placing them in her museum, Margaret allows them to stand for the suffering of all miners afflicted with the condition. Furthermore, Grandfather MacNeil, as the oldest of the MacNeil family, may be seen as representative of an entire class of ageing descendants of Scottish immigrants to Cape Breton Island. His family name, age and his ability to speak Gaelic are explicit textual signals of his connection to this group. But Grandfather MacNeil’s lung condition is so severe that he has given up speaking and communicates solely through writing. His voluntary muteness is significant in the context of his metonymic relation to the class of older Scottish-descendant Cape Breton Islanders, for two reasons. First, one feature of traditional Cape Breton Island culture is a strong oral tradition of storytelling which immigrants from Scotland took with them when they settled in the New World (Morgan 2009: 171). The silence of Grandfather MacNeil represents the slow death of this oral tradition. Second, Grandfather MacNeil’s native language is Scottish Gaelic, a language his children and grandchildren neither speak nor understand. Scottish Gaelic was once widely spoken on Cape Breton Island, but its use has been in decline since the turn of the last century (Edwards 2010: 153–155; Tanner 2004: 300–311). Grandfather MacNeil’s inability to converse with younger generations of his family in his ancestral language is indicative of the general dying out

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of Gaelic on the island. By establishing Grandfather MacNeil as a representative of an entire generation of aging Scottish-descendant Cape Breton Islanders, Currie highlights the slowing transmission of cultural knowledge to younger generations of Cape Bretoners. Metonymic chaining (Barcelona 2005: 328) ensures that the metonymies established for Grandfather MacNeil are structurally transferred onto both Neil and Ian, with both younger men being linked to their respective generations of Scottish-descendent miners in the same way Grandfather MacNeil is linked to his. Margaret explains that she takes Neil’s lungs to show what healthy lungs look like in comparison to her grandfather’s diseased lungs and because “I thought of them connected to his pipes”. Just as Grandfather MacNeil is positioned as a representative of his generation of Scottish-descendent miners, so Neil too is positioned as a representative of a younger generation of miners whose physical health has not yet been compromised by long-time work in the mines. Furthermore, in his knowledge of traditional Scottish music, Neil symbolises the possibility for a maintained connection to a traditional musical legacy that is in danger of dying out with Grandfather MacNeil’s generation. Margaret takes Neil’s tongue “since he always said he was the only one around still had one”. Neil’s tongue represents his outspokenness, especially against the mine company bosses; the accident that killed Neil and Ian occurred following the resumption of work after a strike for which Neil was one of the prime instigators. Neil’s tongue is also a metonym for his ability to speak and understand Gaelic, a fact that constitutes a key part of his identity and characterisation  – the reader learns in the book’s first chapter that Neil was fired from his first mining job for refusing to speak English to the foreman (Curie 1995: 12). But Neil comes from another part of the island. With the exception of Grandfather MacNeil, all others he meets in the mining communities of Industrial Cape Breton are almost completely ignorant of their own cultural past. This contrast symbolises the inevitable loss of culture that will continue if the pace and policies of industry on the island are not reformed. Margaret says that she takes her younger brother’s penis because she doesn’t know what else to take and because Ian “always said to Neil that was his substitute for religion to keep him from being a pit pony when he wasn’t drinking rum or playing forty-fives” (Currie 1995: 127). Ian’s penis may in fact represent a number of overlapping issues: his masculinity, his youth and vitality, but also his potential to contribute to the emergence of the next generation of MacNeils, and thus continue a line of Scottish descendants in Cape Breton. However, Ian does not share the connection to his ancestral past that Grandfather MacNeil and Neil still enjoy. This fact is highlighted through references to Ian’s lack of musical ability, his inability to understand or speak Gaelic, and his ignorance of the history of



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

his Scottish forebears. In a previous chapter, the reader encounters the following exchange between Neil and Ian: “We’ve been here for a long, long, time, John, Neil said, using his English name. “You just don’t remember. Do you remember 1745, John?” “I guess nobody remembers 1745, eh.” Even Ian knew he already lost the argument. You couldn’t argue with Neil because he knew too much and he knew how to get you. He’d play with Ian for a while like he was a fish and then he’d yank him up on the wharf like a little herring. “Go and read your grandfather’s scribblers,1 John,” Neil said. “He remembers. His blood was there, spilled on the ground, and our blood was there, spilled on the ground. He remembers, I remember, and if you don’t remember, go and put your ear on his chest, and listen to his lungs singing, and maybe it will tickle your memory.” (Currie 1995: 66)

Neil refers to the Jacobite rising of 1745, an armed response to the union between England and Scotland designed to overthrow the reigning House of Hanover and re-install the House of Stuart to the British throne. The uprising culminated in the Battle of Culloden, which ended in complete failure for the Jacobite side. Following the uprising, supporters of the revolutionaries were sought out and executed, lands were confiscated and properties destroyed, and the Highland clan system was dismantled. Most significant in the context of Currie’s novel, traditional practices associated with Scottish way of life (the wearing of the kilt, for instance) were criminalised (Lenman 1980; Mitchison 2002: 342–343). The Jacobite rising and its aftermath together represent an important moment in the history of the Scottish people which is especially crucial for understanding the history of the Scots in Cape Breton: the first waves of Scottish immigrants to the island began following the defeat at Culloden. Sustained waves of immigration from Scotland continued until, by 1850, 30,000 Scots had immigrated to the island (Morgan 2008: 113). By setting Ian up as a character who does not realise the significance of this early period in Cape Breton’s and Scotland’s mutual history, Currie allows Ian to stand for all of those Scottish-descendant Cape Breton Islanders who have forgotten their ancestral heritage. However, despite Ian’s lack of conscious connection to his Scottish heritage, he is nevertheless linked to cultural life on the island through his fondness for drinking rum and playing cards. While these activities may lack the prestige associated with the linguistic and musical skills of Grandfather MacNeil and Neil, they are nevertheless important aspects of Cape Breton Island culture. The drinking of rum, still common on Cape Breton Island and throughout Canada’s Maritime provinces today, is a reminder of 18th-century trading routes between French colonies in Canada and the West Indies (Morgan 1.  Notebooks.

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2008: 36; Morgan 2009: 109). Furthermore, card games like Forty-Five (referred to by many, including narrator Margaret as “forty-fives”) and Tarabish have long been part of Islanders’ daily social lives (Barber 2007: 161; Morgan 2009: 31). The significance of both practices is highlighted by Margaret’s decision to include a part-filled bottle of rum and a deck of cards in her macabre exhibit. Ian’s carrying on of local cultural practices may indicate hope for the future survival of a unique Cape Breton cultural tradition, however removed from its Old-World roots. Currie’s novella asks its readers to look critically at the means through which Cape Breton culture is currently being preserved (Hodd 2008). By alluding in his title to a real-life miners’ museum  – the “Cape Breton Miners’ Museum” in Glace Bay – Currie invites a comparison between it and Margaret’s own grotesque monument, asking readers to question the appropriateness of glorifying industry by packaging it as an artefact for tourist consumption. In this way the book also invites readers to question the role of another industry, the heritage industry, which has flourished on Cape Breton Island since the mid-20th-century, concurrent with the decline of traditional industries like mining and steel-making (Hodd 2008: 192). Though the renewed focus on heritage in Cape Breton is a positive impulse in the preservation of traditional culture on the island, the influence of the heritage industry has been called a “double-edged sword” (Hodd 2008: 191). Many of the policies guiding the preservation and transmission of culture in the region have been taken at state level, resulting in a romanticised and homogenised cultural “brand” which is palatable to tourists but which may obscure alternative expressions of local culture. The region’s heavy economic reliance on tourism, especially pronounced since the collapse of the Atlantic cod fishery in the mid-1990s, has fuelled the usual debates about the relevance of the concept of authenticity in the face of a tourist-consumer gaze that shapes narratives of cultural identity on the island. Following work by MacCannell (1984), Hodd has suggested how the heritage tourism industry has worked to define and to constrain cultural identity on Cape Breton, such that locals’ sense of self has become heavily reliant on a prevailing “reconstructed ethnicity” (Hodd 2008: 193; MacCannell 1984). Currie’s critique of the effects of tourism is manifested stylistically through the shift in point of view at the end of the novella from first- to second-person. This shift forces a deictic reorientation in which the reader is implicated as characterenactor in the text-world of the narrative (on enactors, see Gavins 2007: 41). At the level of the discourse-world, the reader, as recipient of the ideological subtext of the book, is one level removed from the depicted events. From this perspective the reader is an outside observer, and can blamelessly look upon Margaret’s personal tragedy, indulging in the shock and outrage of one who is not directly involved in the perpetuation of the social problems addressed by the novella’s subtext. At the text-world level, however, the reader-as-enactor enjoys no such distance; at this



Chapter 4.  World-building as cognitive feedback loop

level they are part of the problem, complicit in the culture-and-tourism machine that glorifies the mining industry and sells a sanitised state-mediated brand of “local” Island culture to outsiders in search of an authentic cultural experience. Through his manipulation of point of view, Currie forces the reader to confront the realities of contemporary life on Cape Breton Island in a way that the mine company bosses and more recently, the state-level cultural policy makers “from away”2 have been able to avoid. At both levels, the reader is presented with a perspective on Cape Breton industry, history, culture and tourism that sits uneasily alongside the institutionalised accounts of these as presented through other channels. Currie’s novel inevitably affects readers’ perceptions of the real-life Cape Breton Miners’ Museum, by offering a competing discourse of preservation to the tourist-oriented one with which many present-day locals will be most familiar. The Cape Breton Miners’ Museum is one of the most popular tourist sites on Cape Breton Island, and an important source of revenue for the area (Mortimer 2016a). The museum “pays tribute to the region’s long and rich history of coal mining” (Cape Breton Miners’ Museum n.d.). This history is showcased in various ways, through artefacts, photographs and other interpretive elements. The highlight of the museum are the seasonal daily mine tours during which visitors are led into the Ocean Deeps Colliery located under the museum site by “authentic” Cape Breton miners who “promise to entertain and inform you” (Community Sector Council Nova Scotia 2014). The museum site also features the “Miner’s Village” – a reconstruction of a company house and company store, as well as a Miner’s Village Restaurant, a modern restaurant situated in a reproduction period building. A shop is located at the museum’s main entrance, and in 2016 a café was also added (Mortimer 2016b). The museum is the official “home” of the “Men of the Deeps”, a popular men’s singing group consisting of current and former miners which regularly performs concerts at the museum site. While the museum clearly serves an important role in informing visitors about the history of mining in the region, there is a strong emphasis on the museum as a site of entertainment, an emphasis that transforms the suffering and exploitation of miners into spectacle (Hodd 2008: 199). Margaret’s own grotesque museum has been seen as a critical re-enactment of this tourist spectacle, refashioned as an act of protest (Chanter 2006: 96). I have argued elsewhere that where readers discern specific correspondences between the contents of a fictional narrative and elements in their “real world”, there will be a stronger tendency for bi-directional mapping of features in reader’s representations of both worlds (Lahey 2016: 47–48). For instance, we should 2.  Someone not from Nova Scotia may be referred to in the regional dialect as “from away” or (more pejoratively) as “a come from away” (Davey and MacKinnon 2016: 5).

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expect a reader’s representation of the author of a fiction to be strongly informed by their perception of the fiction’s protagonist, especially where salient similarities between author and character – age, place of residence, appearance, style of dress, educational background – are known to the reader. In relation to Currie’s novella, I suggest that readers familiar with the Cape Breton Miners’ Museum in Glace Bay will also be likely to map in a bi-directional (or, more accurately, circular) way, using their pre-existing knowledge of the real-life miners’ museum (and all it represents) in their construction of a text-world for Currie’s narrative, and applying Currie’s narrative toward a fresh understanding of the real-life monument. Currie’s reader is positioned stylistically and rhetorically as the recipient of an ideological message that functions at two levels of the discourse. The reader learns from The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum both through their discourse-world interaction with Currie as author-participant, and through their implication as enactor in the world of the text. This learning may involve modification of existing knowledge, prompted in part by the readers’ discernment of transworld links between the world of the fiction and their real world (Ryan 1991: 52), or it may involve the accrual of completely new knowledge. At the level of the discourse-world, the knowledge the reader has acquired through a reading of Currie’s novella may be seen as a straightforward transference of information from writer to reader via the interface of the Common Ground. At the level of the text-world, however, such transference cannot take place. The reader-participant is not located in the text-world; an enactor of the reader is. The knowledge gained through Currie’s manipulation of point of view at the end of the novella can only be explained by conceptualising this as the result of a cognitive loop in which information feeds from the reader’s mind, through the discourse-world into the text-world, and back again through the discourse-world and into the mind as subtext, where it can consolidate as new or modified knowledge. For local readers, whose sense of cultural identity may be consistent with a tourist-driven “reconstructed ethnicity”, Currie’s narrative challenges the predictions they bring to the discourse situation, creating disequilibrium between their existing knowledge and the information offered up by the discourse. For these readers, participation in the discourse results in a positive feedback loop in which Currie’s stark critique must somehow be reconciled with the prevailing, romanticised perspective of the heritage tourism industry. 4.5

Conclusion

In this chapter I referred to research which supports the thesis that readers learn from their engagements with fiction. Until now text-world-theoretical accounts of knowledge accrual in discourse have been limited, with most applications of Text



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World Theory appearing to assume a unidirectional model of knowledge transmission from discourse-world to text-world. Following work by Troscianko (2017), I suggest that it may be more useful to think of the process of world-building as comprising a cognitive feedback loop in which existing knowledge is applied to the construction of a text-world network, and new information feeds from this network via the discourse-world into the mind of readers. Through case-study analysis of Sheldon Currie’s highly ideological “social” novella, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, I demonstrated the utility of a feedback-loop approach in accounting for knowledge accrual in discourse, especially as facilitated through the implication of the reader as an enactor in a text-world of the fiction. I argue that Currie’s rhetorical positioning of the reader as the recipient of a highly politicised subtext at two levels of the discourse cannot but result in a new way of seeing, whether due to the incorporation of completely new knowledge into a reader’s knowledge base, or due to the modification of pre-existing knowledge. My approach in this chapter has relied on stylistic and text-world-theoretical analysis coupled with strong converging evidence to support the claims I make regarding readers’ adoption and adaptation of knowledge during their reading of Currie’s book. While there is robust empirical support for the thesis that underlies my conclusions here – that is, that we learn from reading fiction – my own analysis in this chapter is introspective and speculative. The obvious next step in integrating the feedback loop mechanism that I advocate here into the architecture of Text World Theory will be the use of empirical methods involving real readers, to give text world theorists a clearer picture of the validity of the mechanism and to specify the precise nature of the feedback loops readers report in their own readings of fictional and other texts.

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70 Ernestine Lahey Chanter, T. 2006. Abjection and the Constitutive Nature of Difference: Class Mourning in Margaret’s Museum and Legitimating Myths of Innocence in Casablanca. Hypatia 21(3): 86–106.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2006.tb01115.x Clark, H. and Marshall, C. 1981. Definite reference and mutual knowledge. In Elements of Discourse Understanding, A. Joshi, B. Webber and I. Sag (eds), 10–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, H., Shreuder, R. and Buttrick, S. 1983. Common ground and the understanding of demonstrative reference. Journal of Learning and Verbal Behavior 22(2): 245–258. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(83)90189-5

Clark, A. 2013. Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36: 181–253. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12000477

Community Sector Council Nova Scotia. 2014. Cape Breton Miners’ Museum (Glace Bay) Profile. YouTube, October 10 2014, (27 April 2017). Currie, S. 1995. The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum. Wreck Cove, NS: Breton Books. Davey, W. and MacKinnon, R. 2016. Dictionary of Cape Breton English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442669499 De Graaf, A., Hoeken, H., Sanders, J. and Beentjes, J. 2009. The role of dimensions of narrative engagement in narrative persuasion. Communications 34(4): 385–405. ​ https://doi.org/10.1515/COMM.2009.024

De Graaf, A., Hoeken, H., Sanders, J. and Beentjes, J. 2012. Identification as a mechanism of narrative persuasion. Communication Research 39(6): 802–823. ​ https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650211408594

Edwards, J. 2010. Minority Languages and Group Identity: Cases and Categories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fairburn, C. 2008. Eating disorders: the transdiagnostic view and the cognitive behavioral therapy. In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Eating Disorders, C. Fairburn (ed), 7–22. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. Fillmore, C. 1982. Frame Semantics. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, The Linguistic Society of Korea (ed.), 111–137. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing. Fillmore, C. 1985. Frames and the Semantics of Understanding. Quaderni de Semantica. 6(2): 222–254. Gavins, J. 2001. Text World Theory: A Critical Exposition and Development in Relation to Absurd Prose Fiction. PhD dissertation, Sheffield Hallam University. Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gerrig, R. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Hodd, T. 2008. Shoring against our ruin: Sheldon Currie, Alistair MacLeod, and the Heritage Preservation Narrative. Studies in Canadian Literature 33(2): 191–209. Hunter, A. 2015. Evocative objects: a reading of resonant things and material encounters in Victorian writers’ houses/museums. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Kövecses, Z. 2010. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kuiken, D., Miall, D. and Sikora, S. 2004. Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading. Poetics Today 25(2): 171–203.  ​https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-25-2-171



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Kukkonen, K. 2014. Bayesian narrative: Probability, plot and the shape of the fictional world. Anglia 132(4): 720–739. Kukkonen, K. 2016. Bayesian bodies: The predictive dimension of embodied cognition and culture. In The Cognitive Humanities, P. Garratt (ed), 153–167. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Lahey, E. 2016. Author-character ethos in Dan Brown’s Langdon-series novels. In WorldBuilding: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds), 33–51. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Lenman, B. 1980. The Jacobite Risings in Britain 1698–1746. London: Eyre Metheun. Littlemore, J. 2015. Metonymy: Hidden Shortcuts in Language, Thought and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107338814 MacCannell, D. 1984. Reconstructed ethnicity tourism and cultural identity in third world communities. Annals of Tourism Research 11(3): 375–391. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7383(84)90028-8

Mar, R. and Oatley, K. 2008. The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science 3(3): 173–192. ​ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00073.x

Miall, D. and Kuiken, D. 2002. A feeling for fiction: Becoming what we behold. Poetics 30(4): 221–224.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(02)00011-6 Mitchison, R. 2002 [1970]. A History of Scotland. 3rd ed. London: Routledge. Morgan, R. 2008. Rise Again! The Story of Cape Breton Island: Book One. Wreck Cove, NS: Breton Books. Morgan, R. 2009. Rise Again! The Story of Cape Breton Island: Book Two. Wreck Cove, NS: Breton Books. Mortimer, G. 2016a. Miners museum in Glace Bay in race against time to repair building. CBC News, 27 September 2016, (27 April 2017). Mortimer, G. 2016b. Cape Breton Miners Museum ready for summer with enhancements. CBC News, 24 May 2016, (27 April 2017). Oatley, K. 2011. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ​ https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119970910

Oatley, K. 2017. On truth and fiction. In Cognitive Literary Science, M. Burke and E. Troscianko (eds), 259–278. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pankhurst, A. 1999. Recontextualization of metonymy in narrative and the case of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. In Metonymy in Language and Thought, K. Panther and G. Radden (eds), 385–399. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.4.22pan Rapp, D., Hinze, S., Slaten, D. and Horton, W. 2014. Amazing stories: Acquiring and avoiding inaccurate information from fiction. Discourse Processes 51(1–2): 50–74. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2013.855048

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Riffaterre, M. 1990. Fictional Truth. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ryan, M. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Semino, E., 1997. Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman.

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Tanner, M. 2004. The Last of the Celts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Tilley, C. 1999. Metaphor and Material Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Toolan, M. 2009. Narrative Progression in the Short Story: A Corpus Stylistic Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.6 Troscianko, E. 2017. Feedback in reading and disordered eating. In Cognitive Literary Science, M. Burke and E. Troscianko (eds), 169–194. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Von Bertalanffy, L. 1969. General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications. New York: George Braziller. Wall-Randall, S. 2008. Doctor Faustus and the printer’s devil. SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. 48(2): 259–281. Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.

Part 2

Forming fictional worlds

Chapter 5

Experiencing horrible worlds Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

In this chapter, I explore how conceptual movement within the fictional worlds of horror can affect the reader’s emotional experience of the text. I argue that horror fiction necessarily requires “horrible” world-building elements and function-advancing propositions to establish the macabre ambience of the fictional world, which contributes to the reader’s experience of negative emotions such as anxiety and fear. Once this uncomfortable world is established, various types of world creation can manipulate the reader’s attention to bring about such negative emotional responses. Drawing on Text World Theory (Gavins 2007) and attention and resonance (Stockwell 2009a) to investigate this phenomenon, I conduct a stylistic analysis of how the text-worlds of Stephen King’s IT (1986) are built and experienced by readers. Keywords: horror fiction, texture, Text World Theory, attention, negation, emotion, Stephen King

5.1

Introduction

Horror is a genre characterised by the very emotion it is meant to evoke. This chapter puts forward an argument for how this emotional experience of reading horror fiction is achieved, focusing particularly on the evocation of uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety or fear. The horror-reading experience is primarily defined by its texture, or the experienced quality of its lexico-grammatical features (see Stockwell 2009a; Gavins and Stockwell 2012). Texture is linked to the feelings of conceptual movement a reader experiences throughout a text, whether this movement is characterised by a change in narrative voice, a spatial, fictive movement throughout the story’s setting, or a temporal movement from present to past in the form of a flashback. According to Stockwell (2009a), these examples “are all to a greater or lesser extent physically-focused conceptualisations or conceptuallyfocused physical analogues, along a scale of sensation. What they all have in

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.05ste © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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common is the flow of experience across a transitional moment. The essence of texture, then, is in edges” (Stockwell 2009a: 107). In this chapter, I define conceptual movement as this “flow of experience” across edges. This analysis focuses particularly on how these various types of movement across edges are linked to the emotional texture of the horror-reading experience, and how this movement is most usefully explored through Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) and the attention and resonance model (Stockwell 2009a). In particular, I consider how negatively oriented lexis relates to the ambient experience of the worlds of horror fiction and how world-building can be used to manipulate readerly attention and emotions in the text-worlds of Stephen King’s IT (1986). In the first section, I give an overview of the cognitive poetic features which contribute to the world-building processes and textural experience of the fictional worlds of horror. I focus particularly on how negatively oriented lexis can be employed for ambient effect in this genre. Then I discuss the suitability of King’s IT for this analysis due to its varied use of conceptual movement, particularly worldswitches and modal-worlds. Finally, I present a precise analysis of how manipulation of world-switching is used to elicit fright in the reader. 5.2

Building and experiencing horrible worlds

Text World Theory is suitable for my specific exploration of emotion in horror fiction because of its holistic nature and its stress on the co-operation between writer and reader, text and context. Its ability to map the reader’s conceptual movement throughout the text-worlds allows me to account for the feeling of movement felt while reading, which arguably is key to the emotional experience of horror reading. Its dual focus on the text itself (i.e. text-drivenness) and the knowledge base of the reader, which includes emotional experiences, dreams, hopes, beliefs, knowledge, memories, imagination, and intentions of each reader, can account for how this experiential information is activated by the text and how emotional reactions are triggered during the discourse. Textural analysis can be put into practice with the attention and resonance model (Stockwell 2009a; see also Chapter 2 in this volume), which can also explain how readerly attention works to build and experience text-worlds. This model employs existing psychological notions of attention to account for the ways texts draw readers’ attention to certain textual features called attractors (Stockwell 2009a: 25) and how the feelings elicited from such attention remain with the reader; this residual “aura of significance” is resonance. The best horror fiction resonates with its readers (see Saricks 2009); that is, the emotions evoked from horror stay with readers in some way for hours, days, months, or years after the book is closed.



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

Stockwell suggests drawing on the cognitive-scientific concept of attention to account for literary resonance. Figure and ground (see Ungerer and Schmid 2006) are crucial to attention. The elements that are given attentional priority at any one moment are the figure, while the remainder of the “cluttered array” (Spelke 1990), or amalgamation of objects, is the ground. The objects that occupy the literary space are called attractors, or elements that draw the reader’s attention. As mentioned above, when the attractor is held in the viewer’s attention, it is a figure. When the attention changes to another attractor, then the past attractor becomes the ground and the new attractor is the figure. The three main types of attentional change are shifts (apparent motion for the viewer), zooms (change in size), or state changes (sudden appearance or newness) (Carstensen 2007: 8, described in Stockwell 2009a: 25). Drawing on these categories and other research on attention and narrative (see Emmott et al. 2006; Sanford et al. 2006), Stockwell (2009a: 25) compiles a list of common textual attractors: newness, agency, topicality, empathetic recognisability, definiteness, activeness, brightness, fullness, largeness, height, noisiness, and aesthetic distance from the norm. My analysis focuses in particular on aesthetic distance from the norm, or the focus on referents which are ugly, dissonant, or dangerous (Stockwell 2009a: 25), and I argue that negation can be considered a textual attractor as well, which will be discussed below. The process of world-building greatly affects the readerly emotional experience of a horror text-world. As Allan (2009: 627) claims, “Negative lexical items represent negative events”. Fictional worlds of horror are generally negative, especially in the evaluative sense, in that they commonly contain words with “bad” connotations (e.g. “murder”), as well as morphologically (e.g. “inhumane”) and often semantically negative structures (e.g. “death”); together, I label these evaluative and grammatical items as “negatively oriented lexis”. The text-worlds of horror are frequently coloured by this kind of lexis, which may evoke similarly negative emotional reactions (see Ogden and Richards 1923). This is not to say that all textworlds created by horror fiction are necessarily “horrible”, or always so throughout the entire text; rather, their main action is generally characterised by negativity, and therefore the text-worlds of these events created by readers often heavily rely on negatively oriented lexis for world-building and function-advancing. Various types of negatively oriented lexis act to create the ambience, or combined effects of atmosphere and tone (Stockwell 2014a, 2014b; see also Chapter 8 in this volume, for a discussion of ambience in “The Freeze-Dried Groom”), of horror text-worlds in particular. Atmosphere relates to the perceived quality of the text-world from the reader’s perspective, while tone relates to that of the authorial or narratorial voice (Stockwell 2014a: 361); together, atmosphere and tone’s effects represent the ambience of a text. While this ambience can be related to many factors and textual features, both

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atmosphere and tone have to do with lexical choice and register; atmosphere in particular has to do with semantic priming. When discussing lexico-grammar and ambience, it is important to distinguish between denotation, connotation, and association. A lexical item will have a literal, dictionary definition (denotation), but will also have a cultural or emotional meaning attached to it (connotation); even more idiosyncratic, the lexical item may also have connections that are more specific to the reader’s personal emotions, memories, experiences, and so on (association). Inherent negation (discussed in more detail below), negative connotations, and negative associations are layered into the horror text to activate negative emotions in the reader such as anxiety, fear, and disgust. From a cognitive perspective, negation also represents a figure/ground relationship (Givón 1979, 1993; Werth 1999: 250). It is a conceptual contrast between what is being negated (figure) and its positive counterpart (ground) which is necessarily evoked to then be denied (see Langacker 2008: 59; Lawler 2010). For example, the sentence “Don’t think of a killer clown” first makes you conceptualise a killer clown before you can negate this image. Negation is “literally false but psychologically true” (Horn 1989: 203), which suggests that having imagined the killer clown before negating it will leave a residual emotional effect, which Stockwell (2009a) calls a “felt absence”. Indeed, Nahajec (2012: 127) argues that the basic function of negation is the “linguistic realisation of an absence”, which can be achieved through various forms “that can function as the textual vehicle for the conceptual practice of realising an absence” (see also Jeffries 2010). Researchers have found that negated constructions attract more cognitive attention and are more difficult to process than their positive counterparts (Wason 1961; Trabasso et al. 1971; Clark 1976; Clark and Clark 1977; Carpenter et al. 1999). As horror depends on negatively oriented lexis to set the macabre ambience of the story, negation which also has negative semantic connotations is a useful tool to direct the reader’s attention to these textual elements. Returning to the above example “Don’t think of a killer clown”, negative semantic connotations are layered into the image through the word “killer” and potentially through negative associations with the word “clown”, depending on the reader’s feelings towards clowns; this combined sense of negativity attaches unpleasant feelings to this sentence. In Text World Theory terms, negation is processed as a negated text-world which is separate from the world in which the negation is communicated, as this phenomenon requires a proposition to be conceptualised first in order then to be denied (Gavins 2007: 102; Hidalgo Downing 2000). Negated text-worlds can change the parameters of the positive text-worlds from which they originate as a type of incrementation (Werth 1999: 253–254; Hidalgo-Downing 2000: 87; Gavins 2007: 102; Giovanelli 2013: 27). Hidalgo-Downing (2000: 147) argues that the notion of semantic prosody, or “a consistent aura of meaning with which a form is



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

imbued by its collocates” (Louw 1993: 157), can be applied to negated text-worlds in that their semantic influence “can go beyond the boundaries of a clause and stretch over a piece of discourse” (Hidalgo-Downing 2000: 198). Because negated information is incremented into the reader’s text-world, this idea of semantic prosody aligns with negation, creating a sense of “felt absence” which potentially permeates throughout a discourse. It also relates to Stockwell’s (2014a: 368–72, 2014b: 29–33) discussion of dominion and ambience, where the negative connotations of a lexical item and its collocates may remain with an aura of significance in the text, causing delicate emotional reactions in readers, such as a lingering sense of unease (e.g. associating death with the word “ghost”). The subtle effects of negation, especially inherent negation due to its prevalence, are meaningful in the horror discourse. Following Giovanelli (2013) and McLoughlin (2013), I agree that negation should also be considered a textual attractor. McLoughlin (2013: 222) argues that it is associated with the textual attractor newness “because it creates a mental switch from one text world where things exist to another text world where they do not”. While I agree that this is the case with grammatical negation, I feel that other notions also act as attractors on a more purely experiential level in terms of creating a feeling of absence. In Stockwell’s (2009a: 37) conception, this notion of creating a “felt absence” can extend from grammaticality to cover anything ontologically distant, for example, metaphor is a negation of the literal. I consider all forms of negation – syntactic, morphological, and inherent (see Givón 1992), as well as examples such as that of metaphor above – to be textual attractors. In terms of emotional experience, textual attractors direct the reader’s attention to certain elements which may trigger existing emotional schemata (see Lahey 2005: 277) surrounding those attractors, which in turn may evoke emotions while reading. In addition to being a typical textual attractor of horror fiction, I also argue that a great deal of the negatively connoted and associated lexis will fit under the category of aesthetic distance from the norm (Stockwell 2009a: 25), as much of it will refer to ugly or dangerous referents. This attractor also aligns with the concept of categorical mismatch. Also described as category jamming (Carroll 1990; see also Asma 2014), it occurs when the attractor/stimulus does not fit into existing schematic categories, or indeed violates existing categorical information by incongruity (e.g. werewolves cross the boundaries of species categories), and therefore triggers a fearful response. I argue, then, that instances of category jamming can also fit under the aesthetic distance from the norm attractor in that interstitial entities found in horror often are dissonant, as well as dangerous or ugly. Negative emotions narrow the scope of attention (Huntsinger 2013; Oatley and Johnson-Laird 2014). As negatively oriented lexis and instances of categorical mismatch can activate negative emotional schemata, they can act as typical textual

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attractors in horror fiction, thereby contributing to the emotional experience of horror. By directing attention to such negatively charged textual attractors, readerly emotion can in turn be manipulated, often in unpleasant ways. The following analysis of Stephen King’s IT considers how negatively oriented lexis and negation act as common horror textual attractors that direct the movement of readerly attention throughout the affective space of the horror text-worlds, and how such movement may evoke negative emotions such as fright. 5.3

Stephen King’s IT

Stephen King’s bestselling novel IT (1986) is a prime example of a narrative that induces fear in the reader, since it is about a creature that feeds on the fear of its victims (and sometimes literally on them), not to mention that the creature generally takes form as a murderous clown. IT tells the story of a shape-shifting monster that terrorises the small town of Derry, Maine in a cycle of approximately 27 years. The novel’s action centres on a group of seven childhood friends called “The Loser’s Club” at two time periods in their lives – 1958, as 11-year-old children, and 1985, as “grownups”. After defeating the creature that they call It in 1958, they make a blood promise to return to Derry if the monster ever returns again, which of course It does in 1984. The novel has many encounters with the creature, which mostly appears as Pennywise the Clown, but often takes the shape of anything that the children of Derry fear. While it qualifies as a horror novel (many instances of child murder are depicted, there is a supernatural villain, etc.), IT is also a story of friendship and the magic of childhood. 5.3.1

Category jamming in IT

IT meets the requirements of category jamming in horror. Thematically, the innocence of childhood that is established in the relationships of The Loser’s Club is violated by the creature, as It’s reign of terror forces the children to deal with adult issues and loss on a large scale. In terms of individual textual attractors, the monster is a prime example of categorical mismatch and aesthetic distance from the norm (see Carroll 1990: 34). As monsters in general violate categorical norms (e.g. something that is dead but also somehow alive, like zombies and vampires), by being able to take on the form of any creature, the eponymous antagonist of this novel therefore exponentially trangresses normality.



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

5.3.2 Conceptual movement in IT Part of the allure of IT is its texture, which is due in part to the rich interconnected text-worlds that the story presents and the multiple interwoven character perspectives that populate these text-worlds. The novel makes several switches back and forth between the Loser’s Club’s childhood summer of 1958 and their present day, using various textual deictic markers such as graphology to mark the temporal world-switches. Indeed, the story of each member of the Loser’s Club is told starting through the adult perspective in 1985, indicated by italics, and moves into the childhood perspective in 1958, marked by regular font. Often these switches occur mid-sentence, with each sentence broken across subsections. For example: And thinking these things, she took her washcloth and leaned over the basin to get some water and the voice [subsection] 2 came whispering out of the drain: “Help me …”

(King 1986: 393–394)

The novel is divided into five parts, with an interlude after each, and a final epilogue. Figure 5.1 illustrates the frequency of the childhood to adulthood temporal worldswitches, with roughly half occurring in 1958 and half in 1985. Figure 5.2 shows the multitude of character-perspective switches and highlights the dominance of main-character perspective while still showing the plethora of minor characters perspectives that are also introduced throughout the text. (n.b. some one-time minor character perspectives were not included due to the size of the diagram.) 1957

1984 Year 1985

1958 0

25

50 Number of prespective changes

Figure 5.1  Perspective changes by year

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Points of View

Patty Richie Tozier Eddie Kaspbrak, Myra Kaspbrak Tom Rogan, Beverley Rogan Audra Denbrough Ben Hansoom Henry Bowers Bill Denbrough Narrator

Character

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Eddie Corcoran Mike Hanlon Eddie Kaspbrak Beverley Rogan Stan Kay McCall Tom Rogan Mrs Kaspbrak IT Richie Tozier,Bill Denbrough Bill Denbrough, Eddie Kaspbrak Andrew Keene Mixed

0

10

20

30

40

Number of perspective changes

Figure 5.2  Perspective changes by character

As briefly outlined above and in Figures 5.1 and 5.2, there is a significant amount of perspectival movement between different temporal text-worlds and different character perspectives within those text-worlds. The transitions between these time periods and perspectives are realised graphologically through textual deixis (Stockwell 2002: 46) by way of headings such as Part 1, 2, etc., chapter titles, numbered subsections within the chapters, occasionally titled subsections within the chapters, and interludes. These graphological cues enable the reader to switch between the various text-worlds with minimal confusion, as there are many textworlds to monitor in this novel. It is important to mention that within each of these text-worlds, there is a plethora of world-switches and modal-worlds through flashback, negation, direct speech and thought, and so forth. For example, in Beverly’s 1985 text-world as she travels back to Derry as an adult, she has a flashback to the night before, when she left her husband. It is outside the scope of this chapter to consider all of these text-worlds, but I argue that they affect the reader’s experience nevertheless. The frequency of temporal and perspectival switching reflects the amount of conceptual movement that a reader must undertake to track the text-worlds of the novel. This feeling of constant movement may contribute to the reader’s sense of immersion with and involvement in the story, which arguably affects their emotional experience of the text as a whole.



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

While the entire novel exemplifies how conceptual movement can affect the readerly emotional experience overall, in the following section, I aim to present a more detailed analysis of the frequent world-switching in the first chapter specifically to illustrate what the text can do to the reader’s attention at a micro level. I will consider elements such as foregrounding and world-building manipulation in the first chapter, which focuses on the beginning of It’s killing cycle with the unfortunate death of six-year-old George Denbrough, the brother of one of the main protagonists, Bill Denbrough. I find this chapter to be especially scary because it is the first time that the creature is introduced, but this does not occur until nearly the end of the chapter; there is a great deal of attention manipulation and suspense-building, possibly causing fear or anxiety, leading up to the monster’s appearance, which arguably may trigger fright in the reader. 5.4

Manipulation in the text-worlds of horror

While there are several textual features which contribute to the textured conceptual movement within this first chapter, this section focuses particularly on the manipulation of attention through negation and other types of world-switching (for an extended account of conceptual movement in IT, see Stewart-Shaw 2017). The groundwork for this emotive manipulation is laid throughout the chapter by the use of foreshadowing, which establishes a macabre ambience and primes the reader for the horrific death of George at the end of this chapter. 5.4.1 Foreshadowing Foreshadowing can be subtle or overt. Subtle foreshadowing includes clues for later events in the form of adjectives or other description that can be re-evaluated by the reader after the event for which the reader was primed occurs. The effect of such foreshadowing is a delicate ambience that sets the scene for unpleasant events to come. In narratological terms, overt foreshadowing can be seen as a type of prolepsis in Genette’s (1972) terminology, where narration of an event occurs before it has happened chronologically. The amount of information given in each instance varies, but I claim that it is overt if the narration specifies that something is going to happen. Both subtle and overt foreshadowing are present in Chapter 1 of IT; they can divert the reader’s attention and contribute to the texture of the story, especially upon re-reading when the reader is more likely to spot the foreshadowing, now knowing the story specifics (see Chapter 8 this volume, on re-reading practices). Alternatively, the reader may recall the foreshadowing once the death happens, inviting world repair (see Gavins 2007: 141–145).

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Apart from the great amount of negatively oriented lexis, which can have a foreshadowing function through establishing a foreboding atmosphere, there is an equal amount of subtle and overt foreshadowing in the first chapter. Several instances of both combine to prime the reader for George’s death. The first subtle instance is the use of “floating” to describe George’s boat in the first line of the novel: “The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years – if it ever did end – began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain” (King 1986: 15). This instance of “floating” mirrors the exchange between George and the clown where they discuss whether balloons float. Before the clown kills George, he says, “…when you’re down here with me, you’ll float too” (1986: 26). Immediately following the murder, George is found floating next to the stormdrain. This example primes the ambience of the story through subtle lexical choices that become more salient as the action unfolds. The following extract includes the first instance of overt foreshadowing, quickly followed by the explicit information that George will die: Now, though, the river was receding, and when the new Bangor Hydro dam went in upstream, the river would cease to be a threat. Or so said Zack Denbrough, who worked for Bangor Hydroelectric. As for the rest – well, future floods could take care of themselves. The thing was to get through this one, to get the power back on, and then to forget it. In Derry such forgetting of tragedy and disaster was almost an art, as Bill Denbrough would come to discover in the course of time. George paused just beyond the sawhorses at the edge of a deep ravine that had been cut through the tar surface of Witcham Street. This ravine ran on an almost exact diagonal. It ended on the far side of the street, roughly forty feet farther down the hill from where he now stood, on the right. He laughed aloud – the sound of solitary, childish glee a bright runner in that gray afternoon – as a vagary of the flowing water took his paper boat into a scale-model rapids which had been formed by the break in the tar. The urgent water had cut a channel which ran along the diagonal, and so his boat traveled from one side of Witcham Street to the other, the current carrying it so fast that George had to sprint to keep up with it. Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling as George Denbrough ran toward his strange death. […] (King 1986: 16–17)

In the first paragraph, the sentence “In Derry such forgetting of tragedy and disaster was almost an art, as Bill Denbrough would come to discover in the course of time” gives some explicit character-building information about the novel’s main protagonist and George’s brother, Bill Denbrough, by overtly saying that he will discover the art of forgetting tragedy and disaster, suggesting that he will eventually be dealing with misfortune. This sentence directs the reader’s attention to Bill’s



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

future, a departure from the originating text-world conceptualised as a temporal world-switch triggered by ‘would come’, which, coupled with the omniscient narration, marks definiteness in the future. In the second paragraph, the sentence “Their buckles made a jolly jingling sound as George ran toward his strange death” explicitly indicates that George will die, which prepares the reader for the main horrific event in this chapter, and alerts the reader to the nature of the “tragedy and disaster” that Bill will encounter. Now that the reader is aware that George will die, previous examples of foreshadowing (e.g. negatively oriented lexis such as “deathgrip” [8], and phrases such as “Did you d-d-die?” [9] and “Mom’ll kill you” [12]) may be re-evaluated and future instances of foreshadowing may be combined with this knowledge. In the above passage, several instances of negatively oriented lexis, such as “receding”, “threat”, “tragedy and disaster”, “down”, “break”, “vagary”, “beneath”, and “strange death”, add to the dark ambience of the chapter generally, and specifically the subject of George’s death. There are also examples of lacunae, which Stockwell (2009b: 35) defines as “tangible gap[s]” or “a sense that there is not simply a space but something missing that was previously occupying the space” that further add to the sense of “felt absence” present in the passage: “deep ravine”, “cut a channel”, and “cut through”. Finally, certain lexical items (“tar”, “grey”, and “muddy”) call to mind literal darkness, which helps to set the dark mood of the story. The negativity of these lexical items is made stronger by their juxtaposition with positive, “good” lexical items such as “childish glee”, “a bright runner”, and “jolly jingling”, thereby creating a more obvious conceptual contrast. Most of this negatively oriented lexis acts as subtle foreshadowing of the unpleasant events to come. Foreshadowing, especially overt foreshadowing (e.g. running “toward his strange death”), can create a sense of dread in the reader because they know what is going to happen, if not how it happens specifically. I argue that emotion can be evoked three ways with foreshadowing. First, subtle foreshadowing such as negatively oriented lexis that is encountered prior to finding out directly that George will die helps to create an ominous ambience. As this is a horror story, readers will be somewhat primed to expect something bad to happen, but they may not know what that is, unless they are familiar with the book. This chapter is saturated with inherent negation, such as that illustrated in the extract above, which achieves this dark ambience. Second, once the narration indicates what will happen, a sense of dread or foreboding may be felt because readers know what will happen to George, who is only six years old. This anxiety may be achieved through the subtle use of negative lexical items, as described in the extract above, as well as overt foreshadowing, such as Bill reminiscing about the song his mother was playing “the day Georgie died” (22). Third, emotion may be created by the reader hypothesising how this death is going to come about. In Text World Theory terms,

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conceptualising a hypothesis in this way creates a text-world similar to a modalworld. Whiteley (2010) calls these types of hypotheses participation-worlds, or pworlds, based on Gerrig’s (1993) notion of participatory response. Although these mental conceptualisations are not part of the communicated text-worlds, they are triggered indirectly by linguistic cues from the text, coupled with the reader’s hopes and desires for the characters/story. The anticipation caused by forming p-worlds regarding the manner of George’s death could lead to emotions such as anxiety, fear, or suspense and could make the reader feel tense while reading through the chapter. Combined, subtle and overt foreshadowing can act as textual attractors that help to create a textured experience for the reader, which may result in the various emotional effects discussed above. The movement from subtle to overt foreshadowing elements can be understood in terms of edgework, or the awareness of shifting from one boundary to another (see Stockwell 2009a: 131), as overt edges represent an obvious departure from the originating text-world. While both types of foreshadowing act to prime the reader with suspense for the negative emotional experience of George’s death, the actual depiction of this murder is realised through various world-switches and modal-worlds, with more explicit edgework directing the reader away from the action of the originating text-world – a manipulation of attention which may result in shock or fright. 5.4.2 World-building manipulation This section aims to draw together the notions of conceptual movement through world-building and the use of negatively oriented lexis by applying these concepts to the passage that the rest of the chapter has been foreshadowing, where George meets Pennywise the Clown and his unfortunate demise. This is a key passage because it is the first time the reader meets the antagonist, which turns out to be a clown. I find the revelation of the clown to be particularly frightening or shocking. This passage is resonant for me because of my personal experiences with the horror genre, and this film and book in particular, especially in my formative years. While these extratextual experiences (e.g. childhood nightmares from watching the film at eight years old) from my knowledge base have undoubtedly caused part of my fearful reaction to this scene (even after reading it dozens of times), the textual features of this passage also contribute to that general sense of discomfort when I read it. This passage is taken from towards the end of Chapter 1, when George had lost his paper boat down the stormdrain and just dropped to his knees to look for it there.



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

Key – – – – –

inherent negation is emboldened morphological negation is emboldened and underlined syntactic negation emboldened and double-underlined negatively connoted lexis is emboldened and dashed-underlined negatively associated lexis is emboldened and wave-underlined He got up and walked over to the stormdrain. He dropped to his knees and peered in. The water made a dank hollow sound as it fell into the darkness. It was a spooky sound. It reminded him of – “Huh!” The sound was jerked out of him as if on a string, and he recoiled. There were yellow eyes in there: the sort of eyes he had always imagined but never actually seen down in the basement. It’s an animal, he thought incoherently, that’s all it is, some animal, maybe a housecat that got stuck down in there – Still, he was ready to run – would run in a second or two, when his mental switchboard had dealt with the shock those two shiny yellow eyes had given him. He felt the rough surface of the macadam under his fingers, and the thin sheet of cold water flowing around them. He saw himself getting up and backing away, and that was when a voice – a perfectly reasonable and rather pleasant voice – spoke to him from inside the stormdrain. “Hi, Georgie,” it said. George blinked and looked again. He could barely credit what he saw; it was like something from a made-up story, or a movie where you know the animals will talk and dance. If he had been ten years older, he would not have believed what he was seeing, but he was not sixteen. He was six. There was a clown in the stormdrain. The light in there was far from good, but it was good enough so that George Denbrough was sure of what he was seeing. It was a clown, like in the circus or on TV. […] The face of the clown in the stormdrain was white, there were funny tufts of red hair on either side of his bald head, and there was a big clown-smile painted over his mouth. If George had been inhabiting a later year, he would have surely thought of Ronald McDonald before Bozo or Clarabell. The clown held a bunch of balloons, all colors, like gorgeous ripe fruit in one hand. In the other he held George’s newspaper boat. (King 1986: 24–25)

As illustrated through the emboldened and underlined words, there is a significant amount of negative lexis and inherent negation present in this passage. Note, too, that it includes certain items which fit into Nahajec’s (2012: 129) typology of textual vehicles for pragmatically creating an absence: “far from good” creates an absence through a grammaticalised metaphor (see Yamanshi 2000); and the conditional constructions “If he had […] he would not have believed” and “If

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George had been inhabiting […] he would have surely” also create an absence because they represent events which will not occur, but have been conceptualised nevertheless. This use of negatively oriented lexis helps to set a macabre ambience to the story’s backdrop to prepare the reader for horrific events. In particular, the use of various types of negation creates feelings of “felt absence”. These textual attractors foreground negativity for the reader and build the atmosphere of this passage, which serves to create feelings such as fear, dread, and so on. These feelings will be heightened based on the associations each individual reader brings to the discourse. The prevalence of negatively associated words for me illustrates how many unpleasant connotations I have with this passage. Particularly, my phobia of clowns and my existing experience with the novel and film versions of IT cause me to attach strong negative somatic markers to clowns, sewers, and to a lesser extent balloons in certain contexts. These associations will vary from reader to reader, but coulrophobia (fear of clowns) is fairly common (see Burnett 2016) and, in the US and UK in 2016, a series of incidents where many individuals dressed as “killer clowns” with the intention of frightening people in the streets may have fed this phobia for some (see Addley 2016). Fuelled by social media, the “killer clown” craze started in the US and spread to the UK. Indeed, some of the perpetrators were reported as having weapons, which resulted in the police threatening fines for public order offences (see Addley 2016). Clowns may cause fear for many because of categorical mismatch. It is disturbing to perceive a human face that deviates from the norm – such as the clown’s pale white face (perhaps suggestive of a corpse) and exaggerated mouth and eyes. For me in particular, there is always a mixture of fear and anticipation because I know this is where George is going to meet the clown, which triggers my emotional memory of this scene from the film and from having read it many times, as well as stirring up the connotations and associations I have with many of the words which are emboldened and wave-underlined above. There are a number of images throughout this passage that begin to prepare the reader for the jolt of seeing the clown. For example, the reader is told of yellow eyes that George thinks belong to an animal and that a “perfectly reasonable” voice that knows George’s name speaks from the stormdrain. Even though the voice claims to be otherwise, we guess that whoever/whatever is in the drain is not reasonable, since it is not normal for a person to speak to small boys from the sewer. These “sneak peeks” of the clown divert the reader’s attention shortly, like little jerking movements or “misaligned edges”, which create a bumpy edgework experience. I claim that since the text includes tiny jerks to the attention, almost like cinematographic flashes of the monster through the trees in horror movies, this causes the reader to put more cognitive power into processing the text (see also Stockwell 2009a: 17). In turn, they are primed to concentrate greatly on the



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds 89

world-switches and modal-worlds, and especially negated text-worlds, that this passage has, which sets them up to be jolted when the monster appears. For a detailed depiction of the many world-switches and modal-worlds leading up to “There was a clown in the stormdrain”, see Figure 5.3 below. Figure  5.3 illustrates the multitude of text-worlds conceptualised in the passage. Each cluster of worlds represents a departure, that is, a new text-world created apart from the originating text-world, many with additional embedded worlds. The first two clusters (1–4 and 5–8) are similar in length of departure. These worlds being embedded three and four times, respectively, make the action seem less urgent. Simpson (2014) argues that narrative urgency generally requires fewer world-switches to sustain itself. However, this should be an urgent moment – or at least the reader may think so, as because of foreshadowing it is known that George will die at some point in this chapter – but it is slowed down. This decelerating of urgency occurs through the embedding of further worlds which focus on George’s thoughts and imaginings, which diverts the reader’s attention away from George’s impending death. This slowing down of the scene may create a false sense of security. Depending on the reader, they might fleetingly create a participation-world (see Whiteley 2010) based on their desire for George to not die at that moment with thoughts such as “Okay, it’s not going to happen yet. Maybe it is just a cat”. Leading up to the more urgent part of the text – where George is ready to run – the world-switches and modal-worlds become more fleeting, with the number of embedded worlds lessening accordingly. Interestingly, there is a focus in the originating text-world on the water. Before the first set of new text-worlds (10–12), George is listening to the water, which he thinks makes a spooky sound and reminds him of something which is cut off in the text, but the reader may infer that he is referring to the cellar, which we know scares him. Between clusters 10–12 (when George is ready to run, once he deals with the shock of seeing the eyes) and 13–14 (he sees himself getting up and backing away), George feels the rough surface of the pavement and the “thin sheet of cold water”. Here, there is greater density of world-building elements (the focus on sound and the haptic images of water and macadam), with less functionadvancing (the plot is not developing at this moment), which further slows down the action. This focus on world-building elements arguably grounds the discourse more in the present moment of the originating text-world. This grounding helps to create more of an obvious transition/edge between the embedded world departures and the originating text-world. Also, the focus on water may serve to further foreshadow George’s death; as he is pulled in by the clown “toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed” (26), he is seen by Dave Gardener with “muddy water surfing over his face and making his screams sound bubbly” (27), and finally his dead open eyes “began to fill up with rain” (27).

90 Lizzie Stewart-Shaw

Figure 5.3  Text-world conceptualisation in IT



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

At the most urgent part of the text, where George hears a voice speaking to him from the stormdrain, there is one quick Direct Speech world-switch (15–16), which is epistemically very close to the originating text-world, as the words spoken by the clown reflect its deictic centre anchored in the originating text-world (see Gavins 2007: 50). At this point, depending on readerly disposition and feelings of involvement, readers are likely to want George to leave the stormdrain, but they may also be curious about who/what this voice belongs to. “Alarm bells” may be sounding for the reader, and they are ready to see who is speaking to George. At this point, however, there is the longest stretch of embedded worlds (17–24), with two instances of negation and several of modality. This lengthy stretch may cause the reader to feel further away from the originating text-world due to the remoteness of the discourse being processed here; that is, these worlds are not actualised for the character George in the originating text-world. This conceptual distance is utilised as a distraction for the reader; while the reader is being immersed in a negated world (or any other type of world-switch or modal-world, as they can all have a distancing effect), a “shock” is being prepared simultaneously in the textworld. Therefore, when the reader’s attention is directed back to the originating text-world, something new has appeared and consequently may give the reader a fright. This new image – a clown in a stormdrain who speaks reasonably – meets several textual attractor requirements (Stockwell 2009a: 25), which makes it a very strong attractor. It is new (newness), it is described as bright and colourful (brightness), and it is dissonant (a clown in a sewer is obviously not normal) and dangerous (the reader knows It is dangerous) (aesthetic distance from the norm). In addition, the clown represents an instance of category jamming as discussed above. While the reader follows George’s thoughts, “what he saw” is relegated to the object position and is therefore backgrounded. The text manipulates figure and ground by switching them suddenly, causing the frightening moment. There are more examples of George going off into his thoughts and being brought back suddenly, but nothing as scary as this one moment. The sentence “There was a clown in the stormdrain” is set apart in the beginning of a new paragraph, a textually deictic feature (Stockwell 2002: 46) which breaks the flow, causing a minor pause in reading. It is a “jolt” to the reader – because it is a dissonant image – and it is preceded by a negation. The reader is made to visualise George ten years older at sixteen, not believing “what he was seeing”, before this conceptualisation is denied. This contributes to the perpetual state of emotional juxtaposition between positive and negative moments that is felt throughout the chapter – and indeed throughout the novel – but it is also a heart-warming tale of friendship and the magic of childhood. “He was six” is the trigger that brings the reader back from the negated worldswitch (24) to the originating text-world. “There was a clown in the stormdrain” is

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the next world-building element given in the discourse, and for me at least, it led to fright and general discomfort. In this instance, these two sentences are delivered with simple syntax and no modifiers, which adds to their jarring effect. This constitutes a change in texture because of the marked change in the lexico-grammatical features of the text-worlds. In particular, the texture of the originating text-world when George sees the clown differs from that of the embedded worlds (17–24) preceding it because the language in these sentences is not rich; there are no adjectives or adverbs; the preceding paragraph with the negation and modalisation is much more complex linguistically and cognitively. I argue, therefore, that modalworlds and world-switches which draw the reader’s attention away from the originating text-world can be used as distractions while a frightening image or scene is awaiting the reader on their return to the originating text-world. This focusing of reader concentration on tracking the various embedded modal-worlds and worldswitches helps to hold the reader’s attention in the foregrounded world, which is then quickly relegated to the background position when the reader is directed back to the originating text-world with the trigger “He was six”. To return to the above example of George seeing the clown for the first time, the now-foregrounded dissonant image (the clown) – accompanied by additional textual attractors which demand attention (e.g. brightness, newness, categorical mismatch) – quickly pops into the reader’s immediate attention, potentially causing a shock, depending on the reader’s depth of engagement with the text. Furthermore, because negation takes more cognitive effort to process (see 5.2), a negated world-switch acts as a doubly-useful tool for misdirecting the reader for emotive effect. 5.5

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explored how conceptual movement, in particular the directing of readerly attention through the creation of modal-worlds and worldswitches, is related to the emotional experience of the horror-reading experience in Stephen King’s IT. I argued that the overall conceptual movement in the novel, exemplified by consistent temporal and perspectival world-switches, contributed to the reader’s feelings of involvement in the story. In my stylistic analysis, I have showed how negatively oriented lexis, including various forms of negation, and subtle and overt foreshadowing techniques worked to create a sense of foreboding in the first chapter of the novel. In Section 5.4, I exemplified how world-building, in particular the creation of modal-worlds and world-switches, could be used to manipulate the attention of readers. Several embedded worlds distanced the reader from the originating text-world while a frightening scene was being prepared there. I argued that any series of embedded worlds which distance the reader



Chapter 5.  Experiencing horrible worlds

from the originating text-world could be used for misdirection, but I claimed that negation creates the most useful type of distracting text-world because it requires more cognitive effort on the part of the reader; this further distracts the reader’s attention, which can be used for aesthetic effect. By drawing upon Text World Theory and the attention and resonance model, this chapter has put forward an account of the emotions evoked in IT through a cognitive poetic lens, adding a necessary textually driven approach to King studies, which generally neglect the language of his work. It has focused upon Text World Theory’s usefulness in describing the manipulation of attention through the creation of new text-worlds and how this contributes to the experience of reading horror fiction. Indeed, this text-world approach has useful applications for the horror genre in general and could be used to explain the triggers for other horrorbased emotions, such as suspense or disgust.

References Addley, E. 2016. ‘“Killer clown” sightings in UK trigger police warning. The Guardian [online]. . (7 April 2017). Allan, K. 2009. The connotations of colour terms: Colour-based x-phemisms. Jourmal of Pragmatics 41(3): 626–637.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.06.004 Asma, S. T. 2014. Monsters on the brain: An evolutionary epistemology of horror. Social Research 81(4): 941–998. Burnett, D. 2016. Coulrophobia: why clowns trigger our fear reflexes. The Guardian [online]. . (7 April 2017). Carstensen, K. -U. 2007. Spatio-temporal ontologies and attention. Spatial Cognition and Computation 7(1): 13–32.  ​https://doi.org/10.1080/13875860701337850 Carpenter, P. A., Just, M. A., Keller, T. A., Eddy, W. F. and Thulbom, K. R. 1999. Time course of fMRI activation in language and spatial networks during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage 10: 216–224.  ​https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1999.0465 Carroll, N. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror, Or Paradoxes of the Heart, Philosophy and Literature. New York: Routledge. Clark, H. H. 1976. Semantics and comprehension. The Hague: Mouton. Clark, H. H. and Clark, E. V. 1977. Psychology and Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Emmott, C., Sanford, A. J., and Morrow, L. I. 2006. Capturing the attention of readers? Stylistic and psychological perspectives on the use and effect of text fragmentation in narratives. Journal of Literary Semantics 35(1): 1–30.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/JLS.2006.001 Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gavins, J. and Stockwell, P. 2012. About the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often. Language and Literature 21(1): 33–50.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947011432052

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94 Lizzie Stewart-Shaw Genette, G. 1972 [1980]. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Gerrig, R. J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Giovanelli, M. 2013. Text World Theory and Keats’ Poetry. London: Continuum. Giovanelli, M. 2016. Construing the child reader: A cognitive stylistic account of the opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Children’s Literature in Education: 1–16. Givón, T. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press. Givón, T. 1992. The grammar of referential coherence as mental processing instructions. Linguistics 30: 5–55.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1992.30.1.5 Givón, T. 1993. English Grammar: A Function-Based Introduction, Volumes I, II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hidalgo-Downing, L. 2000. Negation, Text Worlds and Discourse: The Pragmatics of Fiction. Stamford, CT: Ablex. Horn, L. 1989. A Natural History of Negation. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Huntsinger, J. R. 2013. Does emotion directly tune the scope of attention? Current Directions in Psychological Science 22(4): 265–270.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413480364 Jeffries, L. 2010. Opposition In Discourse: The Construction of Oppositional Meaning. London: Continuum. King, S. 1986. IT. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Lahey E. 2005. Text-World Landscapes and English Canadian National Identity in the Poetry of Al Purdy, Milton Acorn and Alden Nowlan. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Langacker, R. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001 Lawler, J. 2010. Negation and negative polarity. In The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the Language Sciences, P. C. Hogan (ed.), 554–555. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louw, W. E. 1993. Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Text and Technology, M. Baker, G. Francis and E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds), 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/z.64.11lou McLoughlin, N. 2013. Negative polarity in Eavan Boland’s ‘The Famine Road’. New Writing 10(2): 219–227.  ​https://doi.org/10.1080/14790726.2013.777460 Nahajec, L. 2012. Evoking the Possibility of Presence. PhD thesis, University of Huddersfield. Oatley, K. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. 2014. Cognitive approaches to emotions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 18(3): 134–140.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.12.004 Ogden, C. and Richards, I. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sanford, A. J., Sanford, A. J. S., Molle, J., and Emmott, C. 2006. Shallow processing and attention capture in written and spoken discourse. Discourse Processes 42(2): 109–130. ​ https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp4202_2

Saricks, J. G. 2009. The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction. 2nd edn. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. Simpson, P. 2014. Just what is narrative urgency? Language and Literature 23(1): 3–22. ​ https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947013510650

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Stewart-Shaw, L. 2017. A Cognitive Poetics of Horror Fiction. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Stockwell, P. 2002. Cognitive Poetics: An Introduction. London: Routledge.



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Stockwell, P. 2009a. Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stockwell, P. 2009b. The cognitive poetics of literary resonance. Language and Cognition 1(1): 25–44.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/LANGCOG.2009.002 Stockwell, P. 2014a. Atmosphere and Tone. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley (eds), 360–375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stockwell, P. 2014b. War, Worlds and Cognitive Grammar. In Cognitive Grammar in Literature, C. Harrison, L. Nuttall, P. Stockwell and W. Yuan (eds), 19–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Trabasso, T., Rollins, H. and Shaughnessy, E. 1971. Storage and verification stages in processing concepts. Cognitive Psychology 2: 239–289.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(71)90014-4 Ungerer, F. and Schmid, H. J. 2003. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (2nd edn). London: Longman. Wason, P. C. 1961. Response to affirmative and negative binary statements. British Journal of Psychology 52: 133–142.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1961.tb00775.x Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Whiteley S. 2010. Text World Theory and the Emotional Experience of Literary Discourse. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. Yamanashi, M. 2000. Negative inference, space construal and grammaticalization. In Negation and Polarity: Syntactic and Semantic Perspectives, L. Horn and Y. Kato (eds), 243–254. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Chapter 6

Framing the narrative The “fictive publisher” as a bridge builder between intra- and extratextual world Natalia Igl

Drawing on cognitive linguistic and narratological conceptualisations of “frames” and “framing” (notably Quendler 2008, 2010) and taking up Grishakova’s (2009: 188) notion of frames as “a link between the ‘real-life’ and ‘fictional’ experience”, this chapter aims to elucidate the phenomenon of paratextual framing and in particular the “fictive publisher” frame as a transitional device that can blend fictional storyworlds and extratextual “reality” and thus act as a bridge between the text and the reader. In the context of fantastic literature, this potential of blending can be seen working at its best. By means of an analysis of the multilayered “fictive publisher” frame in the definitive edition of Adelbert von Chamisso’s fantastic Romantic novella The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl, the chapter examines the inherent ontological and perspectival ambivalence and shifting capacity of the “fictive publisher” frame. In the course of this, it sheds light on the dynamics of distance and proximity created by the paratextual frame and – in the case of the specific arrangement in Chamisso’s definitive edition – the utilisation of framing strategies and familiarity to appeal to re-readers. Keywords: paratext, blending, fictionality, reader engagement, Romanticism, fantastic literature

6.1

Commencing at the frame

In her study on narrative representations of “impossible” topologies, Gomel (2014: 5) points out that “[o]ur ‘operational spaces’ are as much a product of the stories we tell ourselves about the world we live in as they are of our sensory

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.06igl © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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capacities; or rather, the two are closely intertwined”.1 Correspondingly, Nielsen et  al. (2015: 64) state in their “Ten Theses about Fictionality”, that fictive and non-fictive discourse, though being clearly distinguishable discourse modes, are “closely interrelated in continuous exchange, and so are the ways in which we engage with them”. In narrative, this intertwining of the realm of “stories” and the “actual” experiential world surrounding us and the interplay of fictive and nonfictive discourse in many cases happens “at the frame” (cf. Wirth 2009: 167). Forms of embedded or framed narration are highly frequent in novels and novellas of the 18th and 19th century, and paratextual framings, for example, in the form of a preface or editor’s note (see also Genette 1987), are well established at that point in media history. With Quendler (2010: 19), those framings can be seen as “critical in activating the novelistic frame”, that is, the reader’s knowledge and expectations with regard to dealings with literary fiction. As Quendler states: The novelistic frame characterizes a modification of the participants’ roles and the transformation of its frames of reference. Fictional discourse radically undermines the identity between the speaker and the subject of speech, and between the hearer and the subject of address. (Quendler 2010: 19)

In a preface or editor’s note as the default case of paratextual framing, the persona of the editor or author instructs the readers in a more or less explicit way on how to engage with the text and subsequently emerging storyworld. Regarding the dynamic processing of a narrative on the part of the reader whereby narrative meaning emerges as a “cognitive construct, or mental image, built by the interpreter in response to the text” (Ryan 2004: 8), I use the terms “text-world” (cf. Gavins 2007) or “storyworld” when referring to narrative texts. I do so to emphasise the “interplay of literary and cognitive phenomena” that brings forth “the robust and multidimensional mental models we create when confronted with narrative” (Utell 2016: 61; on mental models see also the pivotal research by Johnson-Laird 1980, 1983). We can observe this for example in the preface to the first volume of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (1818): The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of Germany, as not of impossible occurrence. I shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors.  (Shelley 2008: 3)

1.  I want to thank Elana Gomel for her inspiring comment on my conference paper where I first presented my thoughts on the “fictive publisher” as a bridge builder.



Chapter 6.  Framing the narrative 99

By labelling the presented narrative with terms like “fiction”, “work of fancy” and “imagination”, the author’s preface foregrounds the text’s fictionality and the seemingly clear-cut dividing line between literary works of art and scientific works of fact – the latter represented by the mentioning of “Dr Darwin”, that is, the “outstanding popular writer on science” (Butler 2008: 252) Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) and other “physiological writers”. At the same time, though, the author underlines the scientific plausibility of the fictional events, accredited by no less a figure than the respected Dr Darwin himself, and hence points out the similarity rather than the difference of the extratextual and the intratextual world. Thus, the author’s preface seems to instruct the readers in a somewhat ambivalent way. This ambivalence constitutes a core feature of the paratext: As Wirth (2009: 167) states in his study on the paratext as a “transitional zone”, the reflexion about the dividing line between “text” and “non-text” – that is, about the respective nature of the “actual world” outside the text (cf. Ryan 1991) and the fictional worlds (re)presented in the text – happens mostly at the text’s margin, that is the (para) textual frame. Drawing on Wirth’s conceptualisations, this type of paratext can be understood as a textual (and genre-specific) manifestation of the ongoing negotiation between “fictional” and “factual” spaces of reference. By providing the textual gateway for the reader’s first encounter with the text at hand, it can foreground this process of comparing and mapping the realms and thus set a self-reflexive tone for the narrative as a whole. As the discussion in Sections  6.1.1 and 6.1.2 shows, Wirth’s notion is compatible with cognitive linguistic and narratological conceptualisations and provides a good starting point to model the relation between (para)textual framing phenomena and the activation of cognitive frames on the side of the reader. Taking up Grishakova’s (2009: 188) notion of frames as “a link between the ‘real-life’ and ‘fictional’ experience”, this chapter accordingly aims to elucidate the phenomenon of paratextual framing and in particular the “fictive publisher” frame as a transitional device that can blend fictional storyworlds and extratextual “reality” and thus act as a bridge between the text and the reader. In Section  6.2, I will examine the strategic construction of a paratextual “gateway” or “bridge” between the extratextual “factual” space of reference and the intratextual “fictional” space of reference by means of an analysis of the framing strategies in the definitive edition (1836) of Adelbert von Chamisso’s novella Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, which significantly extended the paratextual framing with regard to the first edition from 1814. In the following, the text is cited in the English translation The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl by William Howitt from 1843. Drawing on core concepts of cognitive and textual framing (as discussed in Section  6.1), this case study thus aims to make a contribution to answering the question how a text may engage the reader in the emerging

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storyworld and how it does so especially in cases where the storyworld is marked not only as “fictional”, but also as “fantastic”. Since “fantastic” texts characteristically foreground the divergence between the intra- and extratextual world (see Section 6.1.1), this genre is particularly well suited to analyse the means to bridge the distance between text and reader. As the case study of Chamisso’s strategies of cognitive and textual framing will show, the paratext’s potential to create a dynamic of distance and proximity in terms of the reader’s perceived (alterable) positioning towards the storyworld proves to be crucial here. By comparing the extended paratextual arrangement in Chamisso’s definitive edition with the novella’s first edition, the analysis also aims to shed light on the strategic play on familiarity in order to particularly appeal to readers who are already acquainted with Schlemihl’s story. 6.1.1

Cognitive frames and textual framings

In cognitive semantics, the notion of “frame” is inextricably linked with Charles J. Fillmore (see inter alia Fillmore 1982, 1985), who adopted the term prominently introduced by Minsky (1975) in research on artificial intelligence. As Gawron (2011) points out in his overview on Frame Semantics, Fillmore takes up Minsky’s notion of frames regarding them as “conceptual structures that provide context for elements of interpretation” (Gawron 2011: 667). Although Gawron’s outline focuses on lexical semantics, it also refers to the relevance of (Fillmorean) frames regarding discourse and text understanding (Gawron 2011: 666). This is where Quendler’s (2008, 2010) approach to (para)textual framings comes into play. Drawing on the seminal transdisciplinary works on schemata, scripts and frames as key concepts to explain the structure and functionality of (procedural) knowledge and discourse comprehension (notably Goffman 1974; Minsky 1975; Schank and Abelson 1977; de Beaugrande 1980), Quendler describes frames as cognitive tools by which we navigate through our symbolic universe. They organize familiar patterns of knowledge to establish correspondences or ‘mappings’ that guide comprehension, ranging from basic construction of meaning to the creation of complexly shaped (psychological) realities. A frame implies a certain perspective that shapes the focus of our attention. Thus, like the frame of a painting, conceptual frames influence what we perceive and how we perceive things. (Quendler 2010: 9)

Thus, frames both confine certain structures of knowledge and define a particular view on such structures. The difficulty to theorise the at once stable and dynamic nature of frames has accompanied the discussion about these “cognitive tools” or “data-structures” (see Minsky 1975) from the very beginning. Kintsch (1988: 164),



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for instance, confronts the dominant claim of top-down effects regarding knowledge use in discourse comprehension in the context of his construction-integration model. In her seminal study on narrative comprehension, Emmott (1999) takes into account the dynamic interplay of top-down and bottom-up processes. She accordingly uses the term “(contextual) frame” “to describe a mental store of information about the current context, built up from the text itself and from inferences made from the text” (Emmott 1999: 121) and emphasises the reader’s necessary ability to modify and switch those frames during the reading process due to changing contextual configurations in the course of a narrative (Emmott 1999: 133–174). When it comes to textual framings, this dynamic interplay between text and reader is crucial, as the analysis in Section  6.2 will show  – and it is interlinked with the bidirectionality of frames or framings: as Grishakova (2009: 189) emphasises, from a cognitive semantics perspective, “the concept of ‘frame’ covers the domain of schematic, common sense knowledge that overlaps with both fictional and nonfictional […] types of discourse”. Frames thus “provide a link between the ‘real-life’ and ‘fictional’ experience” (Grishakova 2009: 188). With regard to story- or text-worlds, the cognitive-linguistic notion of frame refers to “referential structures that guide and accommodate the mental spaces that make up a text world” (Quendler 2010: 12). Following this conceptualisation, the nexus of frames as cognitive tools that provide background knowledge (see Quendler 2010: 12) and textual or literary framings becomes clearer: Textual framings in the narrow sense of paratextual framings can be conceived as “verbal texts that are set apart from the main text by devices of layout or typography and distinct from other non-verbal aspects of a book that encircle the main text” (Quendler 2010: 21, n. 39; cf. Wolf 1998: 414, see also Wolf 1999, 2006 for a typological approach). By virtue of their prefixed position, such framings transport a specific perspective on the framed text as a whole and thus prime the reader’s expectation and evaluative stance toward the emerging storyworld. As Young (2004: 77) points out (drawing on the socio-linguistic method of Frame Analysis established by Goffman 1974), frames/framings are “metacommunications” that “separate as well as connect realms” (Young 2004: 105). Quendler (2010) underlines this bidirectional character of cognitive as well as textual framings (cf. also Young 2004: 79) with regard to the reader’s extratextual space of reference and the intratextual storyworld: “Since framings are, after all, mediating devices of transitions [i.e., of the reader’s engagement with a (part of a) text], they frequently relate to both dimensions of literary communication” (Quendler 2010: 8). The intertwining of the communicative scenario evoked in the text and the communicative scenario constituted via the reading process is a phenomenon that is not uncommonly one of the core subjects in paratextual framings like prefaces

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and notes by the author or editor. This is the case, for example, in a new edition of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel Neverwhere (2005, first published in 1996 alongside the making of the BBC TV series of the same name), where the author addresses his readers in an “Introduction to This Text” (the demonstrative pronoun indicates the existence of alternative versions and stresses the specificity of the text at hand): What I wanted to do was to write a book that would do for adults what the books I had loved when younger, books like Alice in Wonderland, or the Narnia books, or the Wizard of Oz, did for me as a kid. And I wanted to talk about the people who fall through the cracks: to talk about the dispossessed, using the mirror of fantasy, which can sometimes show us things we have seen so many times that we never (Gaiman 2005: n.p.) see them at all, for the first time.

Gaiman’s introduction states the author’s defined goal to create a text that offers an immersive reading experience and manages to take the readers into the storyworld – just as he himself as a reader at an early age had experienced it. The introduction thus frames the narrative mainly in two ways: (1) By locating Neverwhere in a line of tradition (“books like Alice in Wonderland, or the Narnia books, or the Wizard of Oz”), it presents the narrative as an “approved” means of transportation into fictional storyworlds (cf. Green and Carpenter 2011); and (2) by addressing the revealing “mirror of fantasy”, it sets the tone of the subsequent narrative as a means of human self-reflection and epistemic device that can produce new insight into the nature of the “actual” world via fantastic fiction. It is constitutive for fantastic fiction, though, to violate the principle of minimal departure as introduced by Ryan (1991: 48–60) which states that “we reconstrue the central world of a textual universe in the same way we reconstrue the alternative possible worlds of nonfactual statements” (Ryan 1991: 51). As Seibel (2014: 229) outlines in her study on generic world construction in fantastic texts, the violation of this principle in fantastic literature “might go so far that [it] is completely frustrated or subverted”. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), which Neil Gaiman mentions as a “classical” representative of fantastic storyworlds (see extract above, Gaiman 2005: n.p.), is quoted by Ryan (1991: 58) as an example of the “principle of maximal departure”, confronting the reader with “the futility of real-world knowledge”. Seibel (2014: 229–230.) points out, though, that even in a case of “maximal departure” “where the actual-world encyclopedia can hardly be applied, there are still elements that can be referenced to real-world knowledge”. This is of course an accurate objection, but it rather shows that there is no absolute scale to ascribe a text’s “minimal versus maximal” departure from real-world knowledge and rules. The clue, however, seems to be that fantastic narratives can create a tension between storyworlds that highly diverge from our “real-world assumptions” and framings of these storyworlds that draw the two

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seemingly separate realms closer together. Stockwell (2014: 155) points out this constitutive “cognitive balancing act between newness and familiarity” for the genre of science fiction, which is closely interrelated with fantastic literature. This is where the potential of paratextual framing comes into play. 6.1.2 The “fictive publisher” frame The “fictive publisher” frame that this chapter focuses on is a specific type of paratextual framing increasingly frequent since the Romantic period (cf. Wirth 2008, 2009). With regard to the above-mentioned tension characteristic for fantastic literature – which as a genre aims at both deviating from the realm of the familiar as well as being highly immersive – the “fictive publisher” frame shows a particular potential to create the necessary distance from reality and at the same time provide a bridge for the readers to overcome it (on the notion of distance and its relevance from a cognitive poetic point of view see also Dancygier and Vandelanotte 2009). This frame or (group) persona of the “fictive publisher” is both an enunciating and mediating instance in the paratextual frame of a narrative as well as a framing device and “text impulse” (Fricke and Müller 2010: 2) that activates the reader’s common knowledge about fictionality, aspects of genre, etc. By adding a fictionalised scenario of a text’s origin, this frame may enhance the fictionality of a narration; the scenario of the “found manuscript” can, however, also foreground the authenticity of the narrated events. Taken as a whole, the “fictive publisher” frame holds an inherent ambivalence with regard to the boundaries between “fictionality” and “factuality” and has the capacity to dynamically shift the focus between the respective realms, as illustrated in Figure 6.1. ‘framing device’ activating frames of ‘fiction’, ‘genre’, etc. (cf. the ‘novelistic frame’, Quendler 2010: 19)

enunciating and mediating instance situated in a (para)textual framing (cf. Wirth 2008, 2009)

equal potential of blurring or affirming the boundaries between (intratexual) ‘fictionality’ and (extratextual) ‘factuality’

persona / frame of the fictive publisher

equal potential of foregrounding ‘fictionality’ or ‘fatuality’ / ‘authenticity’ of the events that constitute the storyworld

Figure 6.1  The inherent ambivalence and shifting capacity of the “fictive publisher” frame

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As the following analysis of Adelbert von Chamisso’s The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl will show, the blurring of the line between the world inside and outside the text can be the pivotal effect of the “fictive publisher” frame. The dynamics of this negotiation of boundaries are crucially spurred by a further phenomenon characteristic of the “fictive publisher” scenario. Although the discourse-world is usually split in case of written narration, “with the participants occupying separate spatial and temporal locations” (Gavins 2007: 26, see also Igl 2016b), the paratextual frame in general and the “fictive publisher” frame in particular can evoke a “realm of conversation” in the sense of “the occasion of recounting a story” (Young 2004). This is seemingly unencumbered by the distance between “speaker” and “hearer” (cf. Zeman 2016; see also Tobin 2014 on the notion of readers as “over-hearers”) that is inherent to written narrative discourse. As Pascual and Sandler (2016: 4) argue, based on its foundational status in human communication, conversation “serves as a domain of experience that shapes the way we conceptualize our physical and social world, our thought processes, and as a result also the structure of both discourse and grammar”. Thus, by drawing on the “conversation frame” (see also Pascual 2014), the “fictive publisher” frame allows the reader to utilise the proximity that comes with the quasi “oral” scenario of telling the story how Schlemihl’s story came to light – and the familiarity of this communicative scenario that facilitates the reader’s entry into the narrated world despite its fantastic nature. 6.2 Chamisso’s Peter Schlemihl and the dynamics between “storyworld”, “fictive publisher” frame and extratextual reference space In accordance with its programmatic aim to intertwine life, art, and science as related epistemic realms and to negate or at least blur the boundaries between the established reality and the realm of the “fantastic”, German Romanticism favours the frequent use of paratextual framings (cf. Wirth 2008, 2009). This is evident in Ludwig Tieck’s Phantasus-collection (1812/16) (for an analysis see Igl 2016a) or E.T.A. Hoffmann’s multiply-framed and interlaced novel Lebensansichten des Kater Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern (1819–1821) which well-nigh overuses different framing strategies for the purpose of an ironic metareflection on Romantic aesthetics. As Orosz (1999) demonstrates from a semiotics perspective in her case study of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s works, the concept of “ambivalence” correspondingly is of great significance regarding Romantic poetics  – and for this, the inherent ambivalence and dynamic shifting potential of the “fictive publisher” frame is very useful.



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My following analysis of the framing strategies in Adelbert von Chamisso’s novella Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte (first edition 1814) takes as a basis the English translation The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl (1843) by William Howitt (hereafter referred to as WHPS), collating it with the 1975 German edition of Chamisso’s works that draws on the author’s definitive edition (1836) and manuscripts. As the comparison of the 1843 English version and the 1975 German edition shows, Howitt’s translation is convincingly true to the original. The rather odd translation of the title’s original adjective wundersam as “wonderful” instead of the more appropriate “wondrous” can be read as a curtsy that corresponds to the praise of Chamisso’s mastery of storytelling in the translator’s preface (WHPS: vii– viii). Intended or not, it can also be read as an allusion to the Middle English word meaning “extraordinary” or “miraculous”, which would comply with the German Romanticists’ affinity for medieval settings. Thus, the title would provide a textual cue that can activate a specific frame in terms of relevant knowledge of literary tradition on the part of the reader. All in all, Howitt’s close translation of Chamisso’s text is of importance particularly with regard to the analysis of the “lyrical dedication” in Section  6.2.2, since for its validity the deictic structures of both versions have to be reasonably comparable, which they are. My analysis focuses on what can be described as the three layers of paratextual framing that constitute the “fictive publisher” frame. Compared to the definitive edition, in the first edition from 1814, the “fictive publisher” frame is actually extended to the outermost paratextual layer (i.e., the front matter) by displaying Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué (contemporary Romantic author and friend of Chamisso’s) as editor as well as adding the declaration mitgeteilt von Adelbert von Chamisso (i.e., “handed down” or “disclosed by Adelbert von Chamisso”) to the title. In contrast, the definitive edition from 1836 as well as Howitt’s translation from 1843 seemingly mitigate the “fictive publisher” frame by disclosing Chamisso as the novella’s actual author. At the same time, though, the addition of a specific paratextual layer in the definitive edition  – a poem addressed at Schlemihl and signed by Chamisso – reinforces the mediating instead of authorial position of the latter and crucially draws on the potential of paratexts to provide a dynamic link between the intratextual world of the narrated events and the extratextual reference space of the reader. 6.2.1 Creating the distance between intra- and extratextual world(s) Chamisso’s novella presents the story of Peter Schlemihl, drawing on the contemporarily popular genre of the Bildungsroman, that is, the “apprentice” or “comingof-age novel” (cf. Böhm and Dennerlein 2016). In opposition to the genre-specific novelistic frame (cf. Quendler 2010) of the Bildungsroman, though, the novella

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abandons the 18th-century paradigm of literary realism constitutive for the genre. Instead of assigning itself to a clear-cut genre, it performs a genre blend: the storyworld presented by the first-person narrator Schlemihl contains incidents – like the loss of one’s own shadow or the gain of magical items like seven-league boots – that are clearly fantastical, drawing on the “fairy tale” genre frame popular in (German) Romanticism. As outlined in Section  6.1, paratextual framing in general and the “fictive publisher” frame in particular can be seen as means to engage the reader with a storyworld that from a “possible worlds” point of view shows a low degree of “accessibility” (cf. Ryan 1991: 31–47; Stockwell 2014: 140). The bidirectional character of framings and the specific ontological ambivalence of the “fictive publisher” frame (as illustrated in Figure 6.1), though, entails not only the potential to connect but also to divide the intratextual and extratextual reference spaces. With respect to the material side of the text, the three layers of framing that constitute the “fictive publisher” frame in the definitive edition of Chamisso’s novella increase the distance between the storyworld and the extratextual reference space of the reader. Figure 6.2 illustrates this distance which the reader has to overcome to finally “arrive” at the actual realm of the narrated story. The “weightiness” of these three layers is furthermore emphasised by the ratio of paratext and actual story in terms of their respective number of pages: while the story told by the first-person narrator Schlemihl spans 30 pages in the English edition from 1843, the preceding paratexts take up no less than 4 pages.

1st layer of framing (dated August 1834)

2nd layer of framing (dated Sept. 1813 resp. May 1814)

added in definitive ed.

3rd layer of framing (dated January 1827

Actual storyworld (dated “many years” [WHPS, xi] back from 1813)

added in 2nd ed.

Figure 6.2  The three (main) layers of framing in Chamisso’s novella (definitive ed.)

The first layer of the “fictive publisher” frame is a “lyrical dedication” from Chamisso: “An meinen alten Freund Peter Schlemihl” (“To my old friend Peter Schlemihl”), dated August 1834. As noted above, this preface was added later on and is part of the definitive edition of Chamisso’s work. The actual author Chamisso acts here as an enunciating instance, addressing his valued friend Schlemihl and thus positioning himself on eye-level with the main character of the subsequently emerging storyworld (see in detail the analysis in Section 6.2.2).



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The second paratextual layer (the sole layer of the “fictive publisher” frame in the first edition) consists of a letter from (the intratextual) Chamisso to Julius Eduard Hitzig. In extratextual reality, Hitzig is a well-known publisher and bookseller as well as a close friend of (the extratextual author) Chamisso. In the fictional letter presented as paratext of the Schlemihl-novella, Chamisso reminds Hitzig of their mutual acquaintance Peter Schlemihl, whose story – by means of a “phamphlet [sic]” (WHPS: xi) – has unexpectedly fallen into his hands. Chamisso urges Hitzig, his “nearest, most intimate friend” (WHPS: xi) to keep Schlemihl’s story secret. Nonetheless and in a playful call on Romantic irony (cf. Igl 2016b: 100), he not only provides the publisher with a ready manuscript but also a drawing, perfect for illustrating a book. There is no response here from Hitzig, but a second letter addressed to him, this time by Fouqué who, as above mentioned, is indicated as editor in the first edition of the novella and is also a fellow Romanticist and actual friend of (the extratextual) Chamisso. In his letter in the “fictive publisher” frame, (the intratextual) Fouqué pleads with Hitzig to preserve Schlemihl’s story. And this Hitzig does, as the concluding third layer of the “fictive publisher” frame shows. This concluding layer of framing consists of a letter from Hitzig to Fouqué, dated January 1827 (added in the second edition), where Hitzig sums up – in a somewhat disgruntled tone – the immense international success of the publication of Schlemihl’s story: “Here then have we the consequences of thy desperate resolve to print the Schlemihl history, which we were to preserve solely as a secret intrusted to us […].” (WHPS: xii). It is only after this lengthy intro that the actual realm of Schlemihl’s wondrous story is opened. The distance between reader and story that materialises on the textual level, and is correspondingly evoked via the presented (a-chronological) timeline (see Figure  6.2), emphasises the act of distancing that is already performed via the “found manuscript” scenario. As outlined in Section 6.1.2, though, the “fictive publisher” frame not only functions as a means to create a distance between the intra- and extratextual spaces of reference. Due to its ambivalent nature it can also work as a textual and cognitive tool to evoke an impression of proximity between the reader’s extratextual reality and the fictional storyworld. 6.2.2 Building the bridge and a stepping stone to re-engage the reader In the case of Chamisso’s novella, the “mapping between the ‘real’, experiential world and the fictional world” (Ljungberg 2012: 162) that fiction always involves and that we automatically do as readers is heavily encouraged, for example by means of deictic projection in the outermost paratextual layer, that is, the lyrical dedication from Chamisso “To my old friend Peter Schlemihl”. With regard to the reader’s process of dealing with the gap between the intratextual and extratextual world, the framing

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poem in the definitive edition turns out to be a potent device to bridge this gap. This is achieved by means of text impulses (cf. Fricke and Müller 2010: 2) that induce the reader to map different deictic centres onto each other and thus produce a blend (cf. Fauconnier and Turner 2002; Turner 1996, 2015) between different spaces of reference, as the following analysis of the poem will show (see also Figure 6.3). This analysis must also factor in the significant re-framing of the Schlemihlnovella in the definitive edition: The added poem in the definitive edition not only functions as part of the “fictive publisher” bridging device, but also as an instrument to cater to the returning reader who is already familiar with the story. The five stanzas of the lyrical dedication do not first and foremost provide the reader with new knowledge as the translated version in the extract below shows. Instead, they draw on the reader’s existing knowledge of the embedded storyworld and the “fictive publisher” frame that has already been introduced in the first edition. From a cognitive-psychological perspective, the text thus provides an impulse to reactivate the emotional and cognitive reward system (cf. Mellmann 2007: 365; see also Tooby and Cosmides 2001) that helps to motivate the reader’s re-engagement with it (for more on re-reading of texts see Harrison and Nuttall, Chapter  8 of this volume). The presentation of an “old” story from a “new” point of departure also affirms the reader’s familiarity with the Romantic practice of re-arranging and re-framing literary works in the course of new editions. This practice is closely intertwined with the characteristic notion of “Romantic storytelling” as a progressive probing of the “transient space” (cf. Orosz 1999) between “fiction” and “reality”. After long years once more thy writing lay Before me, and – how wonderful! – forth flew Back on my heart our youthful friendship’s day, When in the world’s great school we yet were new. I now am an old man: my hair is grey, And false shame I have long learned to subdue. Yes! I will call thee friend, as I did then, Will hail thee mine, and tell it unto men! My poor, poor friend! the juggling fiend hath not Me, as thyself, so treacherously undone; Still have I striven, still hoped a brighter lot, And truly, in the end, have little won; Yet the Grey Man will boast not to have got Hold of my shadow; nor hath ever done. Here lies my native shadow, free unfurled – I never lost my shadow in the world. Yet, guiltless as a child, on me descended The scorn men for thy nakedness did feel;

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What! is our likeness then so subtly blended? They shouted – “Where’s thy shadow, O Schlemihl?” And when I showed it, laughing, they pretended Blindness, and still laughed, endless peal on peal. What help? – We learn in patience to endure; Nay, more, – are glad, – feel we our conscience pure. – And what, then, is the shadow? May I know it, As I myself so oft am catechised? Thus monstrously, and higher far to sh[o]w it, Than the harsh world itself it e’er hath prized? Yes! – and to nineteen thousand days we owe it, Which, passing o’er us, thus have us advised – As formerly to shadow we gave being, We now see life, like shadows, from us fleeing. And thereupon we give our hands, Schlemihl! On we will go, and to the Old One leave it? How little for the whole world will we feel, But our own union, firm and firmer weave it. As thus unto our goal we nearer wheel, Who laughs or blames, – we’ll hear not, nor conceive it, Till, ’scaped from all the tempest of the deep, We’ll enter port, and sleep our soundest sleep.

(WHPS: ix–x)

The signature “Adelbert von Chamisso” and the indication of time and place  – “Berlin, August, 1834” (WHPS: x) – conclude the poem and potentially activate the “fictive publisher” frame: By signifying himself via proper name as author and enunciator of the lyrical dedication which addresses Peter Schlemihl as a companion in a shared (albeit temporally distant) space of reference, Chamisso distances himself from his role of actual author and outermost enunciating instance regarding the presented storyworld. The signatory “Chamisso”, as it were, bows out of the extratextual realm and, from the margin of the “fictive publisher” frame, enters the space of reference related to the characters of the emerging storyworld which already takes shape in the course of the lyrical narration. The spatiotemporal situatedness indicated at the bottom of the poem can be seen as a text impulse that evokes a mapping of intra- and extratextual worlds or reference spaces. Over and above the explicit spatiotemporal situatedness, however, the five stanzas activate the reader’s disposition to map the different realms and his or her engagement with the emerging storyworld by means of their “densely knit” deictic structure: as the extract above shows, the poem is practically lavish with “space builders” and potential “shifters” (cf. Rapaport et al. 1994; Galbraith 1995; Segal 1995) such as varying personal pronouns (establishing spaces of reference of

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an “I”, a “you”, and a shared space of “us” versus “them”) and tenses (establishing different spatiotemporal relations). Drawing on Rapaport et  al.’s (1994: 1) notion of the “deictic centre” as “a mental model of spatial, temporal, and character information contributed by the reader of the narrative and used by the reader in understanding the narrative”, the lyrical dedication “To my old friend Peter Schlemihl” that constitutes the “fictive publisher” frame’s opening layer demands that the reader to create a mental model that is in itself multi-layered. It induces the reader to project different deictic centres – including her or his own – onto a blended space and hence to map different spaces of reference onto one another as shown in Figure 6.3 (the arrows in the illustration indicate the projection of partial structures from the input spaces on the blended space; cf. Turner 1996: 84). blended space Projection of a joint space of reference (SoR)

SoR of reader(s)

SoR of fictive publisher(s)

SoR of character(s)

located in the extratextual ‘factual’ world

located ‘in-between’

located in the intratextual storyworld

different input spaces

Figure 6.3  Evoked blending of different spaces of reference (SoR) in Chamisso’s novella (definitive ed.)

With regard to the reader’s extratextual space of reference as depicted in Figure 6.3, there is of course not only generic knowledge of her or his spatiotemporal situatedness but also general as well as quite specific knowledge that contributes to the composition of the blended space. This knowledge can include, for example, genre characteristics of fantastic literature (such as the violation of the principle of “minimal departure”) or Romanticism (such as the practice of re-framing in Romantic storytelling) and is activated by (para)textual impulses such as the adjective “wundersam” / “wonderful” in the novella’s title or the name of the author (see



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also Emmott 1999 on the different knowledge domains involved in the process of narrative comprehension). In the course of the five stanzas, the textually evoked deictic centres (each opening a respective deictic field) and the corresponding deictic projections on the side of the reader gradually shift from the contrastive juxtaposition of the speaker’s (Chamisso) and addressee’s (Schlemihl) reference spaces in stanzas one to three (see extract above), to a common reference space of speaker and addressee which is especially foregrounded in the third stanza (see extract above, notably the verses “What! is our likeness then so subtly blended? / […] What help? – We learn in patience to endure; / Nay, more, – are glad, – feel we our conscience pure.”). This mapping of deictic centres provides an intersubjective space of reference that entails concepts such as an “us versus them” distinction, “companionship” and the value of friendship in view of a “harsh world”, “transcience” and “mortality”, and so on in stanzas three to five (see extract above). Since these concepts are not distinct components of the fictional world (like the peril of losing one’s shadow, for instance) but belong to a generic space of reference and “world knowledge” shared by the readers, they provide a basis to blend the intratextual and extratextual realms in the minds of the readers (see Figure 6.3). Drawing on the principle of minimal departure (cf. Ryan 1991), the outermost layer of the “fictive publisher” frame in The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl can be described as ambivalent: on the one hand, it violates the principle and increases “the distance between the textual universe and [the reader’s] system of reality” (Ryan 1991: 51) – which is further enhanced on the (para)textual level by means of the two following layers of framing; on the other hand, it decreases the distance between text(world) and reader by evoking a blend between the “actual world” of the readers, the storyworld that encloses the character and first-person narrator Schlemihl, and the “realm of conversation” (cf. Young 2004) that is opened up in the paratextual framing (see also the notion of the “conversation frame” outlined in Section 6.1.2, cf. Pascual 2014; Pascual and Sandler 2016). A more detailed analysis of the poem’s third stanza shows the specific textual strategies that stimulate the blend between the three different spaces of reference as illustrated in Figure 6.3: Yet, guiltless as a child, on me descended The scorn men for thy nakedness did feel; What! is our likeness then so subtly blended? They shouted – “Where’s thy shadow, O Schlemihl?” And when I showed it, laughing, they pretended Blindness, and still laughed, endless peal on peal. What help? – We learn in patience to endure; Nay, more, – are glad, – feel we our conscience pure. –

(WHPS: ix)

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This stanza can be regarded as the central axis of the poem not only with regard to its formal structure of five stanzas, but also with regard to the poem’s key topic of affinity and like-mindedness of friends against the backdrop of bygone closeness: by means of (the poem’s “speaker”) Chamisso’s reported memory of being deliberately confused with the shadowless Schlemihl, it establishes the situation of shared experience and – explicitly – the perceived “likeness” of the two men. In combination with the evoked “conversation frame” (cf. Pascual 2014, Pascual and Sandler 2016), the use of the doppelganger motif with its implied conflation of the poem’s “speaker” (Chamisso) and “addressee” (Schlemihl) lays the groundwork for the projection of a joint reference space that includes not only these two instances, but also the extratextual “reader” as someone who “overhears” (cf. Tobin 2014) the communication. This joint reference space is established in several steps and based on the use of different deictic and semantic strategies, as the following outline will show. The chiasmus in the first two verses “Yet, guiltless as a child, on me descended / The scorn men for thy nakedness did feel” (WHPS: ix) blends Chamisso’s childlike “guiltlessness” with Schlemihl’s “nakedness” due to his missing shadow, invoking the concept or, with Fillmore (1982: 117), the cognitive frame of a “new-born child” by means of two of its core features. Since those two features stem from two different input spaces, that is, from the “speaker” and the “addressee” of the poem, those two different instances are mapped onto one another. The last two verses “What help? – We learn in patience to endure; / Nay, more, – are glad, – feel we our conscience pure. –” (WHPS: ix) take up again the undeserved “scorn” that “descended” on Chamisso, now under modified conditions: The use of the pronoun “we” indicates the preceded mapping of Chamisso and Schlemihl (respectively of the deictic centres attributed to the two subject positions established by the proper names) and points out that it is not only the former who is undeservedly scorned and taunted by others. The juxtaposition of this established communal identity to the vague group identity of the “taunters” whom Chamisso and Schlemihl “learn in patience to endure” creates a kind of “us versus them” scenario – and invites the readers to take sides, indeed to perceive themselves as part of this (by contrast clearly favourable) communal identity. All in all, the “we” in the third and centric stanza does not only conflate the two deictic centres of the instances “Chamisso” and “Schlemihl”, but also prompts the readers to shift their vantage point and align their own respective deictic centre with the former. In the fourth stanza, the notion of “us versus them” is expanded to the scope of “us” versus “the harsh world” (see extract above), while the concluding stanza leads back to the “companionship” frame and once again evokes values and norms such as “friendship” and the power in a “union” that match those of the “actual world” as well as the familiar perils of “transcience” and “mortality”

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that background the fantastic storyworld’s “departures” from the “realm of the ordinary” (Ryan 1991: 51). All in all, the intertwining of the three different referential spaces of the extratextual reader(s), the fictive publisher(s) and the character(s) in the embedded storyworld is very elaborately evoked in the course of the five stanzas. The “fictive publisher” frame with its projection of a communicative scenario thereby acts as a hinge between the two other realms. In contrast to the first edition, though, the definitive edition of Chamisso’s novella opens with a layer of the “fictive publisher” frame that is actually not so much bridging the gap as rather displaying a gateway through which readers might re-enter. Chamisso’s lyrical dedication implies a reader who is already familiar with Schlemihl’s story(world) and who re-engages with the text: Since it is distinctly anaphoric in character, it draws on the readers’ existing knowledge of elements and events of the subsequent narration and rewards their renewed effort and “allegiance” to the text. Hence, not unlike the common practice in today’s storytelling media to provide definitive editions, director’s cuts, bonus material of deleted scenes and “behind the scenes” documentaries – for instance in the case of the filmic adaptation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings directed by Peter Jackson which has been followed by the release of vast additional materials and special editions right up to extensively remastered extended editions – the lyrical dedication can be seen as an addendum that values repetition and offers the recipient a feeling of belonging to the “in-group”. 6.3

Conclusion

Paratextual framing in general and the “fictive publisher” frame in particular can make a fantastic storyworld more accessible to readers in terms of evoking an alignment between the world inside and outside the text. Since fantastic literature genre-wise “lives off ” managing the balance between drawing on the reader’s “real world encyclopaedia” and contradicting assumptions based on a “real world” ontology, however, the mapping between the intra- and the extratextual realm needs to remain dynamic and open-ended during the reader’s engagement with the text. The “fictive publisher” frame provides this dynamicity by means of its inherent ontological and perspectival ambivalence and shifting potential. As the analysis of Chamisso’s Schlemihl-novella has shown, the “fictive publisher” frame is able to at the same time establish a gap between the inside and outside of the text and construct a blend to bridge it. Compared with the first edition of the text, though, the definitive edition’s paratextual arrangement sets a

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different tone regarding the distance or proximity between storyworld and reader: While the first edition inter alia extended the “fictive publisher” frame to the front matter, the definitive edition denominates Chamisso as the author and opens the narrative communication via the blend analysed above. Thus, the arrangement lays focus on bridging the cleft between “fiction” and “reality”, while the presentation of the divide is backgrounded. Regarding the question “Where does the text take the reader?”, the answer with respect to this specific arrangement of paratextual layers and the “fictive publisher” frame could be: Chamisso’s novella takes the reader to a realm where the “fantastic” and the “real” intertwine. In accordance with the poetic objectives of (German) Romanticism and by exhausting the bidirectional character of framings, Chamisso’s definitive edition also takes the (re-)reader to a literary discourse space where the Romanticist notion of dissolving the boundaries between fiction and reality, between life and art, has reached the literary meta-level.

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Chapter 7

Constructing inferiority through comic characterisation Self-deprecating humour and cringe comedy in High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary Agnes Marszalek

This chapter draws on cognitive stylistics and psychology to explore those characterisation techniques in humorous novels which can shape readers’ responses to comic protagonists. I focus on those instances in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) in which the main characters make a comparison between their own physical appearance and that of someone else’s, presenting themselves as either superior or inferior to others. While comic protagonists can be created as generally equal to the reader and more attractive than other characters so as to inspire our identification and empathy, they can also occasionally be placed in a position of inferiority where the comparison between them and others is not as favourable. It is the construction of this inferiority which, I suggest, informs the self-deprecating humour and embarrassment-induced cringe comedy in Hornby’s and Fielding’s novels. Keywords: humorous novel, cognitive stylistics, characterisation, selfdeprecating humour, cringe comedy, empathy, identification, High Fidelity, Bridget Jones’s Diary

7.1

Introduction

Those literary and linguistic approaches to humorous narratives which explore the role of characterisation in humour creation often stress the importance of constructing comic characters whom readers perceive as targets of humour and, consequently, objects of laughter (e.g. Triezenberg 2004; Larkin Galinanes 2002; see also Vandaele 2002). The notion that one of the key social aspects of humour is that it allows us to laugh at other people – whether real or fictional – is based

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.07mar © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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on those theories within humour studies which emphasise that it is the feeling of superiority over someone else which informs our appreciation of humour directed at another person (see e.g. Ferguson and Ford 2008; Zillmann 1983). In this chapter, I build on this idea to show how humorous narratives construct hierarchies of superiority, where certain characters are presented as less attractive, and therefore more laughable, than others. I am primarily interested in the role which the construction of inferiority plays in shaping our responses to characters in humorous narratives, showing what can happen when we, as readers, are encouraged to identify and empathise with a character who may be originally presented as attractive, but who subsequently loses the privileged position of superiority and becomes a target of humour. It is the construction of this kind of inferiority, I suggest, that is key to the creation of self-deprecating humour and cringe comedy, which contribute to our experience of the narrative worlds of comedy. This chapter explores the stylistic techniques which are used to construct positions of inferiority in two humorous novels, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995) and Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996), both of which are romantic comedies narrated by their protagonists. In my analysis of those texts, I focus on those instances in which a character’s inferiority is signalled through a description of physical appearance, particularly where a character can be seen to be making a comparison between his or her appearance and that of someone else. I examine those linguistic choices which allow protagonists in humorous novels to use comparison in order to present their appearance as superior to someone else’s (Section 7.3), use self-deprecation to equate themselves to someone physically unattractive (Section 7.4.1), and share the feeling of embarrassment-induced cringe when their appearance is scrutinised (Section 7.4.2). While my approach is primarily cognitive stylistic, in my discussion of the experiential aspects of comic characterisation I also draw on insights from the psychology of humour and entertainment. 7.2

Characterisation in literature and comedy

At the heart of the cognitive stylistic approach to characterisation in comic novels adopted in this chapter is the belief that our perceptions of characters who appear in fictional worlds are, to some extent, guided by the same mechanisms which allow us to understand real people in our everyday lives. In both, we rely on our prior knowledge to make sense of the new information which we receive. This view is based on the work of Culpeper (2001, see also 2000), who suggests that in order to simplify the complex task of forming impressions of both real people and text-based characters, we tend to rely on our general knowledge of what people



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are typically like to perceive others not as individuals, but as part of particular social categories with which we are broadly familiar. These categories contain information about, for example, people’s traits and habits, social functions, age or ethnic groups, as well as (in the case of literary reading) the types of character who typically appear in works of fiction. The links between these categories form networks of information in our general knowledge  – those networks are referred to as “social schemata”, which can be understood as our mental stores of knowledge about people (Culpeper 2001: 75–77). The role of social schemata in literary characterisation is further developed by Montoro in relation to the genre of “chick lit” (2012, see also 2007). Montoro’s work is particularly relevant here not only because she discusses the character of Bridget Jones (a typical chick lit protagonist), but also because she points to one particular social knowledge category which informs our perception of chick lit characters, but which is not discussed by Culpeper: that of physical appearance. Appearance, Montoro argues, is a crucial factor in the description of the female characters in the chick lit genre, suggesting that, more generally, “the way people look is an aspect influencing our assessment of other individuals so it does have a place in the social evaluation of others” (Montoro 2012: 64). As I show here, instances where (both female and male) characters evaluate their own physical appearance in comparison to that of someone else’s play an important part in helping characters situate themselves as either superior or inferior to others, allowing readers of comedy to assess whether a certain character is a target of humour or not. This assessment, as I show further, will be based on our prior knowledge of what different types of people generally look like, which can be conceptualised as being stored in a “physical appearance” category. The role of our general knowledge in allowing us to form perceptions of characters, and in particular the significance of categories in helping us organise this knowledge, is highly relevant to characterisation in narrative comedy. In fact, much of the literary linguistic research on comic characterisation draws on the cognitive linguistic concept of “prototype categories” (Rosch 1975; Taylor 2003), which assumes that our linguistic conceptualisation of the world involves categorising entities which share certain attributes around “best examples”, or “prototypical instances”, of those categories. The significance of prototypes in the creation of character-based humour is emphasised by Culpeper (2001: 156), who suggests that exaggerating a prototype of a particular social category is a particularly effective comic characterisation technique in jokes and other texts alike: mother-in-law jokes, for example, usually involve a humorous exaggeration of the link between the social role category (that of a mother-in-law) and a category of personal traits (being domineering). Such links (and such humour) tend to be culturally specific – linguists, therefore, often rely on the concept of a “stereotype”

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(meaning a culturally constructed prototype) to explain the creation of character humour in different types of comic text. Triezenberg (2004), for example, argues that excessively magnified stereotypes (such as the ones discussed by Culpeper) are effective in the creation of character humour in comic narratives, as they are built on an easily recognisable incongruity between what we think of as normal and what appears abnormal – and it is this clash of schemata which is often said to lie at the heart of verbal humour (for a review of this incongruity-based approach to humour, see Simpson 2006). While Attardo and Raskin (1991, see also Raskin 1985 and Attardo 2001) also emphasise the key role of such incongruitybased “script opposition” in the creation of humour, they also point out that the exaggerated stereotypes which inform humour in a range of texts are sometimes structured as “targets” of laughter, encouraging the receiver to view a particular stereotype as amusing (Attardo and Raskin 1991: 301–302, see also Ermida 2009). This idea that humorous characterisation often relies on the creation of a laughable target based on an exploited stereotype can be explained with reference to those theories of humour which focus on the representations of other people as objects of laughter. The “superiority theories” within humour studies (also referred to as “disparagement” or “hostility theories”) are concerned with humour as a means of disparaging other individuals, and with the feeling of superiority associated with ridiculing others’ shortcomings and misfortunes. The origins of this approach to laughter have been dated back to the philosophical works of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates (in Billig 2005: 40; Ermida 2008: 21), and the role of the feeling of superiority in humour appreciation has been linked to Hobbes, whose term “sudden glory” (1996: 43) relates to the unexpected boost of self-congratulation which is said to lie at the heart of our pleasure in humour. More contemporary, psychological approaches to this kind of disparaging, superiority-based humour view this type of joking as a vehicle for mocking those people whom we perceive to be different from us, and whom we view as inferior in some way (e.g. Wolff et  al. 1934; La Fave 1972; Martin 2007; Ferguson and Ford 2008). “Amusement with disparagement humour”, suggest Ferguson and Ford (2008: 299), “is mediated by self-enhancement through social comparison”. In the simplest terms, disparagement-based joking can be said to rely on the feeling of superiority shared by the joker and the listener when they compare themselves to the target whom they perceive to be inferior.



7.3

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Constructing superiority: Cueing identification with the comic protagonist

In the context of first-person comic narratives narrated by their central characters like High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary, the role of the superior “joker” is often filled by the protagonist – it is the protagonist who is our guide to the narrative world, and who often (as I show below) targets other characters as objects of laughter. As such, the protagonist will occasionally be presented as superior to other inhabitants of the narrative world. Importantly, for the reader to be able to share that position of superiority and appreciate the humour, the protagonist will also need to be perceived as equal to the reader. This impression of equality will be based on what is generally referred to as “identification” (e.g. Oatley 1994; Cohen 2006), and which here will be understood as the perceived similarity between the reader and the character – the belief that we share certain characteristics (what Sanford and Emmott 2012 call “autobiographical alignment”; see also Bortolussi and Dixon 2003: 90 for “narratorial implicatures”). One route to cueing this kind of perception of similarity is to create a character who is average and unremarkable – an “everyman” or “everywoman”. While not all comedies will follow this pattern of characterisation, Hornby’s and Fielding’s texts are quintessential romantic comedies and, as such, they adhere to the code set out by the low mimetic New Comedy of the Classical period, in which characters were created to be similar to the audience (e.g. they did not have special powers) so as to inspire identification (Frye 1957: 365). Those early comedies, much like contemporary rom-coms, follow a protagonist who is faced with obstacles which need to be overcome (these are often related to reuniting with a lover) in order for a happy ending to occur. In this kind of comedy, suggests Frye, “the hero himself is seldom a very interesting person: in conformity with low mimetic decorum, he is ordinary in his virtues, but socially attractive” (1957: 44). This idea of “social attractiveness” is crucial, as it can elevate the everyman/ everywoman comic protagonist from someone who is relatable to someone who is likeable. While being able to relate to certain people and viewing them as part of social groups with which we identify is likely to discourage us from laughing at them and instead encourage us to laugh with them (as argued in the superiority theories of humour), psychologists have also suggested that the most effective jokes are told by the people we like, not just the people whom we perceive as similar to us. Zillmann and Cantor’s (1996) disposition theory of humour states that the appreciation of disparagement humour is dependent on a “scale of affective disposition” towards people, where amusement is said to “be maximal when our friends humiliate our enemies, and minimal when our enemies manage to get the upper hand over our friends” (Zillmann and Cantor 1996: 100–101). Simply

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put, the more likeable the joker and the less likeable the target, the more effective the humour. A comic hero in a romantic comedy like High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary, therefore, is sufficiently relatable and likeable compared to the reader, but sufficiently more relatable and more likeable compared to some of the other characters. Rob Fleming from High Fidelity, for example, uses a description of his physical appearance to explicitly self-characterise himself as average, but relatively attractive: Example 7.1 I’m OK looking; in fact, if you put, say, Mel Gibson on one end of the looks spectrum and, say, Berky Edmonds from school whose grotesque ugliness was legendary, on the other, then I reckon I’d be on Mel’s side, just. A girlfriend once told me that I looked a bit like Peter Gabriel, and he’s not too bad, is he? I’m average height, not slim, not fat, no unsightly facial hair, I keep myself clean, wear jeans and T-shirts and a leather jacket more or less all the time apart from in the summer, when I leave the leather jacket at home. (Hornby 1995: 21)

There are elements in this description which clearly aim to position Rob as a very ordinary-looking man, someone whose appearance is in no way remarkable, but rather can be considered normal by a proportion of readers. In fact, the description, although seemingly detailed due to the number of items listed in the last sentence, rather lacks specificity in that what is “average height” or “not slim” remains for the reader to decide. This vagueness allows Rob to construct himself as a prototypical member of a very inclusive, very broad category of “normal looking people”, a category with which many readers can also potentially identify, thus perceiving Rob as a relatable character  – someone whose traits we imagine we share. Rob’s averageness, while partly constructed by explicitly listing traits which certain readers may think of as ordinary, is additionally emphasised by suggesting how his appearance, and specifically his physical attractiveness, matches up to that of other people. He may not be as attractive as Mel Gibson, but neither, most likely, is the reader of High Fidelity; unlike the prototypical everyman Rob, Mel Gibson is presented as a very peripheral member of what we can consider to be the “normal looks” category. Both the handsome actor and Rob’s ugly former classmate, Berky Edmonds, are constructed as extreme points of reference, which help to establish what is ordinary and what is unusual. While neither excessively handsome nor excessively ugly, Rob describes himself as slightly more attractive than unattractive, thus encouraging the reader to view him as both ordinary and agreeable: a prototypical comic hero, who is both likeable and relatable.



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While there are elements in the protagonist’s self-description which may seem universally, objectively ordinary (“average height”) or attractive (“keep myself clean”), a number of them will only be recognised as such to readers who share a certain cultural background and the knowledge that comes with it. Aside from those who read High Fidelity in 1990s Britain when the book was first published, the idea that wearing a leather jacket is something normal, or the view that Mel Gibson embodies the height of human attractiveness may be lost on some readers. Writers of humorous narratives have little knowledge of who their readers are and which traits exactly these readers may find easy to appreciate or identify with. A useful strategy when it comes to creating a successful comic hero, therefore, is to create a protagonist who is not relatable and likeable per se, but who is more relatable and more likeable than other characters. For that reason, showing the central character in comparison to others in the narrative world is an effective characterisation strategy. In the extract above, it is the comparison with one particular character which allows Rob to truly shine – that character is Berky Edmonds, who does not appear at any other point in the narrative, and whose only function seems to be to make Rob look more attractive and average. Much like some of those typical comic characters who are based on easily accessible stereotypes (as outlined above in the review of some of the linguistic approaches to characterisation), Berky Edmonds is created as an exaggeration of a particular trait: ugliness. Compared with Berky’s abnormal, anomalous “grotesque” and “legendary” bad looks, it is easy to view Rob not only as more relatable, but also as superior. His comparison with the other character is favourable, allowing Rob (and potentially the reader who identifies with him) to position himself as a superior joker, and Berky as an inferior target of humorous disparagement. The superior joker/inferior target distinction, thus, is very apparent, leaving little doubt as to who is mocking whom. 7.4 7.4.1

Constructing inferiority: Positioning the protagonist as a target of humour Self-deprecating humour and character likeability

The division between those who laugh and those who are laughed at will not always be as clear-cut. While comic narratives will sometimes encourage their readers to form allegiances with their protagonists and comfortably position the protagonist–reader unit as superior to another, laughable character, these power dynamics can be shifted. In the extract below, High Fidelity’s Rob, again, makes a

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comparison between himself and another character, but this time the outcome is not exactly in his favour: Example 7.2 Going to the pictures aged thirty-five with your mum and dad and their insane friends does not take your mind off things, I discover. It very much puts your mind on things. While we’re waiting for Yvonne and Brian to purchase the entire contents of the Pick’n’Mix counter, I have a terrible, chilling, bone-shaking experience: the most pathetic man in the world gives me a smile of recognition. The Most Pathetic Man In The World has huge Dennis Taylor-style spectacles and buck teeth; he’s wearing a dirty fawn anorak and brown cord trousers which have been rubbed smooth at the knee; he, too, is being taken to see Howard’s End by his parents, despite the fact that he’s in his late twenties. And he gives me this terrible smile because (Hornby 1995: 109–110) he has spotted a kindred spirit.

Just like Berky Edmonds above, the nameless character who gives Rob a smile in the cinema is characterised largely through his physical unattractiveness, here linked primarily to his choice of outfit. While the knowledge of whether the character’s clothes are fashionable or not will be culture-dependent (in a way which was already signalled above), the fact that they are described as dirty and tattered should leave little doubt that the narrator views them as unappealing. Unappealing is, in fact, an understatement – Rob explicitly labels the man as “The Most Pathetic Man In The World”: someone who, in Rob’s eyes, is not only inferior when compared to Rob, but also to everyone else on the planet. The Most Pathetic Man In The World, although described in some detail, is nothing more than a simple point of reference, a character whose extreme, exaggerated lack of desirability should, in principle, make him an easy target of ridicule for both the likeable, relatable protagonist of High Fidelity and for the reader. The complicating factor, however, is that the inferior, undesirable target of mockery has been given a certain power by the narrator. While he has not exactly been given a voice, his thoughts, or at least what Rob imagines to be his thoughts, have an effect on shifting the power dynamics between the “pathetic” character and the protagonist. Rob is not strictly reporting what the other character is thinking, as he is not an omniscient narrator and has no real insight into the other man’s mind. He does, however, attempt to “read the mind” (see Baron-Cohen 1995 for “mindreading”) of the man to guess what he may be thinking – specifically, what he may be thinking about Rob. Creating our image by comparing ourselves with other people may be based partly on our own, independent self-appraisal of our traits in relation to those of others, but it is likely to be affected by what we imagine other people think of us as well. In Example 7.1, Rob’s smugness about his



Chapter 7.  Constructing inferiority through comic characterisation 127

appearance was supported by someone else’s opinion – his former girlfriend, he recounted, once compared him to Peter Gabriel. In Example 7.2, in contrast, another character’s appraisal leaves Rob feeling unsettled. While The Most Pathetic Man In The World is someone whom our protagonist is quick to label as inferior, in the eyes of the other, they are equals. Rather than simply mock an undesirable other, Rob draws attention to the similarity between them. As a result, the boundary between the joker and the target becomes blurred, leading the protagonist to temporarily abandon his privileged, superior position and signal his own inferiority. This situation when a joker targets him- or herself as an object of disparagement is referred to as “self-deprecating humour” (e.g. Long and Graesser 1988; Hay 2001). In comic narratives, self-deprecation on the part of the protagonist may encourage a feeling of superiority in the reader which, by allowing the reader to view the protagonist as laughable, can add to the creation and experience of humour. More generally, it can also be linked to comic characterisation, and in particular to the construction of a relatable, likeable protagonist. In real life, putting oneself down for others’ enjoyment can be used “to demonstrate modesty, to put the listener at ease, or to ingratiate oneself to the listener” (Long and Graesser 1988: 43) as it conceivably “places the self-disparager in a more positive light” (Zillmann and Stocking 1976: 155). The link between the use of self-disparaging humorous remarks and perceived personal attractiveness has been investigated in social psychology, with studies suggesting that self-deprecating humour increases desirability if the target is otherwise physically attractive or has a high social status (Lundy, Tan and Cunningham 1998; Greengross and Miller 2008). For a comic protagonist like Rob, who is presented as high-status due to his central role in the plot and whose physical attractiveness is explicitly stated, self-deprecation can be a means of appearing more likeable to the reader. Rob may be quick to mock others, but his disparagement of other people is balanced by self-deprecation. By drawing attention to his own inferiority, Rob puts us at ease and reinforces his position as an affable joker, thus giving us permission to laugh at people whom we would perhaps not otherwise be comfortable mocking. 7.4.2 Embarrassment, empathy and cringe comedy Pointing to our own shortcomings and allowing ourselves to be laughed at can, in certain contexts, help us appear more modest and likeable, but it can also be a risky strategy. One potential, highly damaging outcome of allowing ourselves to become the target of humour is emotional – it can lead to embarrassment. “The prospect of ridicule and embarrassment”, writes Billig in his account of the social functions of humour, “protects the codes of daily behaviour, ensuring much routine conformity

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with social order” (2005: 202). Infringing on established norms of interaction, Billig suggests, is as embarrassing for the agent as it is comic for the onlookers, making the fear of ridicule a key tool in the maintenance of social conventions. While in our everyday lives the idea of being ridiculed may stop us from doing something that others will find inappropriate and laughable, one of the functions of comedy, as comedian Stewart Lee points out, is precisely to “manufacture inappropriate behaviour” (Lee 2010: 241). Describing the role of Pueblo clowns of South America, Lee suggests that, “by reversing the norms and breaking the taboos, the clowns show us what we have to lose, and what we might also stand to gain, if we step outside the restrictions of social convention and polite everyday discourse” (Lee 2010: 241). The question is, to what extent witnessing the clowns – or comic characters in any other text – being socially inappropriate will lead to straightforward amusement in the audience, and to what extent the audience’s vicarious embarrassment for the clowns will disrupt their experience of humour? Due to its negative emotional impact, embarrassment does not seem like a response which should be encouraged in readers and viewers of comedy, as it can disrupt their otherwise pleasurable experience of humorous amusement. In her discussion of embarrassment in the British sitcom, for example, Gray argues that “embarrassment, because it erodes the boundary between audience and butt, is a risky option in comedy and is generally kept in check by precise narrative boundaries” (2005: 151). While some comedies will be constructed to protect their audience from embarrassment, others will actively encourage it. “Cringe comedy”, as it is described in film and television studies (Woodward 2010; Wright 2011; Middleton 2014; see also Gray 2005 and Schwind 2015), is said to be based around awkward, uncomfortable social situations  – situations which, while being presented as humorous, nevertheless encourage such uncomfortable responses as embarrassment and shame. “Cringe humour”, suggests Wright, “relies not on the execution of a gag, but instead on the ‘dead air’ that accompanies an unsuccessful social encounter” (Wright 2011: 662). Such unsuccessful social encounters, in many of the prototypical cringe comedies studied by film and television scholars, are often brought about by the disruptive behaviour of a particular kind of character; someone who, like David Brent in The Office (BBC, 2001–2003) or Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000-present), alienates others by his inability to read social situations and act appropriately. Rather than trying to conform to what is socially acceptable to avoid ridicule and embarrassment, those characters will, like the South American clowns described by Stewart Lee, say or do the most inappropriate thing in order to show us where the boundaries lie and what happens when we step outside them. In a mock-documentary show like The Office, the impact of such behaviour is felt immediately: as Middleton argues, “exploiting



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our associations with televisual liveness and presence, the show can produce the sense that this painful scene is really happening, in the present, right in front of us” (Middleton 2014: 145). This impression of realness and authenticity which surrounds what is constructed as a damaging, serious social blunder lies at the heart of cringe comedy in films and television series (Woodward 2010). Like films and sitcoms, comic novels will also occasionally rely on unsuccessful encounters between characters to create humour. Unlike the multimodal, mockdocumentary texts discussed by film and television scholars, however, written narratives do not generally create the same impression of realness – being somewhat less arresting on the senses, they allow their receivers to distance themselves from the events depicted more easily. They may construct painful, cringe-worthy scenes based on the inappropriate behaviour of their characters, but these scenes are unlikely to produce the sense that the situation is really happening in front of us in the way that film and television texts can – especially in novels like High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’s Diary, which are narrated in the past tense from the perspective of a single character. It is that perspective which, I believe, will be key to the creation of cringe comedy in many comic novels, as it will be instrumental in cueing a response which, rather than allowing us to simply laugh at a character’s inappropriate behaviour, will force us to experience the awkwardness of the situation. In order to experience the cringe in written cringe comedy, readers will need to view the awkward encounter not from a safe, privileged position of superiority, but rather feel with the characters involved in it. The narrative strategy which, I believe, is crucial to the creation of cringe comedy in written narratives is that of cueing empathy for the character involved in the unsuccessful social encounter which is presented as humorous (for “empathy”, see e.g. Davis 1994; Zillmann 2006; Keen 2006, 2007). Experiencing the emotion of embarrassment on which the experience of cringe comedy relies requires us to be able to put ourselves in the position of the character who has embarrassed him- or herself, and view the situation from their perspective. That can be achieved through a mechanism referred to as “role taking”, considered to be a highly advanced cognitive process which enables us to temporarily step out of our normal perspective and into someone else’s in order to feel what they are feeling and, consequently, experience the affective outcome associated with empathy (Davis 1994). Of the general antecedents to empathy outlined by Davis, those which can be applied in a narrative context to explain readers’ empathetic reactions towards characters are the perceived level of seriousness of the situation which we are observing and the degree of similarity between the observer and target of that situation (Davis 1994: 15, cf. analogous “narrative situation” and “character identification” in Keen’s 2006 literary approach). The more serious we consider the situation in which a character finds him- or herself, and the higher

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the perceived similarity between us and the character, the more powerful our empathetic response will be. Additionally, that character should also be perceived as morally sound, since malevolent characters may not trigger empathetic responses as well as benevolent or neutral ones can (Zillmann and Cantor 1977; Zillmann 2006). On the whole, then, a comic character who is most likely to cue the reader’s role taking – and the embarrassment-induced cringe that is key to the experience of cringe comedy – is one who is perceived as relatable and likeable; an “everyman” or “everywoman” protagonist like Rob Fleming or Bridget Jones. Due to the role of character similarity and the seriousness of the situation in triggering the role-taking process which enables the cringe in cringe comedy, the clearest examples of that type of humour in written narratives can be found in situations where a likeable, relatable everyman protagonist is put in a particularly high-risk social situation. That situation, as I show below, can be constructed to place the character in a position of inferiority, forcing the character to evaluate him- or herself against someone else (or worse, a number of people), and finding the comparison unfavourable. In the extract below, Bridget Jones is recounting making an entrance to what she believed was a fancy dress (“Tarts and Vicars” theme) garden party organised by her parents’ friends, and being hit by the painful emotional impact of the realisation that her appearance did not match that of the other people: Example 7.3 10 p.m. Cannot believe what I have been through. I drove for two hours, parked at the front of the Alconbury’s and, hoping I looked OK in the bunny girl outfit, walked round the side to the garden where I could hear voices raised in merriment. As I started to cross the lawn they all went quiet, and I realized to my horror that instead of Tarts and Vicars, the ladies were in Country Casuals-style calf-length floral two-pieces and the men were in slacks and V-necked sweaters. I stood there, frozen, like, well, a rabbit. Then while everyone stared, Una Alconbury came flapping across the lawn in pleated fuchsia holding out a plastic tumbler full of bits of apple and leaves. ‘Bridget!! Super to see you. Have a Pimms,’ she said. (Fielding 1998: 168)

While, from the reader’s perspective, much of the humour of the scene relies on the surprising incongruity between the appearance of Bridget and that of the other guests, there is no doubt that the situation was deeply awkward for the protagonist. The first-person narration and the diary format of the text give us an unmediated insight into Bridget’s feelings, particularly the “horror” which accompanies her realisation that her outfit is inappropriate. Much like Rob’s description of his encounter with the smiling man in the cinema in Example 7.2 as “a terrible, chilling, bone-shaking experience”, Bridget’s “horror” may seem like a slight exaggeration



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in this largely unthreatening context of a garden party, thus adding to the humorous incongruity on which the scene is based. However, it is worth examining Bridget’s horror, as it is this negative emotional reaction which lies at the heart of the embarrassment-induced cringe experienced by her, and potentially by the reader who is able to temporarily step into her perspective and imagine how self-conscious she must be feeling in the situation. “Self-conscious” is the key word here, as what Bridget is likely to be experiencing is based on her own self-reflection of whether her appearance suits the context, and to what extent she has succeeded in following the rules which the others are following. In psychology, embarrassment (alongside, for example, shame and guilt) has been classified as a “self-conscious emotion” experienced as a result of evaluating our behaviour according to certain socio-culturally established “standards, rules and goals” (SRGs) (Lewis 2008). “Success or failure vis-à-vis our SRGs”, suggests Lewis, “is likely to produce a signal to the self that results in self-reflection” and a global evaluation of the self (2008: 745). The negative, unpleasant emotion of embarrassment is based on that kind of unfavourable assessment of one’s actions (like shame, only less intense), or it can result from unwelcome exposure, such as being looked at (Lewis 2008: 750–751). It is the combination of the two which informs Bridget’s response. The construction of Bridget’s embarrassment in the passage above is based on positioning her as an object of other characters’ silent gaze, while signalling that the gaze is an expression of (what she interprets to be) negative appraisal. Much like television cringe comedy which relies on the “dead air” that accompanies unsuccessful social encounters (Wright 2011, discussed above), here it is the silence which is instrumental in creating an impression that a certain social code has been breached. The protagonist’s realisation that something is wrong is based on her reaction to the change in the sound around her. The initial comfort of hearing “voices raised in merriment” becomes terror when everyone suddenly goes quiet and watches her, the only sound presumably heard being that of the hostess “flapping” towards Bridget in her “pleated fuchsia” outfit. The mention of Una Alconbury’s clothes is important, as it fits in with what the other characters are described as wearing. In fact, Bridget seems to perceive all the women to be in “Casuals-style calf-length floral two-pieces”, and all the men “slacks and V-necked sweaters”, her view of the party guests as a unit rather than individual people evident from the way she refers to them as “all” and “everyone”. As a uniform entity, the guests provide a clear point of reference for the protagonist  – they set the standards against which Bridget is evaluating herself. Based on this comparison with the others, her initial hope that she looks good in her bunny girl outfit turns to self-conscious embarrassment that leaves her “frozen, like, well, a rabbit”.

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7.5

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have explored the role of descriptions of physical appearance in shaping readers’ responses to the characters who inhabit the narrative worlds of comic novels. I have pointed to instances where comic protagonists can be seen to compare themselves to other characters, presenting their own appearance as either superior or inferior to that of others, and allowing readers to evaluate their own attractiveness accordingly. While the comic protagonists in romantic comedies like High Fidelity or Bridget Jones’s Diary may be constructed as equal to the reader in order to cue identification, their superiority over some of the other characters allows us to view the inferior others as laughable objects of humour. The likeable, relatable comic protagonist will not always be allowed to maintain his or her position of superiority, however. Humorous self-deprecation, where the characters target themselves as objects of laughter, can rely on the protagonist abandoning the privileged, superior stance and pointing to his or her own inferiority. Although self-deprecation may ultimately present the comic protagonist in a more positive light, it can also expose him or her to the experience of embarrassment, which the reader can vicariously share by empathising with the character. It is this shared feeling of embarrassment, facilitated by an empathetic response, on which cringe comedy in comic novels is based.

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Chapter 8

Cognitive grammar and reconstrual Re-experiencing Margaret Atwood’s “The Freeze-Dried Groom” Chloe Harrison and Louise Nuttall

This chapter examines the cognitive and experiential processes of re-reading, and their contribution to the conceptualisation of a fictional world. Fictional worlds are experienced dynamically, and often in multiple sittings, separated by varying lengths of time. While the myriad of contextual factors which distinguish sittings makes re-reading a difficult object of study, this aspect of our natural, everyday encounters with texts is worthy of consideration in stylistic discussion. As a first step in this direction, this chapter demonstrates an awareness of multiple readings, and the distinct experiences they represent, as part of a cognitive stylistic account of textual interpretation. Firstly, a theoretical account of re-reading is outlined in terms of Cognitive Grammar and, in particular, its concept of construal. This account is demonstrated through analysis of the short story “The Freeze-Dried Groom” from Margaret Atwood’s 2014a collection Stone Mattress. Applying Cognitive Grammar's multidimensional model of construal, and a further process of reconstrual, we make specific predictions concerning readers’ experiences of this story’s fictional world on a first- and second-reading, looking in particular at changing conceptualisations of tone, atmosphere and narrative perspective, and the linguistic processing responsible. Based on this analytical case study, we propose a need for further investigation of texts which surprise readers, or which feature a twist or reveal, and the ways in which information is attended to across multiple readings. Keywords: re-reading, Cognitive Grammar, Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress, reconstrual

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.08har © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

136 Chloe Harrison and Louise Nuttall

8.1

Introduction

Cognitive stylistics investigates the processes that underpin reading and their experience by readers. Reading experiences change through time, in part due to a number of factors, including how we are feeling on a particular day, our prior knowledge about the text, the location in which we are reading, and so on. In this paper, we argue that our experiences of fictional worlds should be analysed diachronically. Introspectively, a second reading of a text is a qualitatively different experience to a first reading. The context for reading will always be distinct on subsequent encounters with a text; we will be older and more knowledgeable to a greater or lesser extent; we may be more or less attentive; and may bring with us a different set of feelings, attitudes and interests. Given the myriad of factors involved, the experiential variances which characterise subsequent engagements with a fictional world are a difficult object of study. However, since cognitive stylistics is concerned with natural reading experiences, and re-reading is part of this experience, this issue is worth addressing. Of the dynamic contextual factors involved in re-reading, one that would seem to be relatively constant is the increased knowledge of the outcome of a story, afforded by a first reading. In stylistics and empirical studies of literature there has been some examination of the experience of (re)reading a surprising text, or one with a reveal. Previous studies have considered the role of prior knowledge and inferencing in our processing of plot twists (Emmott 2003; Tobin 2009); the effects of narrative event sequencing for feelings of suspense, curiosity and surprise (Prieto-Pablos 1998; Hoeken and van Vliet 2000); and the way in which particular textual cues may be “buried” on a first reading in order to facilitate such experiences in readers (Emmott and Alexander 2014). Additionally, a number of reader response studies have examined how re-reading influences aesthetic appreciation and experiences of literariness, particularly with regards to those textual cues which are “foregrounded” in attention (Dixon et al. 1993; Hakemulder 2004). Here, we outline an account of reader processing offered by Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 2008) and illustrate its use as a framework for discussing readers’ evolving experiences of fictional worlds (see also Harrison and Nuttall 2018). This application is demonstrated through stylistic analysis of a short story, “The Freeze-Dried Groom” from Margaret Atwood’s (2014a) collection Stone Mattress. Applying concepts from Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, we make predictions about readers’ experiences of this story on a first- and second-reading, looking in particular at the changing conceptualisation of its characters and the shifting prominence of aspects of the fictional world. While providing a useful set of concepts for analysing the conceptualisations cued by specific textual choices in

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terms of construal, this framework also allows us to describe the reconstrual that takes place during a subsequent reading of this text. 8.2

Cognitive Grammar as stylistic tool

Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1991, 2008) is one of a number of frameworks in cognitive linguistics that aims to model the processes underpinning language use and structure. Recent studies in cognitive stylistics have identified the usefulness of Cognitive Grammar as a stylistic tool (see Harrison et al. 2014; Hamilton 2003; Harrison 2017a, 2017b; Nuttall 2015, 2018; Stockwell 2009). These applications depart from the original use of the model by Langacker, which tended to focus on analysis of everyday language use at the clause or sentence level. By adapting this framework to the analysis of literary discourse, work in cognitive stylistics has demonstrated how Cognitive Grammar can help to explore the experiential and embodied aspects of reading, situating the experience of reading within wider processes of cognition. One of the most readily applicable aspects of Cognitive Grammar for stylistics is construal, which describes our “ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways” (Langacker 2008: 43). Langacker’s model outlines the main cognitive mechanisms through which we construe situations using language. The following three sections outline these mechanisms and their usefulness as a basis for discussing readers’ conceptualisations of fictional worlds. 8.2.1 Focusing and specificity A fundamental way in which construals differ is in the nature and extent of the knowledge focused during language processing. Cognitive Grammar describes lexical choices as providing access to a network of encyclopaedic knowledge in the form of domains (Langacker 2008: 44). Roughly equivalent to concepts such as “frames” (Fillmore 1985), “scripts” (Schank and Abelson 1977) and “schemata” (Bartlett 1932), domains are knowledge structures relating to any area of experience: linguistic or non-linguistic; perceptual, physical or cultural; and are said to form the basis, or background, for our understanding of language. Importantly, different linguistic choices provide access to a different set of domains (Langacker 2008: 62). For example, despite their synonymy, describing someone as a cook or chef may focus different domains such as HOME and RESTAURANT respectively. With regards to literary reading, the kind of knowledge structures focused by a linguistic construal has consequences for the way that readers flesh out their conceptualisation of a fictional world and the inferences they are able to make.

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Construals also differ in the degree of detail or specificity at which the situation is conceived (Langacker 2008: 55). Alternative linguistic choices for describing the same situation can be arranged in taxonomic hierarchies reflecting a scale from highly schematic to highly specific, for example, living thing > person > adult > chef > the tall, over-heated chef named Sarah. The chosen level of specificity in the description of a fictional world determines the extent to which its conceptualisation is constructed from the “bottom-up” and, on the other hand, the extent to which readers must fill in the gaps “top-down”, using their schematic knowledge (cf. Semino 1997). 8.2.2 Prominence and reference point chains Another dimension of construal concerns the attention given to individual entities within the conceived situation. Prominence relates to the relationship between foreground and background in perception, or the tendency for certain elements to “stand out” against the rest of the (visual) field; a phenomenon described in Gestalt Psychology as the relationship between figure and ground (Ungerer and Schmidt 2006: 163–206). In Cognitive Grammar, this relationship is manifested in linguistic structure through profiling, where “profiles” refer to the entities focused in attention by linguistic forms against the background of our schematic knowledge (Langacker 2008: 67). Linguistic forms profile “things” (e.g. the sandwich), “atemporal relationships” (e.g. the sandwich in the kitchen) or “processes” (e.g. bring me a sandwich, Peter) and these profiles combine in discourse to form a layered foreground and background for a conceived situation. Which entities stand out most in attention within our conceptualisation is said to be determined by factors comparable to those which influence the perception of figures in our everyday environment, such as “newness”, “agency”, “definiteness” and “empathetic recognisability” (Langacker 1991: 296; see also Stockwell 2009: 25). By differing with respect to such factors, alternative linguistic construals vary in terms of the relative prominence they allocate to the features of a fictional world. Our conceptualisation of language – and the fictional worlds it portrays – is dynamic; it occurs through time as we read a text, or listen to someone speaking. Our shifting attention to the profiles presented by a series of linguistic choices is described as a process of “mental scanning” along reference point chains (Langacker 2008: 85). Viewed in these terms, the profile of a linguistic expression is a reference point and the network of domains that it affords access to, its dominion. This dominion contains a range of mentally accessible entities within our schematic knowledge, or potential targets, which may be focused later in the discourse by subsequent linguistic choices, or alternatively allowed to fade from attention.

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D

R

T

C= conceptualiser R= reference point T= target D= dominion = mental path

C

Figure 8.1  A reference point relationship (adapted from Langacker 2008: 84)

Applied to literary reading, this model describes the dynamic process by which readers incrementally develop their conceptualisation of a fictional world in response to the particular sequence of linguistic cues provided by a text (see also Stockwell 2009, 2014). The prominence of these reference points, as well as the content and specificity of the knowledge domains they cue, can have a range of consequences for readers’ experiences of fictional worlds. 8.2.3 Subjective and objective construal Finally, construals vary in the amount of attention focused upon the conceptualiser(s) and the vantage point from which they “view” the situation (Langacker 2008: 77). Construals differ in the extent to which they are objective or subjective: Object of conceptualisation

Subject of conceptualisation (conceptualisers)

Figure 8.2  Maximally objective (left) vs. maximally subjective (right) construal; after Verhagen (2007: 61–2) and also summarised in Harrison et al. (2014: 10)

The objective construal represented on the left can be compared with the experience of a particularly absorbing play at the theatre, in which the attention of the conceptualisers (the audience) is entirely focused on the characters and their situation. When awareness of our viewing self is at a minimum in this way, a construal

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can be described as maximally objective. Alternatively, when made aware of our role as conceptualisers – or, equally, the role of an author or fictional character as narrator or focaliser – the construal is subjective, as in that represented on the right. Linguistic construals of fictional worlds vary in their degree of objectivity/ subjectivity by drawing attention to the object or subject of conceptualisation to differing extents, and at different points during reading. The kinds of linguistic choices responsible for this dimension of construal include the use of pronouns and tense to indicate a particular point of view and more subtle choices of speech and thought presentation. The various construals possible and their effects are well attested in discussions of point of view and focalisation in stylistics and narratology (see Herman 2009 for a summary). Considered together as part of a unified model, these dimensions offer a framework for discussing the different ways in which readers conceptualise fictional worlds. This approach is compatible with the analysis enabled using Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) and, through its focus on linguistic structures, enriches the discussion of text-worlds at a micro-stylistic level (Nuttall 2014). In addition, this framework allows us to talk about this conceptualisation as a dynamic process during reading, and one that occurs at both the production and reception ends of communicative events (Hart 2011). In every text, a distinction can be made between a writer construal – the specific textual choices chosen by a writer; the way they have construed and presented the fictional world, and a reader construal – the way individuals respond to these textual cues and draw on their own schematic knowledge in order to conceptualise the fictional world (Harrison 2017a, 2017b). In practice, the two construals are difficult to distinguish; as emphasised in Text World Theory, the construction of a text-world is best seen as an online “negotiation” between discourse participants (Gavins 2007: 20). However, this distinction remains a useful one for stylistics, particularly when discussing multiple readings of the same text. First and second readings of a text represent the same writer construal, but different reader construals. Viewed in this way, the different experiences that the same text can generate on first and second readings may be best accounted for in terms of the dimensions of construal, and may in turn provide insight into these mechanisms themselves. In Section 8.3, we introduce a text for which first and second readings seem to carry significant differences. The analysis in Section 8.4 addresses how construal of the fictional world presented varies between readings of the text.



8.3

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Margaret Atwood’s “The Freeze-Dried Groom”

In “The Freeze-Dried Groom”, we encounter a misogynistic and morally dubious protagonist, Sam, who is preoccupied with imagining his own post-mortem. The narrative is framed through third-person narration and describes a day in Sam’s life. It begins with his car breaking down (Extract 8.1) and with his wife Gwyneth announcing that she wants a divorce over breakfast. The narrative then follows Sam as he goes to work (a counterfeit antiques business; though it is implied that this functions as a cover for drug dealing), before he attends a storage unit auction in order to purchase merchandise for his antiques shop. In the third storage unit, he discovers that someone has stored all of their wedding paraphernalia, complete with a mummified bride groom (Extract 8.2). Throughout the story, there are a number of hypothetical text-worlds (Gavins 2007) in which Sam imagines what would happen following his demise: he pictures, for example, his post-mortem, and plays out scenarios where the police are questioning his wife and colleague about their final conversation (Extract 8.3). The story ends with Sam alone in a hotel room with the “bride”, who admits to having murdered her former fiancé and placed him in storage. Sam speculates about his fate as we are assured that “Nobody knows where he is” (Atwood 2014a: 165). The story is one of nine “wicked tales” in Stone Mattress: the collection details stories that are not “from the realm of mundane works and days”, but instead reside in “the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago teller of tales” (Atwood 2014a). Critics have commented on Atwood’s adaptation of tropes from Horror and the Gothic in Stone Mattress, and the “vivid” scenes and caricatures which “run to a general pattern” in the wider collection (Le Guin 2014). The simultaneously “macabre” and “humorous” reading experience invited by its world and characters (Gill 2014: n.p.) and their shared focus on topics of “aging and mortality” (Beattie 2014: n.p.) are well exemplified in “The Freeze-Dried Groom”. Further, the seemingly unfinished nature of this particular story means that it seems to deliberately invite a second reading. Indeed, following the publication of the collection, Margaret Atwood set up a fan fiction competition, via the fan fiction website Wattpad, where she invited readers to continue the story. Contributors were asked to consider the following questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What does Sam really do for a living? What is Gwyneth’s perspective on Sam and his shady lifestyle? Could the woman Sam meets be a serial killer? What happens after the last scene of the story? Why did Gwyneth tell Sam to leave? (Atwood 2014b)

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Such questions invite readers to re-conceptualise, or re-construe, various aspects of the fictional world. Some Wattpad contributors responded to Questions 2 and 5 by re-construing the narrative through Gwyneth’s perspective, and others similarly (possibly in response to Question 3) reconceptualised the narrative through the “bride’s” perspective. In order to answer these questions, a closer look at, or physical re-reading, of the textual cues in the original text is invited. Whether aware of this competition or not, this story is one which seems to invite a re-reading as part of its experience. Furthermore, these readings are ones that are likely to differ significantly, given the acquired knowledge of the eponymous “Freeze-Dried Groom” revealed in the latter half of the story. A cognitive stylistic analysis of the experience of this story, we argue, would need to distinguish between, and account for, these readings. The following analysis presents an attempt to do so using concepts from Cognitive Grammar. 8.4 Analysis For the purposes of this analysis, we will focus on just three short extracts from the story. The following two extracts are the opening of the story (Extract 8.1) and the reveal scene, in which Sam opens the storage unit he has just purchased for the first time (Extract 8.2). Extract 8.1 The next thing is that his car won’t start. It’s the fault of the freak cold snap, caused by the polar vortex – a term that’s already spawned a bunch of online jokes by stand-up comics about their wives’ vaginas. Sam can relate to that. Before she finally cut him off, Gwyneth was in the habit of changing the bottom sheet to signal that at long last she was about to dole him out some thin-lipped, watery, begrudging sex on a pristine surface. Then she’d change the sheet again right afterwards to reinforce the message that he, Sam, was a germ-ridden, stain-creating, flea-bitten waste of her washing machine. She’d given up faking it – no more cardboard moaning – so the act would take place in eerie silence, enclosed in a pink, sickly sweet aura of fabric softener. It seeped into his pores, that smell. Under the circumstances he’s amazed that he was able to function at all, much less with alacrity. But he never ceases to surprise himself. Who knows what he’ll get up to next? Not him. * This is how the day begins. (Atwood 2014a: 135–136)



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Extract 8.2 Right at the front there’s a white wedding dress with a skirt like an enormous bell and big puffed sleeves. It’s swathed in a clear plastic zip bag, as if it just came from the store. It doesn’t even look worn. There’s a pair of new-looking white satin shoes tucked into the bottom of the bag. There are white elbow-length buttoned gloves pinned to the sleeves. They look creepy: they underscore the absence of a head; though there’s a white veil, he sees now, wrapped around the shoulders of the dress like a stole, with a chaplet of white artificial flowers and seed pearls attached to it. […] “Crap,” says Sam out loud. His breath unfurls in a white plume because of the cold; maybe it’s the cold that accounts for the lack of smell. Now that he notices, there is in fact a faint odour, a little sweet – though that could be the cake – and a little like dirty socks, with an undertone of dog food that’s been around too long. Sam wraps his scarf across his nose. He’s feeling slightly nauseous. This is crazy. Whoever parked the groom in here must be a dangerous loony, some kind of sick fetishist. He should leave right now. He should call the cops. No, he shouldn’t. He wouldn’t want them looking into his final unit, number 56 – the one he hasn’t opened yet. The groom’s wearing the full uniform: the black formal suit, the white shirt, the cravat, a withered carnation in the buttonhole. Is there a top hat? Not that Sam can see, but he guesses it must be somewhere – in the luggage, he bets – because whoever did this went for the complete set. Except the bride: there isn’t any bride. The man’s face looks desiccated, as if the guy has dried out like a mummy. He’s enclosed in several layers of clear plastic; garment bags, maybe, like the one containing the dress. Yes, there are the zippers: packing tape has been applied carefully along the seams. Inside the clear layers the groom has a wavery look, as if he’s underwater. The eyes are shut, for which Sam is grateful. How was that done? Aren’t corpse eyes always open? Krazy Glue? Scotch tape? He has the odd sense that this man is familiar, like someone he knows, but that can’t possibly be true.(Atwood 2014a: 152–155)

8.4.1 Atmosphere and tone A striking feature of this story’s experience is the distinctive quality of its fictional world. Reviewers of the novel on Goodreads (2014–2016) describe this story as “sublimely creepy” (Julie 2014), “morbid and disturbing” (Althea Ann 2014), and the story collection as a whole as “dark” (Veronica 2014; Annet 2016). Stockwell (2014) has distinguished between two related aspects of the felt “ambience” of

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fictional worlds: “atmosphere” and “tone”, where the former concerns a perceived quality of the world described, and the latter, the perceived quality of a narrating voice (2014: 361). This section builds on this previous account by modelling the way in which this experience changes between readings of the same text. On reading this story for the first time, a prominent feature of its fictional world is the references to COLD which recur in its opening (see Extract 8.1) and throughout. Situated fifth in the collection, references to “the freak cold snap” and “the polar vortex” in the opening paragraph of this story can be linked to the ice storm which traps the main character in her home in the first story “Alphinland” and which reappears as the setting for the following two interconnected stories. (These references also continue in the stories which follow “The Freeze-Dried Groom”, most notably in the Arctic setting for the title story “Stone Mattress”). Such cues can be seen to act as reference points in an inter-textual reference point chain which readers may attend to across and between the stories. Adapting the Cognitive Grammar model (see Section 8.2.2) these reference points can be seen to activate a range of targets within a developing dominion of reader knowledge, which may include knowledge of cold climates, personal and cultural (e.g. metaphorical) associations, and inter-textual knowledge of other fictional situations and characters in this collection. These targets will vary in terms of “centrality” (Langacker 2008: 57), or strength of association. Targets such as the vengeful and sometimes murderous female characters found within this cold setting in this collection, for example, may be weakly activated by these reference points for some readers. It is by scanning between such loosely connected reference points across the collection, or drawing connections between specific textual cues – the weather, the women and the murders carried out or imagined – that a sense of the “dark” world in which these stories take place is progressively enriched. Other references to MARRIAGE and DIVORCE in this story (e.g. “groom”, “wives”, “marriage is over” in the first two pages) invite readers to focus relevant schematic knowledge and so draw inferences about the characters and their relationship. In doing so, readers fill in gaps in the relatively unspecific construal of “Sam” and “Gwyneth”, and later, the antiques business that Sam runs, according to the “principle of minimal departure” (Ryan 1991: 51). However, not all such knowledge will contribute directly (or equally) to the text-world. Some of the targets cued by reference points appear less immediately relevant than others, and remain in the dominion, or “periphery of consciousness” (Croft and Cruse 2004: 50) during reading. The foregrounded title of this story, prominent as a result of its semantic deviation, may trigger other less central targets, for example relating to FOOD STORAGE and that which it negates, DECAY, which are not realised through further reference points in the opening of the story and so fade from attention (see Stockwell [2009: 182] on attentional “neglect”). Though not



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feeding directly into our conceptualisation of the fictional world, such unrealised targets, or “secondary schemata” (Semino 1997: 172), can be said to contribute to a cumulative sense of “atmosphere” during reading (Stockwell 2014). In our conceptualisations of this fictional world, attention is drawn very strongly to the focalising character in a highly subjective construal (see Section 8.2.3). The combination of third-person pronouns with deictic expressions such as “The next thing”, “relate to that”, “that smell”, “This is how the day begins”, give the impression that we are accessing Sam’s consciousness directly, through free indirect discourse (see Leech and Short 2007), while rich uses of modality and evaluative language (e.g. “finally”, “thin-lipped, watery, begrudging sex”, “He’s amazed”) further increase the prominence of this conceptualiser and his negative, misogynistic attitudes. The effect of this construal for the authors of this chapter was strong dislike and distancing from this focaliser, which continues throughout the story. In the Cognitive Grammar account of perspective, subjective construal has the effect of drawing attention away from the object of conceptualisation – in this case, the fictional situation Sam focalises. By inviting readers to focus their attention on this character, the cumulative experiential effects of the reference points we are invited to process: the death and decay that persist in the background, are more likely to be attributed to the “tone” of this character (Stockwell 2014), as opposed to the nature of the world in which he is situated. A prominent scene in this story occurs just over halfway through the narrative when Sam discovers the dead groom of the title. This scene, the start of which is seen in Extract 8.2, can be seen to exemplify a “twist in the tale” as discussed by Emmott (2003). This scene takes readers by surprise through a departure from the default assumptions that they have been invited to make drawing on their schematic knowledge – in particular, about the kinds of things that are typically stored in storage units. However, unlike the “plot reversals” that Emmott identifies in the texts she analyses, the reveal in this story does not act as a denouement, prompting us to repair a previously “erroneous” conceptualisation (see also Gavins [2000] on “world-repair”). Rather, this scene defamiliarises the mundane situations conceptualised so far and challenges readers to “refamiliarise” this fictional world, or “discern, delimit, or develop the novel meanings suggested by the foregrounded passage” (Miall and Kuiken 1994: 394). This refamiliarisation involves a reconstrual of the textual cues processed on a first reading. A re-reading of this text sees a shift in the focusing prompted by textual cues and the specificity of the situation conceptualised (Section 8.2.1). Acquired knowledge of the freeze-dried groom scene enriches the dominion of targets cued by references to cold. Its potential significance as a metaphor for the characters’ failed relationship and Sam’s potentially sinister (and arguably well-deserved) fate are now activated by the title and other references throughout, for example “dead

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as November” (Atwood 2014a: 141), “Freeze your nuts off ” (2014a: 141), “locked into the virtual refrigerator” (2014a: 144), “silent witness to his frozen-fingered manoeuvres” (2014a: 145) and “Bitch out there” (2014a: 146). These textual cues now contribute to a closely knit intra-textual reference chain, which, by repeatedly focusing specific knowledge of the scene later to come, create foreshadowing and a sense of inevitability that did not exist (for the authors) on a first reading. In addition, this reconstrual involves a shift in prominence for features of the fictional world (Section 8.2.2). Words and phrases that were given little or no attention on a first reading – or which were “buried” (Emmott and Alexander 2014) – now gain in prominence as reference points in new chains. References such as those seen in Table 8.1 might now be seen to be cohesively linked by their common activation of related domains such as STORAGE, CLEANLINESS and SMELL. As well as feeding into our conceptualisation of the marriage described, such cues bring to mind and progressively enrich a conceptualisation of the freeze-dried groom scene we know is yet to come. At another point in this story, Sam imagines “himself lying on a mortuary slab while a forensic analyst – invariably a hot blonde, though wearing a lab coat over her firm, no-nonsense lady-doctor breasts – probes his corpse with delicate but practised fingers” (Atwood 2014a: 139). Knowledge of this scene, and others encountered during a first reading, may also be activated in the dominion of such reference points (e.g. “bottom sheet”, “pristine surface”). Table 8.1  Intra-textual reference point chains across Extracts 8.1 and 8.2 Storage

Cleanliness/Decay

Smell

Extract 8.1

“freeze-dried”; “bottom sheet”; “sheet”; “cardboard moaning”; “eerie silence”; “enclosed”

“freeze-dried”, “watery”; “germ-ridden”; “stain-creating”; “flea-bitten”; “washing machine”; “fabric softener”; “pristine surface”

“a pink sickly sweet aura of fabric softener”

Extract 8.2

“swathed in a clear plastic zip bag”;“luggage”; “enclosed in several layers of clear plastic”; “packing tape”; “scotch tape”

“new looking”;“dirty socks”; “desiccated”; “wavery look, as if underwater”

“a faint odour”; “a little sweet, a little like dirty socks with an undertone of dog food that’s been around too long”

The felt consequence of this reconstrual, we would suggest, is an overall increase in attention devoted to the fictional world. The greater density of the reference point chains which readers are invited to attend to, and the richness of the dominion they activate, might be predicted to involve greater allocation of cognitive resources as



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readers attempt to refamiliarise this fictional world. This macro-level effect can be described as an increasingly objective construal of the fictional world, or one in which attention is focused less on the focaliser: his attitudes and tone, and more on making sense of the situation he describes. 8.4.2 Cohesion and coherence In his discussion of how reference point chains impact on literary texture, Stockwell (2009) argues that cohesion and coherence are interrelated phenomena; an idea that goes against the differentiation of the categories as outlined in systemicfunctional models (see Halliday and Hasan 1976; Hasan 1985). Instead, Stockwell (2009: 181) argues that there are “coherent associations” in language that provide a more “psychologically plausible” account of how readers make connections between parts of a text during the reading process. Coherent associations are patterns and conceptual relationships within a text that are not simply dependent on textual links and formal inter-sentential connections, but are additionally connections that are generated through semantic and experiential associations triggered within a text. The previous section of analysis (8.4.1) suggested that the coherent associations experienced by readers of “The Freeze-Dried Groom” are likely to vary between readings of the story, with the intra-textual reference point chains between scenes acknowledged by readers particularly on a second reading of the text. Another significant experience of reading this short story, and which fragments the narrative coherence across multiple readings, is the movement between the main story and Sam’s hypothetical musings on what happens after his death. Early in the story Sam informs readers that in order to “keep himself under control he slides back into the mind-game he often plays with himself: suppose he was a murder victim” (Atwood 2014a: 139). These hypothetical or imagined “world-switches” (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007; Chapter 1 this volume) occur throughout the story, and often feature dialogue from an imagined police interview with other characters, as in Extract 8.3 below. Extract 8.3 “Drive safe” says Ned. He texted me to send the van. That was at 2:36, I know ‘cause I looked at the clock, the art deco one right over there, see? Keeps perfect time. Then, I dunno, he just vanished. Did he have any enemies? I just work here. Though he did say …yeah, told me there’d been a fight with his wife. That would be Gwyneth. Don’t know her that well myself. At breakfast, walked out

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on her. You could see it coming. Cramped his style, never gave him enough space. Yeah jealous, possessive, he told me that. She thought the sun shone out his ass, couldn’t get enough of him. Would she, did she ever …Violent? Naw, he never said that. Except for the time she threw a wine bottle at him, empty one. But sometimes they just snap, women like that. Lose it. Go nuts. He entertains himself with the discovery of his own body. Naked or clothed? Inside or out? Knife or gun? Alone? (Atwood 2014a: 149–150)

In this extract, Sam has just said goodbye to his colleague, Ned, before travelling on to the storage unit. After a direct speech construction in which Ned instructs Sam to “Drive safe”, there is an immediate shift to Sam’s speculation on the events following his hypothetical death. The switch in construal to Sam’s “mind-game” is graphologically signposted through the use of italics: “‘Drive safe’ says Ned. He texted me to send the van.” The direct speech continues, and still belongs to Ned, although the other formal speech presentation markers (inverted commas, reporting clauses) are dropped. It is clear that, through a number of stylistic signposts, a police interrogation is being imagined. Ned replies with highly specific details (“That was at 2.36, I know ‘cause I looked at the clock, the art deco one right over there, see?”), and increasingly specific strings of information (“Cramped his style, never gave him enough space […] She thought the sun shone out his ass, couldn’t get enough of him”) that readers can connect to wider knowledge of police interview scripts. It seems significant that only one half of this interrogation is presented, however  – with the exception of the foregrounded interrogative “Did he have any enemies?”. The remaining police questions are suggested through Ned’s topic shifts, discourse markers, and phrasal mirroring (“Yeah jealous, possessive, he told me that […] Would she, did she ever …Violent? Naw, he never said that”). The emphasis on Ned’s direct speech within this world-switch means that Ned is featured as the main figure in the scene. As a named, speaking character he has “definiteness” and “empathetic recognisability” and is therefore prominent (see Section 8.2.2) while the unspecified police interrogator is backgrounded in attention. The return to Sam’s focalisation at the end of the extract is marked through the removal of italics, and the list of rhetorical questions where he considers alternative specific details (“Naked or clothed? Inside or out? Knife or gun? Alone?”). This list outlines some of the details required for a “whodunit”; although the ambiguity of their presentation supports the view that “The Freeze-Dried Groom” is “almost a spoof of the detective novel” (Maciek, Goodreads 2014). Through the sudden world-switches triggered in this way, and the off-stage characters they profile, Atwood’s story can be seen to complicate readers’ conceptualisation of the fictional world and obscure their understanding of the situation presented. Who is speaking at this point? Is this account of events real or imagined?



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Primed by the questions raised during a first reading, a second reading of this story invites increased attention to the layered perspectives involved in its construal. As argued in Section 8.4.1, a first reading of the story reveals an unlikeable, misogynistic character, presented via a highly subjective construal. What occurs on a second reading, however, is that another conceptualiser  – the unidentified third-person narrator of the story – gains in prominence. While the refamiliarisation process afforded by a re-reading of the text places emphasis on the object of conceptualisation – the fictional world being described – at certain points in the narrative (e.g. through the reference point connections outlined in Table 8.1), we would argue that a re-reading of “The Freeze-Dried Groom” simultaneously subjectifies the narrative perspective, by increasing attention to the third-person narrator. This shifting distribution of attention between the object and subject of conceptualisation can be represented as in Figure  8.3 below. In this figure, the thickest lines represent the prominent focus of attention, and the dotted lines denote the least prominent aspect of this construal. Fictional world

Focaliser (Sam)

Third-person narrator (?)

Figure 8.3  Second reading and impact on construal: refamiliarising the fictional world (left); identifying an external conceptualiser (right)

The presence of this narrator-conceptualiser in certain parts of the story is signposted through particular formulaic phrases that follow the schematic template of a police account and that appear outside of the context of the world-switches of Sam’s “mind-game”. In fact, these appear throughout the narrative, to the extent that the whole story may be reframed as a police report. Extract 8.1, for example, opens with the framing sentence: “The next thing is that his car won’t start”. The temporal marker (“next”) establishes a list of events from the outset. Two paragraphs later, this report framing structure is reinforced through the sentence: “This is how the day begins”. These are phrases that, we would argue, are

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acknowledged on the “periphery of consciousness” (Croft and Cruse 2004: 50) on a first reading, but which are reconceptualised as more significant on a second reading. Considered alongside the unspecified, off-stage interrogator in Extract  8.3, coherent associations begin to emerge. We question, for example, whether this report-style account suggests that this second conceptualiser is, in fact, a detective outlining Sam’s movements. The added layer of conceptualisation (see Figure  8.3) means that readers view the text through another subjective lens on a reconstrual of this fictional world. Our awareness of this subjective filter is reinforced by the unflattering presentation of Sam’s thoughts and actions that mark him out as an unlikeable character, and further complicates the tone created at particular points in the story. Readers can infer sarcasm, for example, in the use of particular emphasis (“His partner is already there, in the back, engaged in the usual occupation, which is furniture forgery. No: furniture enhancement”, Atwood 2014a: 146); rhetorical derision (“Who knows what he’ll get up to next? Not him”, 2014a: 135) and thinlyveiled mockery (“Don’t be a dickhead, Sam, he tells himself. You’re losing your cool”, 2014a: 140). Someone who is not predisposed to like Sam would seem to be narrating this story. Such textual cues for recognition of this critical narrative perspective, we would argue, are more likely to be noticed during a second reading of this story. It has been suggested that readers often conceptualise simultaneous perspectives in reading (Emmott 1997) – particularly in response to free indirect discourse, where readers may need to “backtrack” to discern point of view (Bray 2007: 46). Attention to the different implied conceptualisers in “The Freeze-Dried Groom” as described above may nevertheless require additional cognitive effort compared to attention to Sam’s focalising perspective alone. One hypothesis is that this attentional processing is more likely to be possible during a second reading, when fewer cognitive resources need to be devoted to basic propositional content (Millis 1995; Millis, Simon and TenBroek 1998). The presence of another conceptualiser also complicates how we process Sam’s “mind-game” world-switches. As discussed earlier in this section, on first reading, sections such as Extract 8.3 are likely to be interpreted as Sam’s own hypothetical imaginings in the present (as a “modal-world” as opposed to a “deictic worldswitch” [Gavins 2007]). On re-reading, however, there is an increased likelihood of readers attributing sections of direct speech and thought to that of another character in a future world-switch after Sam’s disappearance. This reconceptualisation of accounts lends validity to the perspective of this new conceptualiser; we are following a story recounted by a narrator who is clearly more omniscient than Sam. In Cognitive Grammar terms, this means that these scenes change from representing a “projected reality” to becoming part of the “actual reality” (Langacker 2008; see also Langacker 1999) of the text-world. In other words,

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the level of “fictive simulation” (Langacker 2008; Dabrowska and Divjak 2015) alters so that these world-switches become a continuation of the narrative rather than auxiliary, unrealised events. Fittingly, at the end of Stone Mattress, readers are invited to reflect on such varying levels of fictivity: in the Afterword to the collection, Atwood argues that “[w]e may safely assume that all tales are fiction, whereas a ‘story’ might well be a true story about that we usually agree to call ‘real life’” (2014a: 309). It seems the clues, or the “exposition” (Sternberg 1978) to Sam’s suggested demise, were there all along. Arguably, “The Freeze-Dried Groom” fulfils some of the criteria for a “garden-path” narrative (Sternberg 1978; Emmott 2003; Tobin 2009). This foreshadowing of events emphasises the inevitably of Sam’s demise, supporting the view that the collection as a whole brings “to the fore the utter helplessness with which many are resigned to end their lives” (Gill 2014: n.p.). 8.5

The importance of re-reading

This chapter has demonstrated how Cognitive Grammar can be used as a cognitive stylistic tool to describe the distinctive conceptualisations cued by particular linguistic choices. Adapting this cognitive linguistic framework for the analysis of literature, it was argued that the dimensions of construal, and the equivalent process of reconstrual, can be used to systematically analyse the ways in which readers might enrich and adjust their conceptualisations in response to the same textual cues on different readings. In demonstration of this analytical approach, it was argued that the experience of “The Freeze-Dried Groom” is characterised by significant contrast in its first and second readings. While a first reading of the story allows a sense of atmosphere for its fictional world alongside a distinctive tone for its focaliser, an attempt to refamiliarise the fictional world on a second reading invites greater attention to the chains of associations that underpin the narrative and to the multiple layers of conceptualisation involved in the narrative’s point of view. Investigation of the experience of re-reading and its underlying cognitive processing raises a number of questions for future research. While our discussion here has largely relied upon our introspective experiences of this text, reader response methods could allow for a better understanding of experiences of fictional worlds during re-reading. In addition, we propose a need for further investigation of texts which surprise readers, or which feature a twist or reveal (e.g., see Harrison and Nuttall 2018). Unlike previous research that has examined plot reversals (Emmott 2003) and world-repairs (Gavins 2000), it seems that the reconstrual invited by this ambiguous story, and perhaps by other similar texts, involves a conceptualisation

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of a fictional world that is not resolved or corrected as a result of the reveal, but rather gets increasingly unclear. Understanding our processing of foregrounded and backgrounded textual cues the second time around  – or the processes involved in our refamiliarisation of discourse (Miall and Kuiken 1994) – would seem to have wider significance for stylistic accounts of textual interpretation.

References Atwood, M. 2014a. The Freeze-Dried Groom. In Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales, 135–165. London: Virago, Bloomsbury. Atwood, M. 2014b. About the Contest. Wattpad, (4 January 2017). Bartlett, F. C. 1932. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beattie, S. W. 2014. Author returns with tales of mortality; Righteous anger, biting wit hallmarks of tone in collection. The Gazette [Montreal, Que], 22 September 2014. Bray, J. 2007. The ‘dual voice’ of free indirect discourse: a reading experiment. Language and Literature 16(1): 37–52.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947007072844 Croft, W. and Cruse, D. A. 2004. Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803864

Dabrowska, E. and Divjak, E. 2015. Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110292022 Dixon, P., Bortolussi, M., Twilley, L. C. and Leung, A. 1993. Literary processing and interpretation: Towards empirical foundations. Poetics 22: 5–33. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(93)90018-C

Emmott, C. 1997. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Emmott, C. 2003. Reading for Pleasure: A cognitive poetic analysis of ‘twists in the tale’ and other plot reversals in narrative texts. In Cognitive Poetics in Practice, J. Gavins and G. Steen (eds), 145–159. London: Routledge. Emmott, C., and Alexander, M. 2014. Foregrounding, Burying and Plot Construction. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley (eds), 329–344. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237031.025 Fillmore, C. 1985. Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di Semantica 6(2): 222–254. Gavins, J. 2000. Absurd tricks with bicycle frames in the text world of The Third Policeman. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 15. Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory an Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gill, I. 2014. A matter of perspective. Financial Express [New Delhi, India], 16 November 2014. Goodreads. 2014–2016. Community reviews of Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (Althea Ann, Annet, Julie, Kinga, Maciek, Veronica) (1 December 2016).

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Hamilton, C. 2003. A cognitive grammar of ‘Hospital Barge’ by Wilfred Owen. In Cognitive Poetics in Practice, J. Gavins and G. Steen (eds), 55–65. London: Routledge. Hakemulder, F. 2004. Foregrounding and its effect on readers’ perception. Discourse Processes 38(2): 193–218.  ​https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326950dp3802_3 Halliday, M. A. K. and Hasan, R. 1976. Cohesion in English, London: Longman. Harrison, C. 2017a. Cognitive Grammar in Contemporary Fiction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ​ https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.26

Harrison, C. 2017b. Finding Elizabeth: Construing memory in Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey. Journal of Literary Semantics 46(2): 131–151.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2017-0008 Harrison, C. and Nuttall, L. 2018 .Re-reading in stylistics. Language and Literature 27(3): 176–195. Harrison, C. Nuttall, L., Stockwell, P. and Yuan, W. (eds). 2014. Cognitive Grammar in Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.17 Hart, C. 2011. Moving beyond metaphor in the Cognitive Linguistic Approach to CDA: Construal operations in immigration discourse. In Critical Discourse Studies in Context and Cognition, C. Hart (ed.), 171–192. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ​ https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.43.09har

Hasan, R. 1985. The texture of a text. In Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective, M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan (eds), 70–96. Melbourne: Deakin University Press. Herman, D. 2009. Beyond voice and vision: Cognitive grammar and focalization theory. In Point of View, Perspective, and Focalization: Modeling Mediation in Narrative, P. Hühn, W. Schmid, and J. Schönert (eds), 119–142. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Hoeken, H. and van Vliet, M. 2000. Suspense, curiosity, and surprise: How discourse structure influences the affective and cognitive processing of a story. Poetics 27(4): 277–286. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(99)00021-2

Langacker, R. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 1, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume 2, Decriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Langacker, R. 1999. Virtual reality. Studies in the Linguistics Sciences 29(2): 77–193. Langacker, R. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001

Le Guin, U. 2014. Stone Mattress: Nine Tales, by Margaret Atwood. The Financial Times, 12 September 2014, (1 April 2016). Leech, G. and Short, M. 2007. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson Longman. Miall, D. and Kuiken, D. 1994. Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect: Response to literary stories. Poetics 22: 389–407.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(94)00011-5 Millis, K. K. 1995. Encoding discourse perspective during the reading of a literary text. Poetics 23 (3): 235–253.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(94)00028-5 Millis, K. K., Simon, S., and TenBroek, N. S. 1998. Resource allocation during the rereading of scientific texts. Memory and Cognition 26(2): 232–246.  ​https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201136 Nuttall, L. 2014. Constructing a text world for The Handmaid’s Tale. In Cognitive Grammar in Literature, C. Harrison, L. Nuttall, P. Stockwell, and W. Yuan (eds), 83–99. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  ​https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.17.06nut

154 Chloe Harrison and Louise Nuttall Nuttall, L. 2015. Attributing minds to vampires in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. Language and Literature 24(1): 23–39.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947014561834 Nuttall, L. 2018. Mind Style and Cognitive Grammar: Language and Worldview in Speculative Fiction. London: Bloomsbury. Prieto-Pablos, J. A. 1998. The paradox of suspense. Poetics 26(2): 99–113. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-422X(98)00014-X

Ryan, M.-L. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Schank, R. and Abelson, R. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding. An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Semino, E. 1997. Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London; New York: Longman. Sternberg, M. 1978. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Stockwell, P. 2009. Texture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stockwell, P. 2014. Atmosphere and tone. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley (eds), 360–375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237031.027

Tobin, V. 2009. Cognitive bias and the poetics of surprise. Language and Literature 18(2): 155–172.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947009105342 Ungerer, F. and Schmid, H.-J. 2006. An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics. 2nd edn. Harlow: Pearson-Longman. Verhagen, A. 2007. Construal and perspectivization. In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, D. Geeraerts and H. Cuyckens (eds), 48–81. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman.

Part 3

Fictional worlds in context

Chapter 9

Immersive reading and the unnatural text-worlds of “Dead Fish” Jessica Norledge

In this chapter I present a Text World Theory analysis of Adam Marek’s emotionally charged dystopian short story, “Dead Fish”, which takes for its focus a possible future world recovering from environmental disaster. Drawing upon naturalistic reader response data in support of my own introspective analysis, I investigate the estranging experience of reading this particular narrative and discuss the readerly process of interpreting its defamiliarising world-building elements. Analytical focus is placed upon the responses of a purpose-built reading group (comprising four postgraduate research students from the University of Sheffield), who compare their conceptualisation of particular entities within the text-world, and reflect upon their understanding of such entities as “unnatural”. Through a combined application of narratological approaches to unnatural narration (Alber and Heinze 2013) and a Text World Theory perspective (Gavins 2007; Werth 1999), I investigate how readers respond to unnatural narration and draw several connections between readerly immersion and the emotional experience of reading unnatural texts. Keywords: Text World Theory, reader response, dystopian short stories, Adam Marek, unnatural narration, immersion

9.1

Introduction

Writing about readerly preferences for closed, open or “ajar” story endings, Adam Marek, author of the focus text for this chapter, argues that “one of the most important things you need to do in a story, ideally from the first line, is to create a need to know in your reader” (Marek 2014: n.p); a “need”, which is here understood as a desire to know not only the ending of a text but also the motivations of particular characters and the contextual factors which determine specific actions within the text-world. The reader’s “need to know” should ideally escalate during reading, as

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a result of indirect world-building and withheld function-advancing information (Gavins 2007; Werth 1999), which teases the reader towards the story’s climax without “having to spell it out” (Marek 2014: n.p). Such teasing, Marek argues, encourages the reader to pursue a particular narrative, with the desire to know the ending of a story and decipher the more estranging elements of its text-worlds, driving a reader’s emotional engagement with, and immersion in, the text itself. The “Dead Fish” reader’s “need to know” is of central interest in Sections 9.2 and 9.3 as I explore how readers engage with the ambiguities of the short story and collectively interpret the unnatural world-building elements and functionadvancing propositions that lead the discourse to its equivocal close. As a dystopian short story, “Dead Fish” pivots on such textual ambiguities, depicting a world that is somewhat refracted from the ideal reader’s real-world present and presenting unknown world-building elements as if they were familiar. The narrative, as a result, is defamiliarising and invites what Suvin refers to as “cognitive estrangement” (Suvin 1979). The notion of an estranging discourse is rooted in Russian Formalism and comes, in part, from Shklovsky’s (1917) use of the term ostrenenie (later developed by Ernst Bloch [1962, 1972]). Ostrenenie is translated by Lemon and Reis (1965) to mean “defamiliarisation” and describes the process of “making strange” (see Suvin 1979: 6–7; Bogdanov 2005). “Dead Fish” manipulates this concept, presenting a world that is very much recognisable as an extension of the contemporary reader’s discourse situation but that is also made “strange” through exaggerated or obscured references to commonplace objects or events, such as the theft of a single fish. In this way the “known” is made to feel unfamiliar, adding to the experience of estrangement as echoed by the Brechtian (1973) theory of Verfremdung (alienation). The theft of the eponymous “dead fish” is the key narrative event within the text as the reader follows a crime chase between a young boy, named Rupi, and a group of police officers. Whilst following the crime chase, the reader is directed to observe three other interconnecting events, each of which present defamiliarising visions of future life: a mother trying to purchase the now stolen fish; a couple in the midst of an affair; and a poverty-stricken family trying to stave off starvation on the edges of a city. It is only by moving through each of these text-worlds that the reader can conceptualise the world as a whole, which, as a result of bombing and environmental decay, is polluted and overrun by a carnivorous form of green algae, fungi and disease-carrying spores. As will be discussed in 9.2, these events are recounted by a homodiegetic narrator who, despite being internal to the storyworld, is seemingly omniscient and able to transcend the spatio-temporal boundaries of the fictional world. The identity of the narrator and his role within the text-world is of prominent interest to this chapter as I go on to explore the effect of unnatural narration upon the reader, who, through second-person address, is invited to project into the role of an unnatural narratee, as explored in 9.3.



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So as to further extend my analysis of the above phenomenon, I support my discussion in this chapter with reader response data gathered during a purposebuilt reading group. For the purposes of this research, I invited four PhD students in the School of English at the University of Sheffield to participate in a one-off reading group discussion that focused upon “Dead Fish”. Following Whiteley (2011), I used low-control methods to prioritise “natural validity” (Whiteley 2011: 33; see also Steen 1991) and maintain a relaxed approach to the study. This allowed for a natural reading of the text, as participants could engage in the narrative in a manner and environment comfortable for them and conversation followed the social style of discourse often attributed to book groups (see Fuller 2008; Whiteley 2011: 33). Discussion was participant-led, with conversation developing a natural flow in line with habitual discourse practices. In this way, the particular “preoccupations” of these readers were clearly emphasised and conversation focused more on interpretations of “meaning” and “value” than on purposefully primed narrative features (see Swann and Allington 2009: 248–249). The readers’ “need to know” who or what the narrator was, alongside their desire to identify the ambiguous “we” of which he was part, was central to their discussion (as will be seen in 9.2) and arguably affected their individual immersion in the narrative (as will be discussed in 9.3 and developed in 9.5). I argue that the readers’ understanding of and identification with these characters partially determined their ability to project into the text-world, as they aligned with or distanced themselves from the attitudes and expectations of the implied narratee. This in turn impacted upon the group’s emotional engagement with “Dead Fish”, particularly with regards to the ending of the story, as will be analysed in 9.5. 9.2 Unnatural text-worlds and “Dead Fish” “Dead Fish” was originally published in 2009 for Matter magazine under the title “If Dead Fish Could Blink” and later edited and reprinted as part of Marek’s second short story collection The Stone Thrower (Marek 2012b). The collection contains a variety of narratives that depict estranging visions of the present day alongside startling futuristic worlds, all of which address a range of strange and unusual topics including: a genetically enhanced child militia; a world governed by a superhero dictator; a village ceremony involving toothless sharks; “Sterna’s Syndrome”; cross breeding human orangutans; and a tamogotchi suffering from AIDS. “Dead Fish”, which spans only three pages, zones-in on four interconnected events, each of which presents the vulnerabilities of three familial units as they struggle against the effects of environmental and social disaster. Each of the narrative events (outlined in 9.1) occurs at the same moment in time, on the same

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day of an unknown year. The events are spatially distinct and involve different sets of enactors, yet combine to present a unique vision of a cruel and dying future world. Throughout the story, each of the five narrative strands moves into and out of focus in relation to the primary crime chase, presenting five distinct text-world locations which share the same temporal parameters. Despite such events being presented in a simple chronological order, the narrative is “de-naturalized” by the first-person “simultaneous” present-tense narration (see Richardson 2002: 53; also Cohn 1999: 96–108), which presents each textual event as it is occurring. “Dead Fish” therefore constitutes an anti-mimetic narrative (see Richardson 2006): not only is it presented in the “fictional present” (Cohn 1999: 106), but also the narrator is able to recount, in detail, each spatially distinct event, even whilst occupying a completely disparate spatial location. As an example of homodiegetic, Category A narration (Simpson 1993), such omniscience is notably unnatural, as the narrator is also an internal enactor within the text-world itself and should logically only have access to his own thoughts and spatio-temporal environment. Richardson (2015: 202) examines the relationship between such anti-mimetic first-person perspectives when discussing the alternating first-person/first-person plural narrator in Conrad’s (1897) The Nigger of the Narcissus, who appears to be both an omniscient form of consciousness and also a character aboard the Narcissus (a merchant marine vessel). He argues, “if the narrator is a character on the ship, he cannot enter the minds of others or report conversations he has not observed; if he is omniscient, he is not a participant in the text’s story world” (Richardson 2015: 202). This poses some interesting questions about the narrative voice in “Dead Fish”, as the narrator most certainly acts as an omniscient voice, with access to the minds of other enactors, yet firmly positions himself as being internal to the text-world, thereby violating, in Heinze’s (2008) terms, the mimetic epistemology of first-person narration. In addition to posing such contradictions in terms of the narration itself, the narrator is equally ambiguous as a text-world enactor. He remains unnamed throughout the narrative and my use of masculine pronouns is reflective only of my own interpretation; the narrator’s gender, or lack thereof, is unspecified throughout. In addition to his ambiguous identity, the narrator is also ontologically equivocal, both in terms of his species and his overall vital status – seeming at once to be both dead and alive. He has the ability to project the thoughts and indirect speech of each text-world enactor and can move between the individual text-worlds at great speed, so much so that the city around him “blurs” (2012a: 12). He is of questionable size, being able to “slide” (“slide with me down the seam of Alice’s long jacket” [2012a: 11]) and “skip” (“skip straight over her ankle to her blister-red shoes” [2012a: 11]) over a human body unnoticed, adding additional characteristics of weightlessness and invisibility to my own construal of his



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character. Finally, he also possesses heightened senses, being able to see through windows “too greened up for anyone else to see […] inside” (2012a: 11) and “smell the stolen trout stuffed inside [Rupi’s] jacket” (2012a: 9), both of which distinguish him from the overtly human characters in the text-world. “Dead Fish” is clearly presented, then, by what Iversen (2013: 97) has termed an “unnatural mind” (see also Alber et al. 2010: 119–124). An unnatural mind, he argues, “is a presented consciousness that in its function or realizations violates the rules governing the possible world it is part of in a way that resists naturalization or conventionalization” (Iversen 2013: 97). As previously outlined, the narrator of the story presents several such functions that violate the rules of Marek’s possible world, enacting unnatural material and cognitive processes (e.g. can move at inhuman speed, can see through opaque objects) (see Halliday [1985] for discussion of transitive processes) which cannot be naturalised by the surrounding text-world. Although the text presents a fictional world that is, at its core, science fictional, the world provides no other significant textual cues that suggest the narrator’s behaviour is normal, expected, or a consequence of previous text-world events. The combination of such an unusual narrative voice alongside the narrative’s anti-mimetic timeline arguably identifies “Dead Fish” as being an unnatural narrative. An unnatural narrative, in Richardson’s (2011: 34) terms, is a narrative that contains a number of anti-mimetic features “that conspicuously violat[e] conventions of standard narrative forms” (see also Alber et  al. 2013: 143–144). Alber (2009: 80) further restricts the term to “[denote] physically impossible scenarios and events, that is, impossible by the known laws governing the physical world”. “Dead Fish” clearly fits with such definitions, violating the mimetic conventions of “natural” narrative (Fludernik 2002), both in terms of the narrator’s impossible omniscience and his ontological ambiguity. As Alber et al. (2010: 114) go on to argue, unnatural narratives “may radically deconstruct the anthropomorphic narrator, the traditional human character, and the minds associated with them”. All three of these characteristics are evident in “Dead Fish”, which is not only communicated by a non-traditional, non-human narrator, but goes on to present an equally unnatural set of minds that are similar to the narrative voice. 9.2.1 Conceptualising first-person plural referents The narrator distinguishes himself throughout the narrative as part of a homogenous group of entities referred to by the first-person plural pronouns “we” and “us”. The “we”, in Richardson’s (2015: 201) terms, is “not universal but circumscribed”, denoting an inclusive set of beings that share a similar world-view and ontological status. According to Richardson (2006: 38), “virtually no first person plural narrative discloses its membership at the outset; there is always a bit of drama as

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the reader determines just who this ‘we’ is”. This is certainly true of “Dead Fish”; the “we” remain obscure throughout the narrative and are described in various stages of “empathetic recognisability” (Stockwell 2009: 25), appearing at once to be abstractions (“we are aberrations of light, symptoms of exhaustion” [2012a: 14]), animal-like (“perched upon the roofs” [2012a: 13]), and human, in that they can talk and are fully sentient. Stockwell (2009: 24–25) argues that human speakers and hearers (because of their familiarity and activeness) tend to be more figural during reading than animals, objects or abstractions. It is interesting then that the “we” – who move up and down Stockwell’s (2009) empathy scale, becoming more or less empathetically familiar as the narrative progresses – remained a salient “textual attractor” (Stockwell 2009) throughout my own reading of the narrative. Each additional character-advancing proposition used to describe the “we” (e.g. “they are almost as invisible as we are”, “we are all so light we could not break the thinnest neck of the thinnest fungus” [2012a: 13]) only increased my interest in who or what the beings were and added to the estranging experience of reading the narrative. The “we” are also figural in the readings of several professional reviewers who vaguely describe the “we” in terms of the paranormal, as a “bizarre group of seemingly supernatural entities” (Morris 2012: n.p.) who possess an “almost spiritual viewpoint” (Balloch 2012: n.p.). However, the use of words of estrangement within both these examples – “seemingly” and “almost” – exemplifies that such interpretations are speculative and cannot be confirmed within the linguistic parameters of the text. It is the ambiguity of the characters’ ontological status, rather than their being recognisable, that positions the “we” as a strong textual attractor. In this instance, the characters’ “aesthetic distance from the norm” (Stockwell 2009: 25), in that they are both strange and alien referents, outweighs their lack of empathetic recognisability. Such an argument is supported by the discussions of my reading group participants, who were consistently concerned with the identity of the “we”. Throughout their discourse, the participants attributed a variety of impossible mind-styles (Fowler 1977, 1986) to these characters, describing them in terms of supernatural beings (e.g. “ghosts”, “dead policemen”, “ghost spores”); animals (e.g. “birds”); nonhuman entities (e.g. “sentient fungus”, “spores”, “floating semen”, “a weird fungus hive mind”) and posthuman species (e.g. “spore people”). Each of these interpretations is suggestive of an unnatural form of consciousness that is ascribed to the “we” on the basis of personal inferencing. These inferences in turn are based upon each reader’s text-driven discourse-world knowledge, which is triggered by specific linguistic cues in the text. For example, the entities are described as “perched” (P4. “I wondered if they’re like birds”), as “light” (P4. “when I read that […] I’d written like ghosts or something similar to that”) and



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are seemingly non-corporeal (P2. “are we spores are we just like floating”).1 The group’s discussions, like my own reading, produced no decisive interpretations and concluded with a similar sense of uncertainty – “are we a weird fungus hive mind?”, Participant 2 asks, “I just don’t know”. 9.3

Reading unnatural minds

The reader is invited throughout the narrative to align their perspective with the “we” by “imaginatively enacting” the role of implied narratee (see Lahey 2005: 286; also Whiteley 2014: 404) – a process which should prove difficult given the apparent unnaturalness of the characters. However, as can be seen from the participant responses discussed in the previous section, participants shifted between discussing the “we” in terms of an exclusive “they” to discussing the “we” as being inclusive of themselves – “are we spores are we just floating?”, “are we a weird fungus hive mind?”. The group’s reported inclusion in the narrative “we”, suggested by this relational pronoun change, implies that during reading the readers felt their individual perspectives to be aligned with that of the narrator and the narratee. Such an alignment is arguably encouraged as a result of second-person address, which at several points in the narrative shifts between generalised you, fictionalised horizontal address and doubly deictic you (Herman 1994). Herman (1994, 2002) proposes five modalities of textual you, each of which accommodate a different type of narrative address and pivot on a specific use of the second person. His model consists of five types of textual you: (1) generalised you, which refers to a text’s narrator and/ or protagonist through a process of “deictic transfer” (see Margolin 1984, 1986); (2) fictional reference; (3) fictionalised (= horizontal) you, which denotes the address of fictional enactors within the text-world; (4) apostrophic (= vertical) you, which extends beyond the fictional ontological frame of a narrative to address the reader; and (5) doubly deictic you, which denotes an interactive form of address that transcends both the virtuality and the actuality of the reading experience, reaching both fictional enactors and the reader (see Herman 1994: 380–381). Herman is using “virtuality” and “actuality” here to draw a distinction between the text-world (virtuality) and the 1.  Transcription key: P (.) // []

participant pause overlap paralinguistic features

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discourse-world (actuality), suggesting that the use of double deixis, by triggering what is technically a fleeting word-switch, appears to blur the boundary between these ontological levels. I would argue that the use of “you” within the text shifts between generalised you, referring to the text’s narrator, fictionalised horizontal you in the address of the narratee and doubly deictic you “in which we get a superimposition of virtuality (the fictional protagonist) and actuality (the reader), versus the wholesale actualization of you achieved by way of apostrophe” (Herman 1994: 387; emphasis in original). According to Phelan (1994: 351), “when the second-person address to a narratee-protagonist both overlaps with and differentiates itself from an address to actual readers, those readers will simultaneously occupy the positions of addressee and observer”. When experiencing “doubly deictic you”, the reader is both positioned within the text-world, aligned with the perspective of the fictionalised “you”, and simultaneously occupies the role of observer from their ontologically distinct discourse-world position. This positioning is realised as a result of psychological projection and processes of identification (Whiteley 2014: 400, 2011). Projection describes the ability of readers to shift their deictic centre, or zero reference point (i.e. their sense of the here and now [see Bühler 1982; Green 1995]), onto someone or something within the text-world, so as to understand the deictic parameters of the discourse itself (Gavins 2007: 40). In the case of “Dead Fish”, this “someone” is likely to be the narratee as a result of the doubly deictic second-person address experienced throughout the narrative. Such address encourages the reader to position himself or herself alongside the narrator (the “I” of the narrative whose perspective encodes the deictic parameters of the text-world itself [see Benveniste 1971; Green 1995]) and imagine himself or herself as the co-participant of this particular interaction. However, the experience of enacting the role of narratee and taking on the supposed “relevant schemata” of that fictional entity (Lahey 2005: 286; Whiteley 2014: 404) should prove particularly estranging because, as argued by Kacandes (1993: 141), “to read the address is to perform what one reads” (emphasis in original), and the narratee in “Dead Fish” is the actor of several material action processes (e.g. “slide with me down the seam of Alice’s long jacket” [2012a: 11]) that are logically impossible within the reader’s discourse-world. Such actions, alongside the unnatural mind-styles of the “we”, could therefore reduce immersion in the text-world, and readers may feel alternatively “shifted” at such unnatural moments, “from a position of direct address to one of observation at a greater emotional or ethical distance” (Whiteley 2014: 404). At these moments, the use of “you” will be felt to align more with the perspective of an alternate fictional entity (i.e. fictionalised horizontal address), creating an alienating rather than immersive effect (see Whiteley 2014: 404).



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The positioning of the reader fluctuates throughout “Dead Fish” and may be experienced differently by readers depending on how they perceive the unnatural entities and whether they feel able to imaginatively enact the role of narratee. Such interpretative disparity was highlighted in the reading group discourse as participants reported varying accounts of their own text-world projection. For example, Participant 2 drew specific attention to her initial feelings of immersion in the narrative, having aligned with the deictic centre of the “you” addressed in the opening paragraph: P2.

in those first few lines erm I was like oh oh I’m in this I’m so in this book in this story erm and it did feel like I felt a bit weightless as I was reading it as if I was being sped around carried through the story

Participant 2 reports a feeling of being “inside” the book, exemplified by the repeated prepositional statement “I’m in this”. The preposition highlights Participant 2’s feelings of “transportation” (Gerrig 1993) during reading, indicating her sense of deictic projection to a remote spatio-temporal position that was distinct from her own. As a result of such projection, she reports feeling “weightless” during reading as if she was being “sped around” or “carried through the story”. In addition to projecting her sense of space onto the text-world, Participant 2 also undertakes a level of “perspective-taking projection” (Whiteley 2011, 2014) to reconstruct aspects of the narratee’s world-view. Like the narratee, she feels “sped around” by the narrator and reports a similar sense of movement and lightness that is ascribed to the unnatural entities within the text-world. In contrast, Participants 3 and 4 report feelings of alienation or distance from the unnatural entities in the text, highlighting that they did not feel included in the second-person address or a part of the first-person plural “us”. This interpretative disparity is evidenced in the following extract in which participants retrospectively compare their immersion in the text: P3.

I didn’t necessarily feel a part of whatever the narrator is you know how you were on about us being spores and things like that especially when he moves on to say (.) ‘if you look out the corner of your eyes you’ll see the rest of us’ (.) there’s just a distance an even bigger distance there between me and the guy narrating this story I just feel like he’s he’s sort of taken me with him because he can (.) or she can (.) it it can [group laughs]

P3.

and as like you’ve just said with it being like a tour guide (.) there’s a (.) like an aspect of power and control there where I’m just taken wherever this thing or this person wants to go when he wants to go [group digression about how many weeks there are to Christmas]

166 Jessica Norledge P3.

so anyway I don’t feel like I’m necessarily that I am the same as what’s narrating this story

P4.

yeah we’re not part of the us

Within this extract, Participant 3 expresses her inability to align herself with the perspective of the narratee and/or the unnatural entities within the text-world, noting that she “did not feel part of whatever the narrator is”. She reflects upon the interpretations of her co-participants, who were able to position themselves in relation to the “we”, and seemed to identify with the unnatural perspectives of the “spores” – an experience Participant 3 did not share. She argues that linguistic cues in the text, particularly those that define the “us”, created a distancing effect and as a result she did not feel “the same as what’s narrating the story”. In this instance, Participant 3 reports that she was unable to recognise similarities between herself and the narrator, resulting in feelings of disassociation rather than self-implication or identification (Whitely 2014). Participant 4, who agrees, supports Participant 3’s responses confirming, “yeah we’re not part of the us”. Interestingly, however, Participant 3 does acknowledge a level of deictic projection into the text-world when she explains that the narrator had simply “taken” her with him – “he’s sort of taken me with him because he can”, “I’m just taken wherever this thing or this person wants to go when he wants to go”. In assigning the narrator such “power and control” over her material actions, Participant  3 implies here that she did feel deictically positioned within the text-world during reading and aligned with the spatio-temporal perspective of the narrator; such material action processes can only be logically ascribed to an enactor of herself within the text-world. The ability of Participant 3 to project spatially into the text, yet resist perspective-taking projection, suggests that there are moments within the narrative where it is easier to subscribe to the role of narratee. For example, it is perhaps easier to imagine oneself in an estranging setting, projecting one’s sense of time and place into a futuristic world, than to map one’s sense of self onto an unnatural mind. Even Participant  2, who reported the highest level of immersion in the text-world, acknowledges an inconsistency in her ability to project into the role of narratee throughout the narrative, particularly in terms of her processes of perspective-taking projection. For example, Participant  2 draws attention to a moment towards the end of the story in which the reader is directly cued by the text to share an emotional response with the narrator and the unnatural entities. On Rupi’s arrival at the mouth of an underpass, the narrator states, “this is the moment I wanted you to see. I hope that you too have a taste for the unusual. For the brutal” (2012a: 13). The boulomaic modal-worlds cued by the lexical boulomaic verbs “wanted” and “hope” highlight the narrator’s desire for the narratee to share



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in his emotions at this point by responding excitedly to the scenes of violence that are about to occur. Participant 2’s reaction to this particular scene was as follows: P2.

All the way through I’d really liked the way I’m being carried by the narrator and then I got to that bit and started resenting it and was like you don’t get to tell me how to feel […] it jarred at that point and I was like (.) not sure I like this as much

Participant 2 here points out that, although she was fully content for her spatiotemporal perspective to be aligned with the narrator, she was unable to map aspects of her own attitude and emotions onto the beings. The request to share such an emotional response effectively “jarred” her immersion in the text-world and triggered a more negative, distanced response to the unnatural minds in the text, exemplified by the participant’s resentment towards and dislike of the narrator at this point. I would therefore argue that “Dead Fish” encourages projection into the role of narratee at fluctuating points within the narrative, allowing the reader to experience the physical decay of the text-world from a close, and intimate, deictic perspective. The ending of the narrative presents such an opportunity, when, as referenced above, the narrator expresses his desire for the narratee to share in his taste for the brutal. The closing passages of the narrative, which follow this estranging invitation, take the focus of the following two sections. 9.4 An ambiguous and indifferent end Following the individual descriptions of each familial unit and the text-worlds they are part of, the narrator directs the narratee’s attention back to the initial crime chase with the parallel sentence “here comes the pounding footfalls of a boy on the run” (2012a: 1), which was the opening sentence of “Dead Fish”. By restating this sentence, the narrative becomes almost circular, at which point each of the narrative strands run into one in a succession of parallel function-advancing propositions. These function-advancers reflect individual actions within each of the five primary spatial locations, switching quickly between the text-worlds in apparent temporal succession – a process Participant 2 refers to as “sexy MasterChef editing”. These fleeting world-switches (which were positively received by the group  – “I liked the switching that was good” [Participant  3]) are triggered in succession and give the impression of several events occurring at the same time: Behind the mouth of the underpass, Rupi’s brothers clutch nets in their claws. At the same moment, in the market square, Alice’s heel breaks and she falls. Her bony bottom hits the cobbles hard. In the crumpled house of Rupi’s parents, Rupi’s dad

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hits the hilt of a kitchen knife with the heel of his hand and drives the blade tip through the crayfish’s helmet. And behind the window too green to see through, Danya tells Morris to hang on. (2012a: 13)

Each world-switch documents a climactic moment in each of the five text-worlds – Rupi’s brothers clutch their nets, Alice falls, Rupi’s father takes the head off a crayfish and Danya “tells Morris to hang on”. The build-up of these function-advancing propositions arguably increases the sense of “narrative urgency” (Simpson 2014) experienced by the reader at this point in the story. Attention is shifted away from the moment the reader is being primed to experience, with the boy’s imminent attack being delayed as the narrator recalls the simultaneous, comparatively mundane material actions in each of the parallel text-worlds. The normalisation of violence, experienced first in the Alice narrative strand, is evidenced in the closing scene which follows, as Rupi’s brothers indifferently capture and drown the police officers. It is this final brutal action, which the narrator has been waiting for – the moment he has wanted the “you” to see: The police are in the underpass, and at the moment that their bootfalls bounce off the walls, Rupi’s brothers raise the net and the three pursuers spill into it, become tangled, their fingers and feet caught up within its holes. They are knotted as they hit the cobbles, and even while they fall, the brothers work fast applying a second net, wrapping it around. Rupi drops to the ground, heaving in every breath. He is shaking. His blood is hot in his face. Maybe like this, he senses us for a second, all of us, but not fully. To him, we are aberrations of light, symptoms of exhaustion. The policemen howl curses, threaten terrible punishments. Rupi’s brothers stuff big kicks into the nets, then drag the policemen to the edge of the canal and jump in with them, pulling them under. (2012a: 14)

Again, here, the narrative action within the passage is felt to occur quickly, evidenced by the temporal markers in the first section which seem to synchronise the boys’ movements with those of the men. For example, the boys raise their net at the same time the men reach the underpass, indicated by the temporal marker “at the moment”, and apply a second net “while [the men] fall”, each adverbial phrase indicating a simultaneous sense of material action. There follows a brief interlude in which the narrator attempts to model the mind of Rupi, attributing mental perception processes to his character and creating an epistemic modalworld in which the boy “senses” the presence of the “us”. The negated world-switch triggered in the subordinating conjunction “but not fully” further details Rupi’s perceptions, in that, to him, the beings are “aberrations of light, symptoms of exhaustion”. These attributes further define my conceptualisation of the narrative “we” as, by this point in the narrative, it is evident that the beings are more likely



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to be some form of spirit or sentient abstraction than an animal or human enactor, both of which would be visible to Rupi. There is then a fleeting shift to the narrator’s representation of speech acts as the officers are said to “howl curses” and “threaten terrible punishments”, which highlights their anger at this point without specifying the actual content of their utterances. The series of material action processes which follow indicate that these speech acts were ineffective, as the boys go on to kick, drag and pull the officers into the canal. These actions, which follow the knotting, tangling, and wrapping of the men in the boys’ net combine to create a graphic and detailed account of premeditated homicide. There are no evaluative adjectives in this scene which detail the boys’ emotional responses to the murder, supporting Lee-Houghtan’s (2013) argument that violence in The Stone Thrower is disturbingly neutralised. Indeed, after dragging the men out of the water, the boys prop them against the canal wall and “laugh at the affectionate way two of the three heads [loll] together” (2012a: 15). The additional observers, who have witnessed the murder, move away “sniffing out more drama” (2012a: 15) and only the fish in Rupi’s pocket is responsive to the violence with its mouth ironically “agape” (2012a: 15). The narratee is simply directed to leave, before the boys pack up their nets. The narrator concludes – “we should not be alone with the men on the canal-side” (2012a: 16) – with the negated deontic modal-world, cued by the phrase “should not”, ending the narrative in a remote, unrealised world where the reader is left to imagine – why not? 9.5

Comparing emotional reading experiences of “Dead Fish”

Interestingly, the reading group participants mirrored the boy’s indifferent attitude to the murder of the officers, expressing, on the whole, unemotional and detached responses to the narrative’s violent coda. Participants 1, 3 and 4 all reported feelings of “neutrality” at this point, both in terms of the murder itself and their emotional responses to the ending as a whole. The participants actively compared these responses, marking out similarities in their reading experiences, as seen across the following extract: P3.

When I got to the end as well I didn’t feel I was like neutral completely neutral I didn’t feel sort of angry at the boys or sad for the policemen or the other way round I was just completely neutral and sort of like ‘oh’ do you see what I mean did anyone have any sort of

P2.

//I was invested in it //

P3.

//were you on either side// whose side were you on

P4.

I was on on like Rupi’s side and his family

170 Jessica Norledge P3.

were you

P4.

I think maybe cos they’re identified and sort of gave them a name so you’re like yeah steal that fish I was really on the fish side of the argument

P2.

so at the end were you like HA policemen got drowned (.) good

P4.

yeah!

As can be seen here, Participant 3 reports an indifferent response to the murder that closes the narrative – “I was like neutral, completely neutral”. The repeated adjective “neutral”, which is paired with the intensifier “completely” in the second instance, emphasises her lack of emotion during this scene. She then expands upon her initial response, highlighting a list of emotions that she did not experience – “I didn’t feel angry at the boys or sad for the policemen”. Each of these negative mental cognition processes acknowledges emotions that she felt she should have experienced or was invited to feel. The closing direct thought “I was just like ‘oh’” clarifies the participant’s subdued response, supporting her opening comment – “I didn’t feel”. Participant 4, however, discusses a sense of identification with Rupi and his family (as they are named within the discourse), which encouraged him to “take Rupi’s side”. He goes on to support this interpretation by presenting his direct thoughts whilst reading – “yeah steal that fish” – which are in line with the emotional process of “taking a side”, indicating his encouragement of Rupi and his brothers at this point. Such support would suggest that the participant’s ability to identify with these particular characters, and align his perspective with theirs during the narrative, was sufficient enough to override a moral reading of the ending (Rapp and Gerrig 2006; Simpson 2014). For example, his support of the boys seems to have resulted in a sense of approval and gladness that the policemen were drowned  – positioning Participant  4 in relation to the unnatural entities which have eagerly awaited the boys’ attack. Participant 1 offers a more mixed response to the narrative ending, expressing further support for Rupi and equal indifference towards the murder of the men: P1.

I was on Rupi’s side I was on Rupi’s side and I was glad when he made it but felt like nothing when his brothers drowned the policemen and walked away I was like oh right nothing […] and I was on Rupi’s side until then and I didn’t stop being on his side I was like oh well done Rupi you survived carry on

Similarly to Participant  4, Participant  1 notes a sense of identification with Rupi; she states, “I was on his side”, acknowledging a shared goal with this particular character. She emphasises that she was glad when Rupi “made it” and, like Participant  4, felt inclined to offer direct encouragement to his character, evidenced by the direct thought “oh well done Rupi, you survived carry on”. In line

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with the responses of Participant 2, however, she also notes that she felt “nothing” when the policemen drowned. These reactions pose some interesting questions in terms of the participants’ ethical responses to the narrative, as all three of these readers were seemingly unaffected by the murder. In the case of Participants 1 and 4, the conclusion was cause for celebration, evidenced by their reported congratulatory thoughts, which indicate a shared sense of achievement with the boys. Such responses are particularly significant, as, although the men are depicted as violent and aggressive throughout the narrative, they, not Rupi, were the victims in this story. This encourages two interpretations. The first, at a base level, is that the readers were simply unaffected by, perhaps even disappointed in the ending, expecting something different or more dramatic. The second is the possibility that these readers have successfully projected into the role of a passive observer in the text-world – a role that they have been invited to take throughout the text, determined by their identification with the “we”. It is notable then, that after additional consideration of this violent scene, Participant 4 chooses to reframe his initial response: P4.

yeah it’s weird I (.) saying that I was on Rupi’s side the whole policemen murder thing still erm I don’t think I came out of that thinking like yeah good eat it coppers

P2.

no I didn’t not no

P4.

It was like oooh oh oh they’ve //drowned them//

P2.

//yeah it ends so abruptly//

P4.

yeah when at first they’re caught in the net you’re like oh funny japes

P2.

lol [laughter]

P4.

bit clever their just gonna leave them there to struggle on the floor while they run away what a lark and then are they (.) oh oh they’re drowning them (.) holding them under

In this transaction, Participant  4 reports an increasingly moral response to the text, clarifying that although he was on Rupi’s side, he did not, in fact, feel glad that the policemen had died. Participant 2 evidently shares this response as seen in the repeated use of the negative determiner “no” – “no I didn’t not no”. Participant 4 argues instead, that although he was initially amused by the boys’ actions, expressing a shared attitude of jest and good humour – exemplified in the direct thoughts “oh funny japes”, “what a lark” – his responses shifted on the realisation that the boys were, in fact, drowning the men. Once again Participant 4 uses reported direct thought to support his responses – “oooh oh oh they’ve drowned them” – with the repeated exclamatory “oh” emphasising his shock at the boys’ actions.

172 Jessica Norledge

Participant 4’s closing interpretations indicate one of the potential drawbacks of reading-group discourse, in that I cannot verify which of his responses to the ending offers the most accurate representation of his feelings. There is a certain degree of performance as well as a need to build a shared interpretation during group discourse, and as a result responses are always one step removed from what actually occurs during reading (see Peplow et al. 2016). In this instance, for example, Participant 4’s first response could reflect his desire to provoke amusement from his interlocutors or, on the other hand, his second could recognise a need to present a more ethically acceptable response. However, both responses suggest a clear relationship between immersive reading experiences and emotional readerly responses. Taken together, these comparative readings evidence readerly feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction with the ending (akin to the response of the unnatural entities), a sense of relief and gladness in identification with Rupi, or disassociation from the text-world as a result of ethical and ontological distance between the reader and the “we”. 9.6 Conclusions Throughout this chapter, I have sought a cognitive understanding of the experience of reading unnatural narratives, and of the experience of reading unnatural dystopian texts in particular. I have analysed in detail the unnatural text-worlds of “Dead Fish” and examined both the representation of fictional time and fictional consciousness in terms of unnatural narratology. I placed analytical focus on the varying forms of second-person address within the narrative and examined the effect of doubly deictic you on the positioning and responses of the reader, drawing several connections between deictic positioning, immersive reading experiences and emotional reader responses. Although immersion was not necessary for a successful reading of “Dead Fish”, the invitation to project into the role of narratee at different points in the narrative was of particular import to the reading group participants, who, having outlined their “need to know” what the entities in this text were, moved on to compare their identification with the unnatural “we”. Such identification encouraged Participant 1 to feel as if she were part of the decaying city and richly conceptualise the intricate world-building elements that shape Marek’s future world. For others this identification was perhaps more subtle, only coming to light through their neutral engagement with the text’s violent coda. Following Whiteley (2014), I therefore conclude that readers may feel shifted throughout “Dead Fish” between feeling immersed in the narrative, under the guise of narratee, and feeling disassociated from text-world events, thus occupying a more distal, voyeuristic

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perspective. It is arguably these shifts in perspective, alongside the ambiguities of the text, which invite emotional engagement with the worlds of Marek’s short story and determine the estranging experience of reading “Dead Fish”.

References Alber, J. 2009. Impossible Storyworlds - and What to Do with Them. StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 1: 79–96.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/stw.0.0008 Alber, J., Iversen, S., Skov Nielsen, H. and Richardson, B. 2010. Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models. Narrative 18(2): 113–136. ​ https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.0.0042

Alber, J., Iversen, S., Skov Nielsen, H. and Richardson, B. 2013. What Really Is Unnatural Narratology? StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 5(1): 101–118. ​ https://doi.org/10.5250/storyworlds.5.2013.0101

Balloch, A. 2012. The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek. The Skinny, 25 September 2012, (18 September 2016). Benveniste, E. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. Florida: University of Miami Press. Bloch, E. 1962. Verfremdungen. Frankfurt and Maine: Suhrkamp Verlag. Bloch, E. 1972. “Entfremdung, Verfremdung”: Alienation, Estrangement (trans. A. Halley and D. Suvin). The Drama Review 15(1): 120–125.  ​https://doi.org/10.2307/1144598 Bogdanov, A. 2005. Ostranenie, Kenosis, and Dialogue: The Metaphysics of Formalism According to Shklovsky. The Slavic and East European Journal 49(1): 48–62. ​ https://doi.org/10.2307/20058220

Brecht, B. 1973. Kleines Organon Fur Das Theater. In Gesammelte Werke. Cologne: Anaconda Verlag. Bühler, K. 1982. The Deictic Field of Language and Deictic Worlds. In Speech, Place and Action: Studies in Deixis and Related Topics, R. J. Jarvella and W. Klein (eds), 9–30. Chichester: John Wiley. Cohn, D. 1999. The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Conrad, J. 1897 [2007]. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and Other Stories. London: Penguin. Fludernik, M. 2002. Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London: Routledge. Fowler, R. 1977. Linguistics and Novel. London; New York: Methuen. Fowler, R. 1986. Linguistic Criticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuller, D. 2008. Reading as Social Practice: The Beyond the Book Research Project. Journal of Popular Narrative Media 1(2): 211–217.  ​https://doi.org/10.3828/pnm.1.2.8 Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory; An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gerrig, R. J. 1993. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. Green, K. 1995. Deixis: A Revaluation of Concepts and Categories. In New Essays on Deixis: Discourse, Narrative, Literature, K. Green (ed.), 11–27. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Halliday, M. A. K. 1985 [2013]. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.

174 Jessica Norledge Heinze, R. 2008. Violations of Mimetic Epistemology in First-Person Narrative Fiction. Narrative 16(3): 279–297.  ​https://doi.org/10.1353/nar.0.0008 Herman, D. 1994. Textual You and Double Deixis in Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place. Style 28(3): 378–411. Herman, D. 2002. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln; London: University of Nebraska Press. Iversen, S. 2013. Unnatural Minds. In A Poetics of Unnatural Narrative, J. Alber, H. Skov Nielsen and B. Richardson (eds), 94–113. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press. Kacandes, I. 1993. Are You in the Text?: The “Literary Performative” in Postmodernist Fiction. Text and Performance Quarterly 13: 139–153. Lahey, E. 2005. Text World Landscapes and English-Canadian National Identity in the Poetry of Al Purdy, Alden Nowlan and Milton Acorn. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Lee-Houghton, M. 2013. Review of The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek. The New Short Review, (17 December 2016). Marek, A. 2009. If Dead Fish Could Blink. Matter 9: 56–63. Marek, A. 2012a. Dead Fish. In: The Stone Thrower, 9–16. Manchester: Comma Press. Marek, A. 2012b. The Stone Thrower. Manchester: Comma Press. Marek, A. 2014. How Do You like Your Story Endings, Open or Closed? Adam Marek: Short Story Writer, 18 May 2014, (20 September 2016). Margolin, U. 1984. Narrative and Indexicality: A Tentative Framework. Journal of Literary Semantics 13: 181–204. Margolin, U. 1986. Dispersing/Voiding the Subject: A Narratological Perspective. Texte 5/6: 181–210. Morris, S. 2012. The Stone Thrower by Adam Marek. The Literateur. 7 October 2012, (21 May 2015). Peplow, D., Swann, J., Trimarco, P. and Whiteley, S. 2016. The Discourse of Reading Groups: Integrating Cognitive and Sociocultural Perspectives. New York; London: Routledge. Phelan, J. 1994. Self-Help for Narratee and Narrative Audience: How “I” and “You”?- Read “How”. Style 28(3): 350–366. Rapp, D. N. and Gerrig, R. J. 2006. Predilections for Narrative Outcomes: The Impact of Story Contexts and Reader Preferences. Journal of Memory and Language 54(1): 54–67. ​ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.04.003

Richardson, B. 2002. Beyond Story and Discourse: Narrative Time in Postmodern and Nonmimetic Fiction. In Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Closure and Frames, B. Richardson (ed.), 47–63. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Richardson, B. 2006. Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Richardson, B. 2011. What Is Unnatural Narrative Theory?. In Unnatural Narratives - Unnatural Narratology, J. Alber and R. Heinze (eds), 23–41. Berlin: de Gruyter. Richardson, B. 2015. Unnatural Narrative: Theory, History, and Practice. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press. Shklovsky, V. 1917 [1965]. Art as Technique. In Russian Formalist Criticism, L. T. Lemon and M. J. Reis (trans.), 3–24. Lincoln, NB; London: University of Nebraska Press. Simpson, P. 1993. Language, Ideology and Point of View. London: Routledge. ​ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203312612



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Simpson, P. 2014. Just What Is Narrative Urgency? Language and Literature 23(1): 3–22. ​ https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947013510650

Steen, G. 1991. The Empirical Study of Literary Reading: Methods of Data Collection. Poetics 20: 559–575.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422X(91)90025-K Stockwell, P. 2009. Texture: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Suvin, D. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. Swann, J. and Allington, D. 2009. Reading Groups and the Language of Literary Texts: A Case Study in Social Reading. Language and Literature 18(3): 247–264. ​ https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947009105852

Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Routledge. Whiteley, S. 2011. Text World Theory, Real Readers and Emotional Responses to The Remains of the Day. Language and Literature 20(1): 23–42.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947010377950 Whiteley, S. 2014. Ethics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, P. Stockwell and S. Whiteley (eds), 395–410. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139237031

Chapter 10

Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom Marcello Giovanelli

This chapter reports on a small-scale study of studying fiction in the secondary classroom to explore how a sequence of lessons on Gillian Clarke’s poem “Cold Knap Lake” is experienced by a group of fifteen-year-old students in a UK school. In the context of the performativity agenda that persists in schools, some researchers have argued that the classroom experience of reading poetry in particular has been subjected to a more transmissive method of delivery where students can be fearful of developing individual responses. In addition, the role of the teacher as a more powerful participant in the classroom means that decisions regarding what is read, how activities are framed and how responses are articulated are usually taken by the teacher. This chapter draws on Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) and interthinking (Littleton and Mercer 2013) to account for the ways in which the students in this study respond to Clarke’s poem. The chapter shows that the teacher and the material aspects of the classroom appear to foreground certain ways of interpreting the poem and discussing it, but that students also engage in using a variety of different resources to help structure their learning and arrive at a satisfactory interpretation. Keywords: Text World Theory, classroom discourse, reading literature, poetry teaching

10.1 Introduction The children’s literary critic Aiden Chambers (2011: 13) argues that “All reading has to happen somewhere […]. And every reader knows that where we read affects how we read: with what pleasure and willingness and concentration”. This chapter explores the “how” of reading by examining the importance and influence of the “where”. It argues that to understand the experience of reading, researchers

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.10gio © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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should critically examine the situations in which it occurs. This chapter builds on recent work in stylistics that has focused on real readers and reading as a form of interactional and interpersonal activity in order to examine a specific physical environment, the literature classroom, as a space in which young people talk about their responses to a literary text. The chapter reports on a small case study and focuses on data taken from three one-hour lessons on a single poem, Gillian Clarke’s “Cold Knap Lake” (Clarke 1991). These lessons were taught by a teacher with ten years’ teaching experience to a group of Year 10 (fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds) students at a large secondary school in the midlands in the UK. The class were studying for their GCSE examinations and were working with the poem in order to develop their ability to deal with unseen poetry. In England and Wales, GCSE examinations are terminal assessments that follow a two-year programme of study and are typically taken at the end of Year 11, the school year that a student reaches his or her sixteenth birthday. The students in this study are in Year 10 and so have just started their GCSE course. The school had a policy of setting students by predicted examination performance based on prior attainment and the students in this group were around the median in terms of ability. The group consisted of fifteen male and fourteen female students. Overall, the data comprised of lesson observations with video recordings using a camera focused on the teacher leading activities, audio recordings of students working in small groups, interviews with the teacher after the lessons, and field notes and photographs of the classroom. My analysis in this chapter draws primarily on the recordings of students talking about the poem in small groups of two or three, and on my field notes in order to examine the way that literature is experienced in a particular secondary school classroom. Following a brief contextual overview of literature teaching in schools, I identify and discuss three distinctive types of reading experience that appeared in the data. My discussion of the first type draws on previous work on attention and the setting up of learning tasks in the classroom by examining how a teacher’s pre-figuring (Giovanelli and Mason 2015) impacts on students’ initial responses to “Cold Knapp Lake”. Here, I analyse how the students’ responses are informed by the teacher’s presentation and foregrounding of extra-textual information which gives prominence to certain thematic and interpretative possibilities. The second and third types draw in varying degrees on Text World Theory (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) as an analytical method to explore the ways in which readers utilise various resources in the classroom, including material aspects and each other, to shape interpretations and negotiate meanings. I conclude by reflecting on the nature of the literature classroom as a complex site of fictional experience and literary reading.



Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 179

10.2 Studying literature in schools In the English secondary school system, studying literature, as opposed to simply reading it for pleasure, has formed the backbone of the English curriculum since the 19th century. For much of that time, this practice was concerned with the production of literary-critical responses in the vein of practical criticism (Richards 1929), although towards the latter part of the 20th century, space was created for more reader-centred pedagogies (e.g. Benton et al. 1988; Dias and Hayhoe 1988). These gave rise to epistemologies of reading in classrooms that were rooted in understanding response and interpretation as dynamic, complex and sociallyoriented, yet still maintained a focus on students providing responses to literary texts that could be assessed in some way. Secondary English teachers have consistently emphasised their belief in the transformational power of studying literature, aligning themselves very closely to a “personal growth model” (DES/WO 1989) of teaching that stresses the role of literary fiction in developing imaginative, linguistic and social skills (Goodwyn 2010, 2016). More recently, radical changes to the GCSE curriculum, however, have required teachers to review the ways that literature teaching is perceived, taught and examined. Specific changes to GCSE English Literature include a focus on more canonical Anglo-centric texts, and more strikingly, an emphasis on responding to unseen texts in an examination (DfE 2013). Critics of reform have argued that the new specifications promote a more transmissive mode of teaching that is likely to downplay students making use of their own culturally-specific experiences (Gay 2010; Mansworth 2016) as an essential filter through which texts may be understood. In the fields of social science and literacy studies, scholars have increasingly sought to make connections between school and home reading so as to highlight the importance of reading literature for pleasure in supporting educational and cognitive development (Clark and Rumbold 2006), in encouraging empathy for and knowledge about others in the context of the education for social justice agenda (Alsup 2015), and in building on and developing young people’s imaginative and creative assets (Cremin 2007; Cliff Hodges 2010). Researchers have argued for an interconnectedness where literature classrooms represent spaces where authority is reconfigured so that what students bring to texts is valued and discussed, and where meanings are understood as socially negotiated and constructed (Maybin 2013; Yandell 2013; Mason 2016a; Yandell and Brady 2016). The classroom itself is a specific discourse environment where institutional interaction occurs that is typified by “participants [engaging] in specific goal orientations” (Heritage 2004: 224). Mercer (1995) argues that teachers are “discourse guides” and the classroom a “discourse village”, with the goal of teaching

180 Marcello Giovanelli

competence in an “educated discourse”, a specific and acceptable way of thinking and talking (Mercer 1995: 83). In classrooms, teachers and students are therefore largely unequal participants (Fairclough 2014), and practice itself is generally structured around a series of routines (Coulthard and Sinclair 1975; Edwards and Westgate 1994; Walshaw and Anthony 2008) and ground rules (Edwards and Mercer 2012). In these contexts, the teacher is responsible for both setting out these routines and ground rules, and for organising the ways in which literary texts are read and explored by students. The teacher thus remains able to influence how reading is enacted and the types of interpretation that are legitimised. An increasing culture of accountability that exists in secondary schools may also mean that, as Ball suggests, “teachers […] may find their values challenged or displaced by the terrors of performativity” (2003: 216) so that teaching to the test becomes the norm. In the literature classroom, this may yield more homogenous and less creative responses from students (Dymoke 2002, 2012), where the teacher is positioned as a “gatekeeper to meaning” (Xerri 2013: 135). In the UK, teachers introducing texts to their classes are, in most cases, re-readers guiding first-time readers (Giovanelli and Mason 2015). The teacher will therefore typically have a relatively rich narrative schema (Mason 2016b), a cognitive map of the text that has been developed over time, through reading, rereading, discussion, wider and complementary reading and other institutionalised discourse. A narrative schema is thus developed, or accreted, through experience so that a bank of knowledge is built up either directly through reading, or indirectly through being told about it. In Giovanelli and Mason (2015), we argue that these differences in knowledge, experience and authority can often give rise to what we term “pre-figuring” (2015: 46). In such instances the teacher, through lesson and activity design, draws students’ attention towards particular aspects of the text such as themes or certain language features; by consequence other potential avenues of interest may remain in the background. In our research we showed how such pre-figuring often had the consequence of downplaying the student’s own personal response to the text, which resulted in an interpretation that was largely influenced by the teacher. Teachers often pre-figured interpretations through offering strong indications about preferred responses to literary texts in the way that they set up activities. Since in these instances, the interpretations shared and discussed by the students drew heavily on the knowledge presented to them by their teacher, we argued that these were examples of “manufactured” rather than “authentic” readings (see Giovanelli and Mason 2015: 42–43 for full discussion). Manufactured readings are often a result of students being taught about the text rather than being taught how to engage with it (Giovanelli and Mason 2015; Mason 2016a; Mason and Giovanelli 2017).



Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 181

10.3 Experiencing “Cold Knap Lake” The poem “Cold Knap Lake” focuses on the speaker’s recollection from her childhood of a near-tragedy at a lake in south Wales where a young girl was rescued from drowning and then resuscitated by the speaker’s mother. The poem is based on Clarke’s own experience of visiting the lake as a six-year-old. It can be read in full at Clarke’s own website, . 10.3.1 Experience as pre-figured response The extract discussed in this section is taken from the first lesson on the poem. The teacher began the lesson by discussing the importance of patterns in poetry. She exemplified this by showing the students a series of slides, reproduced below as Figure  10.1, and asked the students to comment on the significance of the final image.

Figure 10.1  Slides used to exemplify the significance of patterns1

All of the students in the class were able to point out that the final slide was significant in that it broke away from an established pattern in the first three: the couple (most assumed that they were married) were no longer together (most thought she was unwell or had died). Many also commented on the fact that in the final 1.  Photograph by Ken Griffith 1964. All attempts have been made to contact copyright holders at Ken Griffith’s Estate (http://www.kengriffiths.co.uk/contact/) but at the time of publication no response has been received.

182 Marcello Giovanelli

slide, the male character stands to the left in the space previously occupied by the female character. Some students also commented on the fact that the background changes across the slides and that this might represent the cyclical nature of life. Without exception, the students were moved by what they saw and were intrigued and enthusiastic to discuss their ideas and responses in more detail. After some debate, the teacher told the class that the slides were of an elderly married couple, whose son had photographed them every year (there were more slides in the collection) until the wife had died. The teacher told the students that the final photograph was taken in the first year that the husband had been alone. In fact, the series of pictures was taken by a professional photographer to show the changes in the couple’s garden over a period of twelve months. The wife did not appear in the final photograph because she felt it was too cold to be outside, not because she was dead. As a second entry point to the poem, the teacher introduced the following quotation, “Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory”, together with a photograph of the musician David Bowie (the lesson took place in mid-January 2016, a few days after his death). They were asked to discuss what the significance of this might be. Immediately after the starter activities, the teacher asked the students to read through “Cold Knap Lake” and highlight their initial observations together with any thoughts they might have on the theme(s) of the poem. Extract 10.1 shows two male students, Participant 1 and Participant 2, discussing the significance of the final two lines, which are foregrounded in the poem as a rhyming couplet and separated from the rest of the verse. All lost things lie under closing water in that lake with the poor man’s daughter.

(Clarke 1991)

Extract 10.1. Participants 1 and 2 1. Participant 1:

the way I view it right (.) if you take the last lines which they've made stand out for a reason =

2. Participant 2:

= yeah

3. Participant 1:

‘all things lost lie in the closing water’ (.) for me that is the feeling of (.) having a certain amount of time before something disappears

4. Participant 2:

yeah

5. Participant 1:

and judging from the quote that was on the board earlier (.) he’s talking about a memory

6. Participant 2:

so if someone died =

7. Participant 1:

Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 183 = a memory of someone precious (.) because (.) er (.) there’s nothing more precious to a family than their own daughter (.) right (.) so they’re in (.) all this is a giant metaphor for trying (.) losing something that is precious to you

From the discussion, it appears that the students are immediately drawn to the idea of the poem being about memory. In this extract, Participant 1 leads the discussion while Participant 2 largely offers his agreement through minimal responses. He does, however, offer his own suggestion in turn 6, where he highlights death as a potential point of discussion. Interestingly, Participant  1’s follow-up develops the suggestion that the poem is about memory and perhaps even builds on Participant 2’s point about death. His references in turn 7 to “their own daughter”, and “losing something that is precious to you” hint at the death of the child and her family’s sense of loss at her death even though this is not supported by the language of the poem itself. Although the girl is described in the poem as “drowned”, “blue-lipped” and “dead”, these attributes are filtered through the perspective of the speaker who in turn is attempting to recall a childhood experience. Furthermore, we are told that the girl was pulled from the lake, survived the incident and was later punished for the incident she had caused. The poem itself offers very little (if any) explicit discussion of the potential sense of loss that her family might be experiencing. Indeed, there is hardly any mention of the girl’s family in the poem at all; arguably much more attention is afforded to the speaker’s family. The slides about the couple and the quotation related to David Bowie are, I suggest, good examples of pre-figuring in action, and may well have resulted in an undesired effect since they appear to encourage student response away from the text itself: in the transcript above, both participants are keen to argue that the poem is connected with death and loss even when there is insufficient textual evidence to make those claims. The bases for these interpretations, it appears, are the pre-reading activities set up by the teacher which foreground the loss of another as a salient area for exploration. In this instance, it is possible to argue that an interpretation is foregrounded for the students before they have had a chance to read the poem. Indeed, Participant 1 explicitly refers to the quotation in turn 5, “judging by the quote that was on the board earlier”, to legitimise his “reading of the poem”. There is strong potential, therefore, for narrative schema accretion to come from discourse about the text rather than from the text itself. The use of visual clues to support the students’ task may be understood as an example of cued elicitation (Mercer 1995; Edwards and Mercer 2012), a technique used by teachers to attempt to draw out from students a specific answer or interpretation. This can make it appear that the students own the knowledge demonstrated in answering a question even when it is clearly knowledge that is heavily mediated

184 Marcello Giovanelli

by the framing question of the teacher. In fact, the structuring of activities as a way of allowing students an entry point into the text can often produce similar results in terms of producing “manufactured” (Giovanelli and Mason 2015: 43) readings of texts in so far as they offer the potential for downplaying students’ own personal responses. In her study of literature classrooms, Mason argues that such tasks often reveal themselves to be a “trigger point” (2016b: 327) for teacher-led interpretations. 10.3.2 Experience as collaborative response In the following section, I focus more extensively on how students were engaged in co-construction of meaning through their discussions in the classroom. In doing so, I draw on Text World Theory to provide a descriptive analysis of the interactional activity that occurred during another exchange in the first lesson. Text World Theory has a three-layered architecture that provides a comprehensive and contextualised account of discourse. First, discourse participants encounter the discourse-world, the situational context in which communication takes place and consisting of what can be perceived and inferred from surroundings, various types of background knowledge, memories, imaginative resources and so on that language users bring to a discourse event. The discourse-world is a “socially and culturally situated” (Gavins and Lahey 2016: 3) dynamic structure, updated at various moments as new information becomes salient and shared among discourse participants (Gavins 2007: 20). Second, participants themselves construct text-worlds as the discourse progresses. These are conceptual spaces that consist of world-building elements that give the text its deictic parameters of time and space, and by function-advancing propositions that flesh out the text-world, adding descriptive and narrative elements. Third, world-switches occur when the deictic parameters are altered so as to re-configure the initial text-world in some way, for example through shifts in time, location, direct speech and metaphor. A particular type of world-switch examined in this chapter is the modal-world, which is triggered by a participant’s use of a modalised expression. For a comprehensive overview of the different types of world in Text World Theory, see Gavins (2005). Although Text World Theory has largely been used as a tool for written text analysis, there has been some recent work exploring its use as a method for analysing spoken language (van der Bom 2015), and specifically talking about reading (Peplow et  al. 2016). Peplow et  al. (2016) demonstrate in particular how Text World Theory is useful in tracking the utterances that speakers produce as they talk about their reading so as to show how groups of readers “use and refer to content from literary texts in the performance of social and interpersonal work” (2016: 36). In this way, Text World Theory offers a principled model for examining how participants’ utterances project conceptual spaces both in the construction of

Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 185



discourse and in managing interpersonal work. As van der Bom (2015: 117–123) notes, the discourse-world in which the researcher analyses data is different from the original discourse-world in which the participants were speaking, separated in space and time and distinctive in the type of knowledge that is now salient. Consequently, only a trace of the original discourse-world is accessible and this is heavily dependent on the contextual knowledge and field notes gained by the observer. Subsequently, my analysis of the extract takes place within a separate context and the representation and analysis of the text-worlds as I discuss them now is inevitably my own. However, van der Bom also argues that to get some sense of the real people behind the data, and indeed for any analysis to be possible, it is necessary for the text-world theorist to discuss the text-worlds in the discourse as though they were those created by the original discourse-world participants. I hope therefore that my analysis in this and the subsequent section is mindful of but seeks to mitigate the problem with representing speech that originally occurred within a separate discourse-world. As previously noted, Extract 10.2 was taken from near the beginning of the first lesson, when the students were discussing their initial responses to “Cold Knap Lake”. In this instance, the three members of the group (all male) are discussing the significance of the word “cold”. Extract 10.2. Participants 3, 4 and 5 1.

Participant 3:

so it’s about the girl drowning

2.

Participant 4:

yeah cos the title’s cold

3.

Participant 5:

yeah but cold could just mean anything (.) the name of the [lake

4.

Participant 4:

                                              [yeah

5.

Participant 3:

but she has blue lips and =

6.

Participant 4:

= she has blue lips

7.

Participant 5:

but every lake is cold

8.

Participant 4:

yeah

10. Participant 3:

blue lips must mean that she’s been in there long enough for the cold to affect her (.) she must have been there for a long time so she must have been at the end of her life =

11. Participant 4:

= yeah

12. Participant 5:

but she could have just been swimming and got caught on the seaweed =

13. Participant 4:

= yeah (.) but where are her parents (.) but it even says that they’re not her parents (.) ‘My father took her home’

14. Participant 3:

I know but you don’t always go with your parents everywhere do you

15. Participant 5:

but (1) how old would she be

186 Marcello Giovanelli

The participants take distinctive roles during this discussion. Participant  4 is largely happy to accept the others’ evaluations, demonstrated in his use of repetition and his use of the minimal response “yeah”. On the other hand, Participants 3 and 5 both show more of a commitment to questioning and re-evaluating others’ ideas; it is through their contributions that we can observe the emerging sense of a more considered literary response in terms of their exploration of both the title and the significance of “blue lips”. The students’ attention to interpersonal work acts as a vehicle for enabling them to develop their ideas as they think about what the others in the group have said in order to orientate their own contributions. Participant 5 appears to be more tentative than Participant 3. His contributions are embedded in epistemic modal constructions using the auxiliary verb “could”, whereas Participant  3 uses the stronger modal auxiliary “must” to frame his responses. In each case these modalised constructions open up new conceptual spaces remote from the original text-world and operate to allow the speakers to represent their differing views on, and interpretations of, the poem. These modalised constructions also serve the group’s interests in allowing for a more collaborative response to develop. For example, Participant 5’s comment about “cold” opens up the space for the more detailed discussion that follows. He rejects Participant 4’s point that “cold” in itself is an indicator of the girl’s condition, allowing Participant 3 to later connect “cold” with “blue lips” in turn 5 and then argue, in turn 10, that he believes the girl is near death. Equally, Participant 4’s point about the girl’s parents in turn 13 prompts a further area of discussion. In this instance, the use of negation sets up a further world-switch (in Text World Theory, negation requires the conceptualisation of a remote space containing the positive proposition which is then negated). Participant 3 then makes a valid suggestion (in a further negated world-switch) concerning children and their parents, from which Participant 5, in turn 15, asks a question about the girl’s age. In fact, the discussion continued beyond this extract into a consideration of the representation of children and parents in the poem. The reading that is developed here is clearly co-constructed and carefully managed by the three students. The use of different modal forms may also reflect the relative status of participants. Participant 3 uses constructions that have a stronger modal force and therefore represent higher commitment on his part. This may signal that he is a more powerful participant in the group, has a higher accepted social status among his peers and is thus able to influence the discussion more. In fact, observations of Participant 3 outside of this discussion confirmed that this was the case. The extract shows that he does appear to be more inclined to promote his own opinion whereas Participant 5’s influence appears less direct. Participant 5, however, still offers much to the group through his willingness to engage with the poem; his less forceful framing could also, of course, be a result of his increased sensitivity

Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 187



to group dynamics. In contrast, Participant  4 offers fewer of his own ideas and is instead willing, for the main part, to uncritically accept those of the other two participants, although his use of repetition and speaker support may also simply Text-World WB time: present location: beginning of poem objects: lake, seaweed entities: the girl/she, parents, you

mean anything/name of lake

girl is drowning title is cold

EPS MODAL-WORLD

MOD EPS MODAL-WORLD been in there enough time for the cold to affect her

girl has blue lips every lake is cold

MOD

MOD

EPS MODAL-WORLD been there for a long time EPS MODAL-WORLD

MOD

been at the end of her life EPS MODAL-WORLD

MOD

been swimming and caught on seaweed NEG MODAL-WORLD

NEG where are parents

they’re her parents NEG MODAL-WORLD

NEG

Figure 10.2  Text-world diagram of Extract 10.2

you always go with your parents

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be a sign of politeness. The interpretation that is co-constructed and developed in Extract 10.2 is represented in Figure 10.2, which provides a broad outline of the various world-switches on the poem. A different font style is used to show the contributions of different participants: bold for Participant 3, italics for Participant 4, and underlined for Participant 5. The phenomenon described above may be understood as exemplifying interthinking (Littleton and Mercer 2013), which emphasises the collaborative role that discourse participants play in establishing a shared context for discussion and in developing co-constructed interpretations (see also Peplow et al. [2016: 113–116] for further discussion in relation to Text World Theory and group reading). Littleton and Mercer describe how, what one person says acts as a catalyst for activating the thoughts of a listener. In a conversation, an attentive listener draws on whatever knowledge they have that seems relevant to making sense of what has been said, and also so that they can contribute to the continuing joint process of sense-making.  (Littleton and Mercer 2013: 9)

In the context of group talk, we can distinguish between three types of interaction, each of which emphasises the different ways that groups may operate, share resources and arrive at varying degrees of consensus: disputational talk, cumulative talk, and exploratory talk (Dawes, Fisher and Mercer 1992; Mercer 1995). Disputational talk is characterised by participants disagreeing and taking individual decisions, with few attempts to collaborate. Cumulative talk is characterised by participants pooling ideas in a positive yet uncritical way, for example through agreement and the accumulation of points. Finally, exploratory talk is characterised by participants engaging critically and constructively with each other’s ideas. This may include constructive disagreement, the sharing of alternative ideas and theses and a sense of jointly shaped agreement. Exploratory talk represents the “social mode of thinking” (Mercer 1995: 104) that is likely to lead to more constructive group interaction and shared construction of knowledge. In Extract  10.2, we can observe different types of talk in operation. In this extract talk is characterised by an abundance of modal-worlds as the participants worked with the poem and with each other’s ideas on it. Although many of the world-switches were fleeting, they represent evidence of an engagement in a discussion of a literary text that combined imagination, inferencing and textual analysis with critical commentary and interactional work. The extract appears to move between cumulative and exploratory talk, evident in the strong modal commitment offered by Participant  3, the more tentative observations offered by Participant 5 and the attention to speaker support that typifies Participant 4’s responses.



Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 189

10.3.3 Experience as divergent resourcing The third extract discussed in this chapter draws attention to a third type of reading experience that was observable from the data generated. In discussing this extract, I return to an examination of the classroom as a specific site of interaction, in which literary interpretations are shaped and negotiated and draw both on Littleton and Mercer’s notion of interthinking and on Text World Theory as methods of analysis. In doing so, I examine how the two students discussed draw on a range of resources within their talk to present an emerging interpretation of the poem. As I discussed in Section 10.3.2, Text World Theory treats the discourse-world as the shared mental context that is updated by discourse participants as communication proceeds and which helps to shape text-worlds that form the discourse proper. In Werth’s model, the discourse-world may contain aspects of the scene that are directly or indirectly perceptible to participants (Werth 1999: 83); in other words, discourse participants may draw on material aspects of the physical space in which communication takes place to help provide a context. In their discussion of how teachers and students establish a shared platform for education, Edwards and Mercer (2012: 49) in turn draw on their own notion of a “universe of discourse”, a mutually established mental representation of the immediate surroundings and types of knowledge that are necessary for learning to take place, and similar to the Text World Theory concept of the discourse-world. Edwards and Mercer (2012) argue that, in educational contexts, teachers actively evoke elements of a perceived physical context for their students, which they foreground as salient and which may influence how the discourse proceeds. These elements may include aspects of the classroom, the immediate shared physical space, or educational tools such as learning objectives, teaching materials and other resources. In this instance, the teacher’s explicit foregrounding of aspects of the classroom creates a “mental context […] necessary for joint understanding” (Edwards and Mercer 2012: 68), with the intention that both teacher and student attend to this. Kress et  al. (2005) argue, in turn, that the physical space of the English classroom represents a site in which pedagogy, policy and individual and group ideologies merge in the deliberately enacted practice of the teacher. Identifying the classroom as a complex series of multimodal signs, they argue that the teacher can evoke visual displays and the physical environment of the classroom as “pedagogic tools” (2005: 39) that promote both representations of English as an academic area of study and expectations of student behaviour: […] the displays and arrangements of the classroom do not remain as “inert”, “precreated” background: they are activated, or reactivated, by classroom pedagogy. In this respect the teacher’s role is central: the teacher mediates what is displayed

190 Marcello Giovanelli

and what is enacted in the classroom; it is the teacher who connects the spatial material display of English to other aspects of the subject’s realisation.  (Kress et al. 2005: 39, my added emphasis)

My discussion in this section explores this aspect of practice by examining how students drew on particular examples of classroom displays that were evoked for them and which they used as a resource to support discussion and ultimately an interpretation of “Cold Knap Lake”. In this extract, I am therefore concerned with the ways that the students drew on types of knowledge as a resource to support their interpretation of the poem. I am also interested in how the students present differing representations of studying poetry and English as a subject through the knowledge that they draw on. The extract discussed is taken from an activity in the second lesson where students had been working on their initial responses to “Cold Knap Lake” in more detail and had been asked to comment on what they saw as significant examples of contrast in the poem. The activity began with some revision of the idea of patterns and pattern-breaks (see Section 10.3.1 for details). The teacher spent twenty-five minutes at the beginning of the lesson introducing, defining and discussing literary critical terminology that was new to the students. The teacher wrote a list of essential literary critical terms on the board and asked the students to write these in their books. The students were also told that they should be aware that definitions of these were on the walls of the classroom to refer to during the activity if needed. In addition, the classroom space itself contained additional material signs that were evoked during the introduction to the activity. Figure  10.3 is a screenshot from a video recording that was taken of the teacher introducing the activity. It shows Assessment Objective posters, colour coded and using various kinds of typographical foregrounding, which dominated the classroom wall immediately in front of the students. Assessment Objectives are developed by awarding bodies and underpin examination specifications. They can be viewed as a prominent aspect of the assessment agenda in schools, and indeed

Figure 10.3  A student’s view of the teacher in the classroom



Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 191

Figure 10.4  Assessment Objective posters

are often used as a backdrop to teaching (see Dymoke 2002). As an example, some of these posters are shown as Figure 10.4. Key literary terminology also appeared on the other walls in the classroom, together with detailed definitions and examples from canonical literary texts. It should be noted that these material aspects were fairly typical of all of the English classrooms in this school. The mediation and enactment of terminology and assessment objectives into teaching was accepted by the teachers as part of a departmental strategy and all classrooms displayed these posters. As such, the posters, and the assessment and critical terminology on them, present the dominant concern of studying literature in the classroom as passing examinations and promote the currency and distribution of critical metalanguage.

192 Marcello Giovanelli

In the remainder of this section, I discuss Extract 10.3, the interaction that took place between a female student, Participant 6, and a male student, Participant 7. Extract 10.3. Participants 6 and 7 1.

Participant 6:

It’s like they’re describing it (.) it’s like we the person who’s writing it obviously (.) trying like to almost involve you in a way in the poem (.) it’s like they’re almost trying to describe it to you (1) but not (.) fully (2) I don’t know it just makes me feel like I’m there (.) that’s she’s just describing it to me

2.

Participant 7:

yeah because of the words that she’s used (.) we (.) she’s (.) not using words like

3.

Participant 6:

the [girl =

4.

Participant 7:

    [yeah

5.

Participant 6:

= she’s not saying like she (.) her

6.

Participant 7:

she’s using third pers- (.) no (.) I don’t know what person it is but (.) er (.) first person (.) yeah first person (.) the author’s using first person to like draw us into the poem

7.

Participant 6:

but then that changes throughout =

8

Participant 7:

= no cos she says ‘was I there’

9.

Participant 6:

but here look (.) that’s describing it to you a bit more =

10. Participant 7:

= yeah (.) so that’s a pattern break

11. Participant 6:

I think the tone’s really mysterious (.) you’ve got to work out what’s going on (.) it doesn’t really tell you (.) it’s like dark (.) it's like death there hanging over like

12. Participant 7:

yeah (.) but it's not (.) it’s like all of it speaks of life

13. Participant 6:

that’s a pattern though

14. Participant 7:

but it’s not broken (.) so it’s a not a pattern break

In this extract, the students draw on different representations of the subject in order to develop their talk. Participant  6’s opening personal response is tightly focused on the effect “Cold Knap Lake” has on her. Her remark in turn 1 that “they’re almost trying to describe it to you” attaches an element of intention to the poet/speaking voice as she tries to make sense of the framing of the narrative events. This sense of involvement is evident in her reference to the poem’s use of the first-person plural pronoun “we”, and her awareness that there is some complexity in the way that perspective operates across the opening lines, “but not (.) fully (2)”. She also demonstrates a strong sense of proximity with the fictional world of the poem. She remarks that “it just makes me feel like I’m there” and it appears that her initial critical intention is simply to establish a sense of connection



Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 193

with the events being described and to start to consider how the language in the poem enables this. In contrast, Participant 7, although supportive in his responses to Participant 6, offers a less subjective view. He appears keen to present his own ideas, but these are framed in critical terminology and metalanguage. Most clearly he invokes some of the material aspects of the classroom. For example, while Participant 6 is happy to use the noun “girl” in turn 3, he draws on a more technical term that had previously been highlighted by the teacher as he reflects over the poet’s use of the first-person narrative voice (turn 6). In fact, his contribution to the collaborative world-building at this point is his repair of his first suggestion, “third pers-” via a fleeting negated world-switch, “I don’t know what person it is”, before reformulating Participant 6’s prior interpretation “the author’s using first person to like draw us into the poem”. This comment captures the essence of Participant 6’s initial comments into a response that is framed more explicitly in literary critical vocabulary. Turns 7–10 appear to be genuine examples of exploratory talk, marked by the negative evaluations of each other’s stances taken by the participants that develop their shared understanding of the poem. Participant  7’s disagreement in turn 8 focuses on the providing of explicit textual reference to support his view before he again chooses to revert to a previously discussed and pre-figured concept, the “pattern break” (turn 10). In turn 11, Participant 6 again offers an idea that avoids using critical language; in a similar way to her opening remark, she offers a more subjectively-framed interpretation as she attempts to highlight another subtle way in which the poem’s events are presented to the reader. Interestingly, the exchange ends with both students drawing on Participant 7’s previous point about patterns in the poem. In this exchange, they are able to explore some of the complexities in the poem through their differing interpretative stances: Participant 6’s preference for a more subjective, impressionistic approach that describes her experience as an immersive one; and Participant 7’s comments that seek to utilise the terminology and official discourse of the classroom. Whilst Participant 6 appears largely content to maintain a personal response (which arguably is the more insightful of the two), Participant 7 positions himself within the parameters of literary criticism, a discourse that was previously foregrounded in and authorised by the classroom display and the framing of activities by the teacher. His stance is a representation of literary reading as a critical rather than a personal enterprise and a very specific type of cultural capital (see also Yandell and Brady 2016). In their discussion of reading groups, Peplow et  al. (2016: 115) refer to the ways that discourse participants draw on different kinds of knowledge as they construct meanings as “interpretative bricolage”. In my discussion of this extract, I propose the alternative term divergent resourcing to draw explicit attention to the

194 Marcello Giovanelli

contrasting yet complementary approaches taken by the two participants as they discuss the poem, and the different resources they make use of as they engage in interpretative collaboration. Such resources include Participant 6’s own personal feelings, intuitions, and emotions and Participant 7’s more literary-critical stance with its explicit reference to the critical terminology on display in the classroom itself which had been evoked by the teacher as conceptually salient in her own setting up and discussion of the activity. Together, the participants utilise these resources, at either end of the pedagogical spectrum, to develop an interpretation of the poem that is both valid to them and subsequently able to be shared in the classroom. 10.4 Conclusion In this chapter, I have argued that the classroom is an interesting and important context for studying how readers arrive at literary interpretations. The data I have explored show that such interpretations are influenced by the ways that teachers frame activities, by the material aspects of the classroom and by the strategies that students use to support collaborative interpretative work and the production of knowledge. This chapter has also drawn on the cognitive linguistic framework Text World Theory in order to explain some of the ways that students engage in meaningful collaborations. Indeed, I would argue that there is tremendous potential for the existing Text World Theory framework to be used as a method for analysing the unique nature of classroom discourse. For example, as I show in Section  10.3, the various modal world-switches that occur in the interaction between the students offer a way of exemplifying varying degrees of cumulative and exploratory talk within peer discussions where knowledge is co-constructed, and may also yield some interesting insights into power relationships within groups and how these affect the ways that readers arrive at decisions about interpretations. There is also considerable scope for researchers to further probe the usefulness of the current Text World Theory as a contextually-sensitive discourse grammar and a method for analysing spoken discourse in order to account for the rich and complex contexts within which literary interpretations take place in educational contexts and to examine how readers discuss, collaborate and draw on different types of resources as they engage in acts of meaning-making. To this end, I conclude my discussion by briefly sketching what I see as a central concern of this chapter and the three extracts discussed within it. This is offered as a starting point for further research. In each of the extracts, rather than being a solitary activity, reading involves multiple discourse-world participants beyond the author of the poem and an

Chapter 10.  Experiencing literature in the poetry classroom 195



individual reader. In each case, both the teacher and the others in the group are key participants, holding an influential role in the discourse and influencing both how it proceeds and the types of knowledge constructed (see also Giovanelli 2016). That is, in this educational context, the relationships between reader and writer and between reader and text are more complicated than in a prototypical reading experience since other participants are responsible for evoking and collaborating in the dynamic contexts within which literary interpretations occur either through the framing of activities (the teacher) or interactional work (the other students). In the classroom, the conventional split discourse-world between author and reader is, I would argue, reconfigured into a complex mediated representation of the immediate context, additionally influenced by the actions and interpretations of discourse participants as they occur in real-time, as well as by the material aspects evoked by them as important and which might not normally form part of the reader’s experiential knowledge.

Note Transcription conventions used are as follows Utterance emphasis given by speaker = Utterance B latched speech Utterance [A (.) pause of less than one second Utterance [B

overlapping speech

(2)

pause of more than one second, number of seconds in brackets

Utterance A =

References Alsup, J. 2015. A Case for Teaching Literature in the Secondary School: Why Reading Fiction Matters in an Age of Scientific Objectivity and Standardization. New York, NY: Routledge. Ball, S. 2003. The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy 18(2): 215–228.  ​https://doi.org/10.1080/0268093022000043065 Benton, M., Teasey, J., Bell, R. and Hurst, K. 1988. Young Readers Responding to Poems. London: Routledge. Chambers, A. 2011. Tell Me: Children, Reading and Talk/The Reading Environment. Stroud: Thimble Press. Clark, C. and Rumbold, K. 2006. Reading for Pleasure: A Research Overview. London: National Literacy Trust. Clarke G. 1991. Letting in the Rumour. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Cliff Hodges, G. 2010. Reasons for reading: Why literature matters. Literacy 44(2): 60–68. ​ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4369.2010.00552.x

196 Marcello Giovanelli Cremin, T. 2007. Revisiting reading for pleasure: Delight, desire and diversity. In Understanding Phonics and the Teaching of Reading: A Critical Perspective, K. Goouch and A. Lambirth (eds), 166–190. Berkshire: McGraw Hill. Dawes, L., Fisher, E. and Mercer, N. 1992. The quality of talk at the computer. Language and Learning 10: 22–25. DESWO. 1989. English for Ages 5 to 16. London: HMSO. DfE. 2013. English Programmes of Study: Key Stage 4: National Curriculum in England. London: HMSO. Dias, P. and Hayhoe, M. 1988. Developing Response to Poetry. Buckingham: Open University Press. Dymoke, S. 2002. The dead hand of the exam: The impact of the NEAB anthology on poetry teaching at GCSE. Changing English 9(1): 85–93. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/13586840120112369

Dymoke, S. 2012. Poetry is an unfamiliar text: Locating poetry in Secondary English classrooms in New Zealand and England during a period of curriculum change. Changing English 19(4): 395–410.  ​https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2012.736741 Edwards, A. and Westgate, D. 1994. Investigating Classroom Talk. 2nd edn. London: Routledge. Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. 2012. Common Knowledge: The Development of Understanding in the Classroom. 2nd edn. London: Methuen. Fairclough, N. 2014. Language and Power. 3rd edn. London: Routledge. Gavins, J. 2005. (Re)thinking modality: A text world perspective. Journal of Literary Semantics 34(2): 79–93.  ​https://doi.org/10.1515/jlse.2005.34.2.79 Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gavins, J. and Lahey, E. 2016. World-building in discourse. In World Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds), 1–13. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gay, G. 2010. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research and Practice. 2nd edn. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Giovanelli, M. 2016. Text World Theory as cognitive grammatics: A pedagogical application in the secondary classroom. In World-Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds), 109–126. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Giovanelli, M. and Mason, J. 2015. ‘Well I don’t feel that’: Schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom. English in Education 49(1): 41–55.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12052 Goodwyn, A. 2010. The Expert Teacher of English. London: Routledge. Goodwyn, A. 2016. Still growing after all these years? The resilience of the personal growth model of English in England and also internationally. English Teaching Practice and Critique 15(1): 7–21.  ​https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-12-2015-0111 Heritage, J. 2004. Talk. In Qualitative Research: Theory, Method and Practice. 2nd edn. D. Silverman (ed.), 222–245. London: Sage. Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Bourne, J., Franks, A., Hardcastle, J., Jones, K. and Reid, E. 2005. English in Urban Classrooms: A Multimodal Perspective on Teaching and Learning. Abingdon: Routledge. Littleton, K. and Mercer, N. 2013. Interthinking: Putting Talk to Work. London: Routledge. Mansworth, M. 2016. Creative potential within policy: An analysis of the 2013 English literature curriculum. English in Education 50(1): 116–129.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12097



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Mason, J. 2016a. Narrative interrelation, intertextuality, and teachers’ knowledge about students’ reading. In Knowing about Language: Linguistics and the Secondary English Classroom, M. Giovanelli and D. Clayton (eds), 162–172. London: Routledge. Mason, J. 2016b. Narrative Interrelation: A Cognitive Account of Intertextuality and its Application to the Study of Literature. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Mason, J. and Giovanelli, M. 2017. ‘What do you think?’ Let me tell you: Discourse about texts and the literature classroom. Changing English 24(3): 318–329. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/1358684X.2016.1276397

Maybin, J. 2013. What counts as reading? PIRLS, EastEnders and ‘The man on the flying trapeze’. Literacy 47(2): 59–66.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12005 Mercer, N. 1995. The Guided Construction of Knowledge: Talk Amongst Teachers and Learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Peplow, D., Swann, J., Trimarco, P. and Whiteley, S. 2016. The Discourse of Reading Groups: Integrating Cognitive and Sociocultural Perspectives. London: Routledge. Richards, I. A. 1929. Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement. London: Routledge. Sinclair, J. and Coulthard, M. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse: The Language of Teachers and Pupils. London: Oxford University Press. van der Bom, I. 2015. Text World Theory and Stories of Self: A Cognitive Discursive Approach to Identity. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. Walshaw, M. and Anthony, G. 2008. The teacher’s role in classroom discourse: A review of recent research into mathematics classrooms. Review of Educational Research 78(3): 516–551. ​ https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308320292

Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Xerri, D. 2013. Colluding in the ‘torture’ of poetry: Shared beliefs and assessment. English in Education 47(2): 134–146.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12012 Yandell, J. 2013. The Social Construction of Meaning: Reading Literature in Urban English Classrooms. London: Routledge. Yandell, J. and Brady, M. 2016. English and the politics of knowledge. English in Education 50(1): 44–59.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12094

Chapter 11

Sharing fiction A text-world approach to storytime Sarah Jackson

In this chapter, I explore the pre-adult reading experience and assess what pre-school literary interaction can tell us about later adult literary cognition and the subjective experience of reading fiction. The cognitive-linguistic framework Text World Theory is applied to storytime discourse in order to examine the complexities of early reading practices. Throughout this chapter, I advocate an empirical approach to the examination of the pre-school reading experience and the discussion centres on data collected from real readers: specifically, reader dyads made up of a pre-school child aged between two and four years old and a parent, who regularly read a picture-book story together at home. The analysis presented in this chapter focuses on the storytime discourse of one of my adult–child pair participants, and looks specifically at the role of “interactive interpretation” and pictures on the pre-schooler’s literary experience. Overall, I argue that participants work together during storytime to negotiate meaning and assimilate their independent text-worlds for a coherent literary experience. Keywords: Text World Theory, pre-school reading, picture-books, ontology, ethnography

11.1 Introduction Cognitive poetics sees literature 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” (Gavins and Steen 2003: 1). However, the majority of cognitive approaches to literary reading to date have taken adult-readers and complex written narratives as their primary focus; pre-adult reading experiences have yet to receive extensive attention in cognitive poetics. In particular, the formative years of the cognition of literature have so far been largely overlooked and the relationship between pre-school literary interaction and later literary cognition

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.11jac © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

200 Sarah Jackson

remains unexplored. This chapter takes the pre-school literary experience as its key focus and employs Text World Theory as a means of exploring how the fictional worlds of the literary discourses involved in pre-school reading practices are constructed and experienced. It also adopts an empirical approach to the examination of the reading experience and draws on video data of naturalistic reading practices that take place in the home, alongside ethnographic data collected about my video participants as they attend a weekly playgroup in Sheffield. 11.1.1 Pre-school reading practices Pre-school children are unable to read independently and require a literate narrator to read literary fiction aloud to them. Most commonly, the texts pre-school children experience in such read-aloud situations are “picture-books”, which combine a small amount of text with larger illustrations. It is this notion of the “pre-literate” child, and of a text defined through its use of pictures and limited narrative text, that has led to pre-school literary discourses being viewed as “simple”. It is, perhaps, for this reason that these practices have received very little academic attention. The majority of existing research on pre-literate children’s experiences with literature can be categorised into two broad fields of work: education and pedagogy, which takes into account “shared-reading” and the impacts on cognitive and linguistic development in young children (see e.g. Bus et al. 1995; Mol et al. 2010; Zucker et al. 2013; Milburn et al. 2014; Wasik and Hindman 2014); and a stylistic approach, which focuses on the influence of images in texts for young children (see e.g. Nodelman 1988: 40–76; Moebius 1990; Doonan 1993; Kiefer 1994; Stanton 1998; Sipe 2001) and the specific relationship between text and image on the construction of literary meaning (see e.g. Nodelman 1988: 193–221; Agosto 1999; Sipe 1998, 2012; Nikolajeva and Scott 2000, 2006; Lewis 2001). These existing approaches to pre-school reading have focused on either the context of reading aloud, often under experimental conditions and in line with early-years educational aims, or on the construction of meaning in picture-book texts based on the relationship between image and text, and not the reader; context and text are not analysed together. This chapter endeavours to explore the pre-school reading experience in context, looking at real readers and the texts they read at the time of reading. Pre-school reading practices are defined here, then, as the read-aloud situation between an adult parent or carer and a pre-school child, specifically in the domestic setting. These “storytime” practices are likely to be the very earliest encounter that a pre-school child will have with a literary text, prior to pre-school or nursery. What is significant about this read-aloud context is that is provides a shared reading experience between two – or sometimes more – participants who



Chapter 11.  Sharing fiction 201

usually know one another extremely well, but who differ in cognitive capability, experiential knowledge, and reading ability. I also partially define storytime practices by the picture-book texts that the participants read, since these books have specific stylistic features that influence the reading practice. Participants are involved in a discourse situation that requires them to make sense of a minimum of two different modes: words and pictures. As such, we can identify pre-school reading practices as a “multimodal” experience, if we define multimodality as the “use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event” (Kress and Leeuwen 2001: 20). In addition to words and pictures, it is important to remember that the voice of the adult read-aloud narrator in the storytime situation also holds potential interpretative content. All of these different modes are used as “resources for making meaning” throughout the comprehension of pre-school literary texts (Kress 2010: 59). The shared multimodal nature of storytime discourse situations means that they are physical and discursive. From start to finish, the practice is interactive and therefore also unpredictable. What is more, pre-school reading practices are not suited to the same reader response methods associated with the subjective adult fictional reading experience. The pre-schooler’s level of cognitive capability, control of language, and lack of experiential knowledge means that they are unable to reflect on their reading in the same way as an adult. The only way in which to access the child’s experience of the fictional discourse is to capture it “in-action”. Thus, far from viewing pre-school literary experiences as “simple”, this chapter will address the complexity involved in both the exploration and evaluation of these unpredictable early literary interactions. 11.1.2 An empirical approach I conducted an 18-month ethnography in two playgroups in Sheffield with the aim of familiarising myself with the literacy practices of a community of pre-school readers. Ethnographic methodologies endeavour to understand how a specific context and the people within that context interact and operate. As such, these methodologies are well-suited to the exploration of reading practices where the context of reading is particularly significant. As “a theory-building enterprise constructed through detailed systematic observing, recording and analysing of human behaviour in specifiable spaces and interaction” (Heath and Street 2008: 29), ethnography enabled me to explore both the wider contextual background to preschool reading practices and the more specific reading practices of individuals. I attended each playgroup’s weekly session in an affluent area of the city of Sheffield, where the groups were located approximately a mile away from each other. Both groups took place in a church hall for an hour and a half on a weekday

202 Sarah Jackson

and were organised and run by members of the church congregation. Every week, the groups were attended by a minimum of 20 adults, all of whom attended with at least one child aged between birth and four years old. During the playgroups, I helped out with organising and setting up the sessions and I interacted with all members of each group. Following each session, I made detailed fieldnotes about what had occurred during the playgroup, including topics I had discussed with both adults and children at the group. Whilst I spent time collecting information from participants about literacy practices and other reading practices that take place in their home, one of the key aims of this ethnography was to build up a relationship with the parents at the group in order to collect sets of storytime videos from them. The videos captured “online” natural reading practices that took place at home. Participants used their own recording equipment and no researcher was present at the time of recording. I collected a total of 51 videos from five adult–child pair participants across the 18-month period; the videos, therefore, represent the regular reading behaviours of the same participants across a significant span of time. Alongside the videos, I collected detailed reader-profiles for each of the adult– child pair participants involved in the project, which included information such as family relationships, parental occupation, and childcare arrangements, alongside other information relating specifically to typical reading practices in their home. Once the data collection was complete, I collated the data for each of my five individual adult–child pairs and tagged it for linguistic features, turn-taking patterns, conversational themes, and physical behaviours, using the qualitative data analysis software, NVivo. The 51 videos I collected included a minimum of 291 instances of what I will refer to here as “additional talk”. This type of talk involves any interaction between the adult and the pre-school child about the literary text being read which takes place at the time of reading. All 51 videos included some additional talk by adult–child pairs, not all of which stemmed from the text being read. Instead, I found that the instances of additional talk that arise during read-aloud practices are unpredictable; participants can choose to break away from the narrative of the fictional text at any moment. However, whilst there is no definitive pattern that determines when participants will engage in additional talk, what became clear is that adult–child pairs employ talk at the time of reading continuously throughout their storytimes. What is more, there are observable patterns in how the talk is employed by participants once it is initiated. Additional talk can therefore be subcategorised based on factors such as who triggered the talk, what the talk is about, and what the talk achieves. Subcategories of additional talk include “additional commentary”, where participants provide extra detail about what has happened in the fictional discourse;



Chapter 11.  Sharing fiction 203

“extended discussion”, where the talk becomes prolonged and the topic discussed evolves gradually; and “question and answer”, where one participant asks a question about the fictional discourse which requires an immediate answer from their storytime partner. The boundaries between these subcategories are not definitive and, often, one episode of a specific subcategory of talk can merge into another, depending upon the topic and the participants involved in the interaction. However, regardless of the subcategory that the talk falls into, all additional talk contributes to participants’ comprehension of the fictional discourse that is being read, because it takes place at the time of reading. For this reason, I refer to all instances of additional talk as “interactive interpretations”, where participants engage in discursive behaviour in order to comprehend some aspect of the fictional discourse at hand. If such interactive interpretations are not triggered by the text, then we can assume that they are determined by the specific influence of the context of pre-school reading practices. 11.2 Sharing fiction: The storytime discourse-world Text World Theory (cf. Werth 1999; Gavins 2007) defines a discourse-world as the space in which a language event takes place; it is the immediate situational context that surrounds human beings as they participate in discourse. The discourseworld thus contains human beings participating in discourse and all objects and entities that surround them, including all their personal and cultural knowledge (Werth 1999: 83–86; Gavins 2007: 9–10). The shared nature of pre-school readaloud practices means that the discourse-world plays a more significant role in the conceptualisation of a fictional discourse, compared with the experience of independent, literate adult readers. All elements of the discourse-world environment, including the book as an object, remain mutually perceivable between the adult and the child as they read a text together and process the fictional discourse. The discourse-world of pre-school read-aloud practices is complex and is illustrated in Figure 11.1. As with all other written discourses, the discourse-world of storytime is split between the spatio-temporal environment of those participants reading the picture-book text and the spatio-temporal environment of the author of the picture-book text; this is represented in Figure  11.1 by the “text-producer” and “text-receiver” labels that sit on either side of a “split” division line in the discourseworld. The two key stylistic elements of picture-books are the written narrative, which requires an author, and the images, which require an illustrator. In some instances, the author and the illustrator are the same person; however, it is often the case that the author and illustrator are two separate individuals. This means

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Discourse-World (Read-aloud participants) Adult (text-producer)

Author Illustrator Editor/ designer

S P L I T

Privileged access

Child (text-receiver) Time and place of reading Book as an object to be produced

TEXT-PRODUCER

TEXT-RECEIVER

Figure 11.1  The storytime discourse-world

that the author–illustrator relationship itself can be spatially and temporally split. While, for the sake of simplicity, this potential added complexity of the discourseworld is not represented in Figure 11.1, each participant in the text-producer half of the discourse-world may be working on the same text independently and in different locations. What is more, when the author and illustrator are not the same person, an editor or designer is usually employed to assign the text to an illustrator (Sipe and Brightman 2009: 76). As a result, an additional participant enters the discourse-world, again working independently on the same text as the author and the illustrator, but in their own spatio-temporal environment. The “text-receiver” half of the split discourse-world also contains two textreceivers: an adult and a pre-school child, or more specifically, an adult-reader and a child-listener. This “double reader” discourse-world is a fundamental feature of these reading practices. If we compare this to adult fictional reading practices, where we have one literate adult with a mature cognitive capacity and a store of experiential knowledge, reading independently and usually silently, we can see how the text-receiver half of the split discourse-world of pre-school storytime adds an extra level of complexity when it comes to the conceptualisation of the written discourse.



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The pre-school child needs the adult in the discourse-world to read the narrative lines of the text for them in order to be able to construct a mental representation, or text-world (Werth 1999; Gavins 2007), of the text. The narrative text, therefore, becomes spoken discourse by the adult in the discourse-world. As such, “comprehension aids”, such as intonation and gesture, which we usually associate with face-to-face communication and not with the comprehension of written communication (Gavins 2007: 26), remain pertinent in the storytime discourse situation. Thus, the way in which the narrative lines are produced by the adult can impact the way in which the child comprehends them, giving the adult a level of authorial control in the discourse situation. Furthermore, for the child in the textreceiver half of the discourse-world, the text is not the only source from which world-building information can be incremented, since the adult remains as a constant source of knowledge throughout the read-aloud practice. The adult in the text-receiver half of the discourse-world is essentially the main text-producer for the child and as such, the ontological and physical split in the discourse-world is likely to remain unperceived by the child. Instead, the child simply views the book as an object in the discourse-world and the narrative text as spoken discourse produced by the adult. In this situation, instances of interactive interpretation that take place at the time of reading also play an important role. What is key about this additional talk is that it happens simultaneously with the fictional discourse as it is being processed and interpreted by participants in the discourse-world. Although it is in many ways separate from the fictional narrative, additional talk is nevertheless simultaneously with that narrative and undeniably intertwined with the picture-book discourse that is being read aloud. In a storytime discourseworld, additional talk is integral to how each participant experiences the literary discourse and I will now turn to an exploration of an example of this talk in-action. 11.2.1 Real readers: William, Rosie and Matthew Rosie and Matthew are the parents of William, who at the time of his video recording was three years old.1 The child has one younger sibling who is 14 months his junior, however they were rarely read to together because Rosie and Matthew found that the younger sibling struggled to focus on the text being read. Both of William’s parents work for the National Health Service (NHS); they share child-care between themselves and a part-time nursery. He attended playgroup every Monday, usually with his father, Matthew, and his younger sibling. Matthew helped to organise the weekly playgroup and therefore the boy attended almost every week without fail. William was very active at the playgroup sessions and 1.  All personal names used to refer to participants throughout this chapter are pseudonyms.

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would participate in a range of activities, including craft, free-play and reading. I spent a lot of time with this family during my fieldwork and they produced approximately 16 storytime videos. At the time of the recordings, William had a regular bedtime story routine that was very structured. Every evening, he would choose three stories just before bed for his parents to read to him. The read-aloud activity usually took place in a large chair in William’s bedroom, or on his bed; he was read to regularly by both parents. Alongside choosing what texts to read, he also decided in what order his parents should read the texts. The stories that he chose were a mixture of old and new books that the family owned or had been given as gifts. They also often read library books that he had chosen and borrowed from the local library; visiting the library was a regular activity for this family. The extract discussed in this chapter is taken from the full transcript of one storytime video that shows Rosie reading a bedtime story to William. In the video, the pair are reading the picture-book text Do Not Enter the Monster Zoo (Sparkes and Ogilvie 2013) (henceforth Monster Zoo). Rosie and Matthew told me that this text was fairly new to the family at the time of reading. Monster Zoo (2013) is a story about a young boy who wins a prize to run a zoo for the day. When the boy arrives at the zoo, he discovers that it is full of monsters. The adult zoo-keeper leaves the boy in charge for the day, whilst he takes a holiday. The boy spends the day trying to tame the monsters in the zoo and does such a good job that the monsters and the zoo-keeper want him to return the next day. Monster Zoo (2013) has a rhyming narrative and a maximum of 41 words per page and a minimum of just four. Extract 11.1 has been chosen because of the interactive interpretation it shows taking place during the reading. This was not the only instance of additional talk that occured in this video and it should be noted that such talk is not specific to just these participants and this one instance, but reflects a communicative practice that was common across my dataset. I begin my discussion of this particular example with a more in-depth look at how interactive interpretation functions during early reading practices. Extract 11.1. From transcript of William and Rosie’s Monster Zoo storytime video 1 2 3

AP: I waved goodbye and began to ride. I whizzed past hills and through the wood. I think today was rather good *turns page* CP: look, that dino-, that one, look *turns page back* that one’s

4

*points at image* fl- crying

5

AP: *laughs* he’s so sad to see him go

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6

CP: and there, and he *points at image* (inaudible)

7

AP: he’s got sad eyes, hasn’t he? Oh, *points at image* that one’s crying

8 9

*laughs* he’s wiping his eye with his tail *turns page* CP: I think he’s crying too

10 AP: *turns page back* which one? 11 CP: *points at image* that [one there 12 AP:                   [Oh, boo-hoo (.) they miss him Key: AP Adult Participant (Rosie) CP Child Participant (William) ** represents a significant action [] overlap

11.2.2 Interactive interpretation: Guiding talk and text-worlds So far, I have determined that early reading practices are shared between an adult and child and are, in many ways, a joint practice. The concept of additional talk and the term “interactive interpretation” further emphasise the idea that the adult and the child participants work together during these reading situations in order to make sense of the fictional discourse. Indeed, one of the key roles of interactive interpretation during pre-school read-aloud practices is for the adult reader to guide their co-participant to a similar understanding of the literary text. However, Text World Theory maintains that, as a language event progresses, each participant constructs a text-world of the discourse in their own mind. So, if we consider the text-world to be each individual participant’s mental representation of the discourse, then participants cannot share a text-world, regardless of the level of joint practice they engage in throughout the language event. The conceptual processing typical to storytime is illustrated in Figure 11.2. Figure  11.2 shows the ontologically distinct mental representations of each participant in the shared text-receiver half of the discourse-world. The “text-world (adult)” and “text-world (child)” that have been diagrammed here show that the text-world each participant constructs from the fictional discourse remains distinct from the other at all times. This is significant because one of the key aims of the communicative act of reading a picture-book text aloud to a young child is to present the story from within the pages of the text. So, although ontologically each participant’s text-world must be distinct, a core aim of storytime is to try and make sure that the child’s text-world resembles the adult’s as much as possible. For example, for William and Rosie reading Monster Zoo, the prominent focus of the text is a deictic space where the zoo, the young boy, and the monsters in the

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Discourse-World

Text-world (adult) (Read-aloud participants) Adult (text-producer)

Author Illustrator Editor/ designer

S P L I T

Privileged access

Child (text-receiver) Time and place of reading Book as an object to be produced

TEXT-PRODUCER

Deictically remote: time zone and location as defined by the text Objects: defined by text Negotiation Text-world (child) Deictically remote: time zone and location as defined by the text Objects: defined by text

TEXT-RECEIVER

Figure 11.2  Conceptual processing during storytime

story exist and the young boy looks after these monsters. In order for the adult to achieve the aim of telling the story successfully, the text-worlds of each participant must assimilate to some degree. This is where episodes of interactive interpretation enter the discourse situation. In fact, it is the shared communicative aim of making sense of the fictional discourse that triggers many episodes of additional talk in the first place. In Text World Theory terms, then, interactive interpretation is a key means through which the participants can endeavour to bring their text-worlds of the literary text being read closer together, in order to create a coherent reading experience. Given that the text-worlds of each participant remain independent at all times, however, I propose that pre-school reading practices are a process of negotiation between participants in the discourse-world, rather than a joint-text-world construction process. As such, interpretative interactions are often used to extend, clarify, and aid the comprehension of the fictional discourse and participants frequently produce additional talk to construct, amend and clarify aspects of their own text-world. In Figure 11.2, the negotiated nature of the distinct text-worlds is represented by the “negotiation” arrow placed between them to the right of the diagram. This arrow accounts for the instances of interactive interpretation that take place during storytime within the same discourse-world environment as the fictional discourse. What is more, the adult’s “privileged access” to the text-world of the fictional discourse, which is afforded to them by their literate status, is represented by the arrow of the same name in Figure 11.2. This arrow illustrates the adult’s ability to quickly comprehend the fictional discourse and their potential authorial control



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in the discourse-situation, which enables them to guide the child’s interpretation towards one that is most similar to their own. 11.2.3 An example: Understanding crying monsters The storytime video that Extract 11.1 is taken from shows William sat on Rosie’s knee whilst the pair read the picture-book Monster Zoo in a large chair in his bedroom. Rosie is holding the text so that both participants can see the pages. The text-receiver discourse-world thus contains two participants: William and Rosie, the book, and all other objects and entities that surround the pair as they sit in the child’s bedroom. As soon as the book is opened and Rosie begins reading the written discourse aloud, text-worlds are formed by both participants. Extract 11.1 is taken from near the end of the storytime video and therefore the end of the story. As such, when this interaction takes place, we can assume that both participants have already constructed a prominent text-world for Monster Zoo. The adult participant (AP), Rosie, reads the narrative lines from the text aloud (lines  1–2) and then turns the page to continue reading the text. However, the child participant (CP) interrupts this action and instead verbalises an observation that he has made about a text-world enactor that he can see represented in the pictures of the book (lines  3–4). The CP’s comment triggers an episode of interactive interpretation between participants in the form of extended discussion. Although his comment is relevant to the fictional text that is being read-aloud, it causes the adult to stop reading the narrative lines of the text and both participants engage in talk with one another that is separate to the read-aloud discourse. More specifically, as we can see in Extract 11.1, this additional talk takes place over a prolonged span of nine turns. Across these nine turns, the interpretative topic that the participants discuss is “the sad monsters” in the text, focusing in particular on the images in the book. This topic evolves during the interaction from William’s initial observation of who he can see crying in the pictures to a more specific consideration about why these monsters are crying. Prior to this interaction taking place, the adult and child have read a narrative that has followed a young boy successfully looking after and befriending a selection of monsters who live in the zoo. Moreover, the adult reads the narrative line “I waved goodbye” moments before William’s observation. As such, the fact that the monsters are crying is wholly relevant to the narrative lines that have just been read-aloud and to the event that is taking place in the text-world: the boy is leaving the zoo and the monsters do not want him to. However, the fact that the text-world enactors are crying is not actually mentioned in the narrative lines of the text at all, or therefore, by the read-aloud narrator. In line  3, when William makes his observation about the monsters in the image, he uses the imperative “look” to

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direct the adult’s attention to what he is discussing and to the visual information supplied by the text in particular. In addition to this, he also has to turn back the page of the text in order to point to the image. What the child does here is verbally and physically foreground an aspect of the discourse that is salient to him in some way, but that would otherwise have gone unmentioned. It is for this reason that I define this episode of extended discussion as creating a “break away” from the narrative lines of the fictional discourse. What is more, his effort to foreground this aspect of the text to his discourse-world partner suggests that it is of some significance to him and his experience of the fictional discourse at this point. Furthermore, the fact that what William has noticed in the picture of the text is not mentioned at all in the narrative lines of the book suggests that there is an interpretative gap left between the word and image in this picture-book text. The CP does not possess the cognitive capacity and experiential knowledge to fill this gap, so he turns to his more mature co-participant for help. The interpretative gap in this case is the reason why the monsters are crying, of which Rosie holds a more fully formed understanding. Thus, in Extract 11.1, her response to William’s spontaneous observation about the monsters in the image is the clarifying explanation “he’s so sad to see him go” (line 5). Rosie can only guess at the boy’s experience of the discourse because of their independent processing (see Figure 11.2). However, given that William foregrounds the tears in the fictional discourse through his own turn, and given that this foregrounded information is relevant to the narrative lines that have just been read-aloud (lines 1–2), it is safe for Rosie to assume that the independent text-worlds of each participant involved in the read-aloud situation are, at this point, quite similar; both contain enactors of the monsters and an enactor of the boy who is leaving. Nevertheless, Rosie’s response in line 5 provides an interpretative reason for the text-world enactors’ tears, thus filling the gap left by the word–image interaction and ensuring text-world assimilation between her interpretation of the discourse and her child’s. As the talk progresses, she adds that the text-world enactors will “miss” the boy (line  12), providing further detail about why the text-world enactors are sad and therefore, filling the interpretative gap William has perceived and flagged in his own turn with greater precision. As a result of this interactive interpretation, the adult is able to guide the child’s conceptual experience of the discourse, through the provision of additional text-world-specific explanations that are not available in the picture-book alone. It is important to remember that any clarification and or additional commentary that the adult provides about the text-world is based on her own mental representation of the fictional discourse; the adult uses her own text-world of Monster Zoo to guide the child’s conceptualisation of the discourse, thus resulting in more similar text-worlds and a shared overall interpretation. More specifically, it is the



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additional talk by the pre-schooler that provides the adult with the interpretative “clues” they need about the child’s experience in order to adapt their presentation of the fictional discourse accordingly. This does not mean that the adult has to change their interpretation of the text, but it means that they are better able to guide the pre-schooler’s construction of a coherent literary experience. In the extract above, Rosie not only guides the child towards an understanding of “sad monsters”, but she presents this information in a certain way, using her potential authorial control to influence to child’s experience of the discourse. The storytime video of Monster Zoo shows Rosie laughing when William first states that “that one’s crying”. Rosie also later chuckles when she points to the monster that is “wiping his eye with his tail” (line 8). This might seem like an odd reaction to an image that shows a text-world enactor that is upset. However, Rosie  – by laughing and acting amused by the picture – softens her explanation of sadness. William soon adopts this “amused” behaviour himself and when he points to the final monster across lines 9–11, he does so with an amused tone and manipulates his own voice to match his mother’s. As a result, this extended discussion, which essentially focuses on sadness, becomes fun and we can see how the adult guides the child not only through the content of her speech but by the presentation of her speech. The way in which Rosie leans toward William, laughs and changes her tone of voice all informs the child’s experience of the discourse. This is not to say, however, that the adult controls the interaction. Instead, we see control switch between participants as they negotiate the interpretative topic of “sad monsters”. Through lines 6–11, the participants take it in turn to foreground different aspects of the image. The adult actually mimics the child’s actions here by pointing out monsters in the image just as he did in lines 3–4. Essentially, it is the child who controls when to stop the reading and the topic selection – he even physically turns the page back – and the adult who controls how the pair talk about the topic that has been highlighted. This is often how extended discussion that is initiated by the child in the read-aloud situation occurs: the child initially foregrounds, whilst the adult expands. The adult, then, as the participant with the higher cognitive capability and experiential knowledge, always maintains a “scaffolding” role in the discourse, rather than a “controlling” one. This scaffolding role involves the adult “controlling” only “those elements of the task that are initially beyond the learner’s capacity” (Wood et al. 1976: 90; see also Henderson et al. 2002; Yelland and Masters 2006; Pentimonti and Justice 2010). The theoretical background for the term can be linked to the work of Vygotsky (1978) and his concept of the “zone of proximal development”, which is defined as “The distance between the child’s actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development

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as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978: 86). Vygotsky believed that guided interactions with a more skilled peer could facilitate a higher level of thinking within the zone. More specifically, these guided interactions can be seen to aid a child’s learning and encourage them to internalise their thinking and strategy surrounding the scaffolding activity (Yelland and Masters 2006: 363–364). In the extract above, Rosie’s comments in line 5, “he’s so sad to see him go”, and line 12, “they miss him”, scaffold William’s understanding of what is happening in the text-world. What is more, the adult not only aids the child’s comprehension of what is happening in the text-world of Monster Zoo, but she also guides him into linking up visual aspects of the picture-book with its textual component – a skill which, if “internalised”, will aid William’s development as an independent reader. Overall, the scaffolding role that the adult provides during these early reading practices acts like a cognitive stepping stone for the pre-school child. It provides children with an opportunity to discuss text-world-specific information in more detail, whilst simultaneously building up their knowledge of how to construct meaning from the information supplied by a literary text. However, at all times the discourse – both fictional and spoken – is processed separately by each participant and their experience remains individual. Each participant will increment information from any spoken discourse about the fictional text being read into the text-world that they have already built for the read-aloud narrative up until this point. Furthermore, additional, individual text-worlds will also need to be constructed in order for the participants to conceptualise one another’s additional talk. Fundamentally, although there is “joint practice” during the episodes of interactive interpretation, where participants share turns and work together in order to explore and explain some aspect of the fictional discourse, the conceptual end products are always distinct from one another. William’s effort to highlight an aspect of the fictional world that would otherwise have gone unmentioned in the extract above is proof that, even at this early stage, pre-schoolers are independent in the way that they conceptualise and experience fiction. The discussion so far has focused on how talk at the time of reading aids interpretation during early read-aloud practices, but I will now turn to the role of pictures during these early reading practices. Across my dataset, I found that pictures facilitated additional talk and usually, whenever some interactive interpretative activity developed, images were either the cause (see Extract  11.1) or were used as part of the explanation.



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11.3 Pictures: Direct perception and access to text-worlds In his initial outline of Text World Theory, Werth defined a text-world as being “dependent on resources of memory and imagination, rather than direct perception” (Werth 1999: 17). However, as Lewis (2001: 36) recognises, a picture-book’s story emerges out of the mutual interanimation of words and pictures; images are “part and parcel” of the early-reading context (Lehr 1991: 94). The extract discussed above emphasises the significance of pictures in early literary experiences. William makes a comment about something that he can see, foregrounding an aspect of the image and therefore indicating that his attention in the discourse situation is predominantly perceptual. Across my dataset, I found that pre-school children and adults rarely asked a question that didn’t include pointing to an image in the text or referencing an image directly. In Extract 11.1, when the child asks his mother to “look” at a particular textworld enactor, he also uses the distal demonstrative “that”, which suggests that he comprehends a distance between himself and the text-world enactor that he is referring to. This could indicate that he conceptualises the text-world entity as existing in a separate spatio-temporal environment from himself and his mother and that he uses the images to mediate this ontological distinction. I propose that images in picture-book texts are a direct representation of the text-world. This creates an ontological reversal in the discourse situation, where the text-world exists as a material object in the discourse-world. As a result, picture-book images create a level of “access” to the text-world by reducing the conceptual effort required by all participants. Images are immediate and are shared by participants in the discourse-world. Therefore, pictures are a constant and reliable source of text-world-specific information for participants to draw on, which is why they facilitate extended discussion about the text. In Extract 11.1 above, William points to and touches the monster that he is referring to when he tells his mother to “look”; this physical discourse-world action becomes another key element which influences his experience of the discourse. Figure  11.3 shows the page that William and Rosie are reading whilst the interactive interpretation in Extract 11.1 takes place. If we take a close look at the pictures on this page, the extent of the world-building information that is included in the images is clear. The image provides information about what the monsters look like; what the keeper looks like; the relationship between the text-world entities, indicated by how close they stand to one another; temporal information, indicated by the light sky; and how the text-world enactors feel. However, none of this is mentioned in the narrative lines or, therefore, by the read-aloud narrator. This means that there is less written – and therefore spoken – discourse for the

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child to process because it is presented visually and they can see it without having to mentally construct the space first.

Figure 11.3  Sad Monsters illustration from Monster Zoo (2013)2

Overall, the images in picture-books present children with an immediate representation of the text-world in the discourse-world environment. This ontological reversal provides the child with key world-building information about the textworld, thereby reducing the conceptual effort needed to construct an ontologically and deictically distinct structure independently. What is more, unlike the distinct, individual text-worlds the participants construct from the narrative lines in the picture-book, the images are shared and allow all participants in the discourse

2.  Artwork Sara Ogilvie. From Do Not Enter The Monster Zoo by Amy Sparkes. Published by Red Fox Picture Books. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. © 2013.



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situation to discuss the text-world with one another with greater ease, therefore ensuring better text-world assimilation. 11.4 Conclusion: A shared, interactive negotiation The pre-schooler’s experience of fiction is shared and interactive; it is a process of negotiation where the participants in the text-receiver half of a split discourse-world work together to interpret the read-aloud discourse through regular instances of interactive interpretation. However, as the Text World Theory application in this chapter has shown, whilst participants may share a reading context and a text, the text-worlds that they construct during the discourse remain completely separate at all times. As a result, one of the key roles of interactive interpretation during these early reading practices is to guide participants to a similar conceptual understanding of the discourse for an overall coherent reading experience. This chapter looked at one instance of interactive interpretation which emphasised the role of joint discursive practices on individual conceptual processing. These episodes of talk at the time of reading are an integral part of storytime discourse-worlds that feed into how each participant experiences the literary discourse as a whole. The adult, in particular, is a trustworthy participant that the child is able to rely on. The shared context means that the child can ask any questions or make any observations at any time about the ontologically distinct realm that the language in the fictional text creates. In response, their adult co-participant is able to provide an immediate and physical face-to-face response that enables the child to negotiate their interpretation of the fictional discourse immediately. What is more, direct perception is key in early reading experiences. The images in picture-book texts facilitate additional talk and are often at the heart of interactive interpretation. Pictures reduce the conceptual effort needed by the child by providing key worldbuilding information about the text-world and reducing the written information they have to process. Pictures are a significant part of the reading experience that focus attention, reduce confusion, and enhance engagement with the fictional discourse. Essentially, reading is only part of the experience when it comes to our earliest interactions with literary texts. Whilst young children are required to process the written language of the text like any other reader, the written language is read aloud to them by another participant. This means that the presentation of the narrative text can be adapted to the needs of the child and the reading situation and can impact the child’s interpretation of the discourse. Moreover, as this chapter has shown, the pre-schooler’s text-world of the literary text being read is often influenced by the discussion that takes place in the discourse-world at the time of

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reading, just as much as these worlds are influenced by the text and the pictures in that text. Mental interpretative activity is, of course, never the same, but for a child who is pre-literate, with little experiential knowledge and developing cognitive capabilities, the shared reading context means that there is always a scaffolding co-participant to aid the completion of any interpretative gaps that may appear. I propose that during these early reading experiences children learn how to link up the spoken words of the discourse with the images that they can see. As a result, we teach them that words build worlds and that these worlds can contain their own objects and entities. Moreover, as the example discussed above has shown, children also learn how to conceptualise a world that is ontologically distinct from their own and therefore begin to comprehend the boundary between these two domains. These early experiences with literature, then, really do prepare the child for later subjective experiences as an adult, where they lose their reading partner and are able to build and interpret the text-worlds of more complex fictional discourses independently.

References Agosto, D. 1999. One and Inseparable: Interdependent Storytelling in Picture Storybooks. Children’s Literature In Education 30(4): 267–280.  ​https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022471922077 Bus, A. G., Van Ijzendoorn, M. H. and Pellegrini, A. D. 1995. Joint Book Reading Makes for Success in Learning to Read: A Meta-Analysis on Intergenerational Transmission of Literacy. Review of Educational Research 65(1): 1–21.  ​https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543065001001 Doonan, J. 1993. Looking at Pictures in Picture Books. Woodchester: Thimble Press. Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gavins, J. and Steen, G. 2003. Cognitive Poetics in Practice. London: Routledge. ​ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203417737

Heath, S. and Street, B. 2008. On Ethnography: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. New York: Teachers College Press. Henderson, S. D., Many, J. E., Wellborn, H. P. and Ward, J. 2002. How Scaffolding Nurtures the Development of Young Children’s Literacy Repertoire: Insiders’ and Outsiders’ Collaborative Understandings. Reading Research and Instruction 41(4): 309–330. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/19388070209558374

Kiefer, B. 1994. The Potential of Picture Books: From Visual Literacy to Aesthetic Understanding. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pearson. Kress, G. R. 2010. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Kress, G. R. and Van Leeuwen, T. 2001. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold. Lehr, S. 1991. The Child’s Developing Sense of Theme: Responses to Literature. London: Teachers College Press.

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Lewis, D. 2001. Reading Contemporary Picturebooks: Picturing Text. London: Routledge. Milburn, T. F., Girolametto, L., Weitzman, E. and Greenberg, J. 2014. Enhancing Preschool Educators’ Ability to Facilitate Conversations During Shared Book Reading. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 14(1): 105–140.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798413478261 Moebius, W. 1990. Introduction to Picturebook Codes. In Children’s Literature: The Development of Criticism, P. Hunt (eds), 131–147. London: Routledge. Mol, S. E., Bus, A. G. and De Jong, M. T. 2010. Interactive Book Reading in Early Education: A Tool to Stimulate Print Knowledge as well as Oral Language. Review of Educational Research 79(2): 979–1007.  ​https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654309332561 Nikolajeva, M. and Scott, C. 2000. The Dynamics of Picturebook Communication. Children’s Literature in Education 31(4): 225–239.  ​https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026426902123 Nikolajeva, M. and Scott, C. 2006. How Picturebooks Work. New York: Routledge. Nodelman, P. 1988. Words about Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. London: University of Georgia Press. Pentimonti, J. M. and Justice, L. M. 2010. Teachers’ Use of Scaffolding Strategies During Read Alouds in the Preschool Classroom. Early Childhood Education Journal 37(4): 241–248. ​ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-009-0348-6

Sipe, L. 1998. How Picture Books Work: A Semiotically Framed Theory of Text-Picture Relationships. Children’s Literature in Education 29(2): 97–108. ​ https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022459009182

Sipe, L. 2001. Picturebooks as Aesthetic Objects. Literacy, Teaching and Learning 6(1): 23–42. Sipe, L. 2012. Revisiting the Relationships Between Text and Pictures. Children’s Literature in Education 43(1): 4–21.  ​https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-011-9153-0 Sipe, L. R. and Brightman, A. E. 2009. Young Children’s Interpretations of Page Breaks in Contemporary Picture Storybooks. Journal of Literacy Research 41(1): 68–103. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/10862960802695214

Sparkes, A. and illustrated by Ogilvie, S. 2013. Do Not Enter the Monster Zoo. London: Red Fox. Stanton, J. 1998. The Important Books: Appreciating the Children’s Picture Book as a Form of Art. American Art 12(2): 2–5.  ​https://doi.org/10.1086/424316 Vygotsky, L. 1978. Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. London: Harvard University Press. Wasik, B. A. and Hindman, A. H. 2014. Understanding the Active Ingredients in an Effective Preschool Vocabulary Intervention: An Exploratory Study of Teacher and Child Talk During Book Reading. Early Education and Development 25(7): 1035–1056. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2014.896064

Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Wood, D., Bruner, J. S. and Ross, G. 1976. The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17(2): 89–100. ​ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x

Yelland, N. and Masters, J. 2006. Rethinking Scaffolding in the Information Age. Computers and Education 48(3): 362–382.  ​https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2005.01.010 Zucker, T. A., Cabell, S. Q., Justice, L. M., Pentimonti, J. M. and Kaderavek, J. N. 2013. The Role of Frequent, Interactive Prekindergarten Shared Reading in the Longitudinal Development of Language and Literacy Skills. Developmental Psychology 49(8): 1425–1439. ​ https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030347

Chapter 12

Afterword Joanna Gavins

Experiencing Fictional Worlds bears witness to an analytical approach reaching its maturity. A range of theories and frameworks based on the text-as-world metaphor has gradually gained legitimacy and traction from the mid-20th century onwards in a variety of disciplines focusing on the conceptualisation of language, including cognitive linguistics, stylistics, narratology, and literary criticism. Its appeal as a way of thinking and talking about textual experience can be seen to have increased directly in tandem with the dramatic upsurge in the understanding of human cognition which has emerged from the cognitive sciences over the same period. Research in this area has revealed the human mind to be fundamentally embodied and abundant evidence now exists to show how this embodiment is reflected in and expressed through the nature and structure of all forms of everyday language (see Johnson 1987; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; and Gibbs 1994, 2006 for influential accounts). If we understand language to be an integral part of cognition, then it is a short and logical stride from that point to understanding fictional texts as experienced, sensory, potentially immersive, and simulative phenomena. The common-sense attraction and usefulness of conceptualising fictional texts as world-building in nature can be seen in the multiplicity of different terms and concepts which have come to be used as a means of articulating and examining this process over recent years: from storyworlds (see, for example, Herman 2002) to text-worlds (see Gavins 2007; Werth 1999); from possible worlds (see Ryan 1991) to conceptual frames (see Emmott 1997). Each of these separate but related frameworks is informed by its own disciplinary and theoretical origins and driven by its own analytical and discursive aims. However, they are all united through their core concern with producing an account of fictional discourse which accurately represents the ontological and cognitive complexity of human interaction with text.

https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.32.12gav © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company

220 Joanna Gavins

Most of the contributions to this volume have chosen to take a predominantly Text World Theory perspective on the fictional worlds they explore, following Werth (1999) and Gavins (2007) in the main. This is obviously encouraging for me to see, having been centrally involved in the development of this particular worldsbased framework for over twenty years now. My own experience as a text-world theorist has stretched from the earliest days of the approach, when it was easy to level a criticism of limited application and unproven scope at the comparatively infant Text World Theory. However, the chapters of this book have demonstrated quite how far the text-world model has travelled from the end of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st. Even within the constraints of a volume focused only on fictional worlds, the analyses and discussions presented here represent an impressive spectrum of different applications of Text World Theory to a wide range of text types and in a variety of communicative contexts. The chapters by Stockwell, Lahey, Stewart-Shaw, Igl, Marszalek, and Norledge have all shown how the text-world framework can be used to examine the textual and conceptual systems of fictional narratives. They have revealed variously how immersion is encouraged and linguistically controlled in fiction; how knowledge is deployed and affected through reading; how humour, horror, and unnatural narration are constructed; and how paratext functions in conjunction with text. Each of these contributions has pushed the boundaries of the text-world approach through the originality of its analytical focus and through the illuminating interpretative conclusions it draws as a result of that analysis. The chapter by Harrison and Nuttall is similarly original in its examination of the experience of re-reading a fictional text. However, there is an added innovative dimension to this discussion in its amalgamation of contemporary Cognitive Grammar (following Langacker 2008) into the Text World Theory framework, which originally viewed grammar through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics (following Halliday 1994). Such ground-breaking theoretical augmentation brings text-worlds fully into the modern, cognitive-linguistic landscape and demonstrates the ongoing adaptability of the model to compatible concepts and ideas. The chapters by Giovanelli and Jackson have extended the reach of Text World Theory into pre-literate reading practices and classroom learning environments, showing the flexibility of the worlds-view of fictional experience in a multitude of reading contexts, extending from early childhood, through secondary education, to adult literacy. Finally, Neurohr’s chapter has taken a step into neuroscientific terrain. In so doing, it not only reflects on the journey worlds-based approaches to fictional language have already completed over the last few decades, but also indicates how much ground has yet to be covered, particularly through direct engagement with other disciplines. The precise nature of that unexplored ground has yet to be fully defined. However, there are already emerging clear directions in which future exploration



Chapter 12.  Afterword 221

and discovery is likely to travel. Some of the most challenging and exciting work I have been involved in over recent years has been based around direct collaboration with teachers in UK secondary schools to bring the text-world approach into Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 English classrooms (age 12–16 years). The development of such practical pedagogical applications has been driven primarily by research by Giovanelli (such as that showcased in this volume, but also in Giovanelli 2010, 2016a, 2016b), Giovanelli and Mason (2015), Mason (2016), and Cushing (2018). Each of these text-world theorists have additionally led free workshops for teachers with me at the University of Sheffield and at teachers’ conferences, as well as providing innovative and open-access online teaching resources (see www.textworldtheory.org and https://studyingfiction.com). These activities not only aim to ensure that Text World Theory finds an effective place in the analytical toolkit available to all schoolchildren studying language and literature, but that it retains or even broadens its accessibility and serviceability for teachers and learners beyond the higher education and research environment. One of the main reasons the teachers I have worked with so far have given for taking up a text-world approach in their classrooms is the theory’s flexibility as an investigative framework. The ability of a worlds-based approach to open up a vast array of text types for rigorous and rewarding exploration has been amply demonstrated, not only through the chapters of the present volume, but in the similarly diverse analyses presented in Gavins and Lahey (2016). Elsewhere over recent years, Text World Theory has been used to examine topics from political discourse (e.g. Browse 2016, 2018) to legal language (e.g. Gavins and Simpson 2015); from tourist discourse (e.g. Gavins and Whiteley in press) to multi-modal fiction (e.g. Gibbons 2012); and from oral narrative (e.g. van der Bom 2015) to reading group discourse (e.g. Whiteley 2011; Peplow et al. 2016), among many others. The adaptability of contemporary Text World Theory thus remains its greatest strength. Indeed, this aspect of all worlds-based approaches to the investigation of discourse needs to be encouraged and nurtured above all others. Continually testing the scope of the framework through its application to an ever-widening diversity of discourse types firstly extends the practical and analytical parameters of this way of seeing textual experience. Secondly, but just as importantly, it anchors text-worlds firmly to Paul Werth’s original conception of Text World Theory as a widely applied ‘cognitive discourse grammar’ (Werth 1999: 50). If Experiencing Fictional Worlds is seen as an indicator of the health and further potential of the text-world approach, then it is clear to me that the only limits to its future investigations are those of text-world researchers’ imaginations.

222 Joanna Gavins

References Browse, S. 2016. Revisiting Text World Theory and extended metaphor: embedding and foregrounding metaphor in the text-worlds of the 2008 financial crash. Language and Literature 25(1): 8–37.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947015608969 Browse, S. 2018. Cognitive Rhetoric: The Cognitive Poetics of Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cushing, I. 2018. “Suddenly, I am part of the poem”: texts as worlds, reader-response and grammar in teaching poetry. English in Education 52(1): 7–19. ​ https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2018.1414398

Emmott, C. 1997. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748622993.001.0001

Gavins, J. and Simpson, P. 2015. Regina v John Terry: the discursive construction of an alleged racist event. Discourse and Society 26(6): 712–732. ​ https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926515592783

Gavins, J. and Lahey, E. (eds) 2016. World Building: Discourse in the Mind. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gavins, J. and Whiteley, S. In press. Creativity and cognition in the discourse of National Trust holiday cottage guestbooks. In C. Hart (ed.) Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Text and Discourse: From Politics to Poetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gibbs, R. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbs, R. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibbons, A. 2012. Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature. London: Routledge. Giovanelli, M. 2016a. Text World Theory as cognitive grammatics: a pedagogical application in the secondary classroom. In World Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins and E. Lahey (eds), 109–126. London: Bloomsbury. Giovanelli, M. 2016b. Readers building fictional worlds: visual representations, poetry and cognition. Literacy 51(1): 26–35.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12091 Giovanelli, M. 2010. Pedagogical stylistics: a Text World Theory approach to the teaching of poetry. English in Education 44(3): 214–231. ​ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-8845.2010.01074.x

Giovanelli, M. and Mason, J. 2015. “Well I don’t feel that”: schemas, worlds and authentic reading in the classroom. English in Education 49(1): 41–55.  ​https://doi.org/10.1111/eie.12052 Halliday, M. A. K. 1994 An Introduction to Systemic Functional Grammar, 2nd Edn. London: Arnold. Herman, D. 2002. Story Logic: Problems and Possibilities of Narrative. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Johnson, M. 1987. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and Reason. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ​ https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226471013.001.0001



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Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. 2008. Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.  ​https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001 Mason, J. 2016. Narrative Interrelation: A Cognitive Account of Intertextuality and its Application to the Study of Literature. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham. Peplow, D., Swann, J., Trimarco, P. and Whiteley, S. 2016. The Discourse of Reading Groups: Integrating Cognitive and Sociocultural Perspectives. London: Routledge. Ryan, M.- L.. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press. van der Bom, I. 2015. Text World Theory and Stories of Self: A Cognitive Discursive Approach to Identity. PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield. Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London: Longman. Whiteley, S. 2011. Text World Theory, real readers, and emotional responses to The Remains of the Day. Language and Literature 20(1): 23–41.  ​https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947010377950

Subject index

A access to text-worlds  208209, 213-215 additional commentary  202-203 additional talk  202, 205-207, 210-211 see also additional commentary extended discussion  203, 211 question and answer  203 aesthetic distance from the norm  77, 79, 80, 162 agency  16, 19, 28, 29, 77, 138 alienation  128, 158, 164-165 ambience  77, 83-84, 87-88, 143 ambivalence  99, 103-104, 106, 113 anti-mimetic narrative  160-161 atmosphere  61, 77-78, 83, 143-145, 151 Atwood, Margaret  135-152 attention  18, 20, 21, 25, 27, 28, 76-80, 83-93, 149, 150, 167-168 see also manipulation of attention and resonance model  76-77, 93 B backward connections  35, 40 background knowledge  38, 42, 50, 54-55, 101, 184 bi-directional mapping  67-68 Bildungsroman  105 blended space  110-111 boulomaic modal-world  5, 166-167 brain  34-38, 40 see also predictive Brandon Sanderson  38, 49 Bridget Jones’s Diary  119-132

C Canadian Literature  53 categorical mismatch/category jamming  79-80, 91 Chamisso, Adelbert von  97-114 character  4, 20, 21-22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 40, 51, 56, 66, 68, 81-82, 84, 86, 106, 109-110, 113, 120, 123, 132, 136, 139-140, 144, 145, 148, 157, 159, 160-161, 168, 162, 163, 168, 170 see also comic protagonist/ comic hero everyman/everywoman  124, 130 likeability  124, 125-127 physical appearance of  124, 132 the joker  125 characterisation  64, 119-122, 123, 125, 127 Clarke, Gillian  178, 181-195 co-construction of meaning  184, 188, 194-195 cognitive estrangement  158, 159, 162, 164, 166, 167, 173 cognitive feedback loop  53, 54, 57-69 cognitive frame  99 Cognitive Grammar  43, 135-154, 220 cognitive poetics  1, 5-6, 18, 20-21, 199-200 cognitive stylistics  119, 136, 137, 142, 151 “Cold Knap Lake”  178, 181-195 collaborative response  186, 193, 194-195 comic protagonist/ comic hero  123, 127

common ground (CG)  54-55, 57, 68 comprehension aids  205 conceptual movement  5, 75-76, 81-83, 93 construal  137, 149, 151 see also subjective objective  139-140 reconstrual  137, 146, 151 counterfactual  2, 33, 40, 42, 45 cringe comedy  120, 127-131 cued elicitation  183 cumulative talk  188 Currie, Sheldon  53-69 D “Dead Fish”  157-175 defamiliarisation  145, 158 deictic braid  21-22, 25 deictic centre, see deixis/ deictic deictic projection  107, 111, 166 see also deixis/deictic deictic shift, see deixis/deictic deixis/deictic  4, 21, 42, 53, 81-82, 89-91, 105, 145, 150, 184, 207, 208, 214 see also braid centre  91, 108, 110-112, 164-165 doubly deictic you  163-164, 172 manipulation of  24 projection  107, 111, 166 shift  22, 24, 26, 29, 41 deontic modal-world, see modal-world direct perception  213-215 disassociation  166, 172 discourse-world  4, 25, 28, 29-30, 53-57, 63, 68-69, 164, 184, 185, 189, 194-195, 203-205, 208, 213-126

226 Experiencing Fictional Worlds see also double reader knowledge  40, 162 participants  185, 194-195 split  4, 104, 195, 203-205, 215 discourse-world knowledge, see discourse-world; see knowledge discourse-world participants, see discourse-world disputational talk  188 divergent resourcing  193-194 domains  137-139 dominion  79, 138-139, 144-147 double reader discourse-world  204-205 doubly deictic you, see deixis/ deictic E edgework  86-88 embarrassment  120, 127-131 embodiment  4, 5-6, 19, 137, 219 emergence  20, 21-30 emotion  1, 17, 19, 23-25, 27-30, 58, 59, 75-95, 127-128, 129, 131 see also emotional responses/engagement emotional responses/ engagement  23-25, 131, 158-159, 165, 169-173 empathetic recognisability  138, 148, 162 empathy  119, 120, 129, 132, 179 see also role-taking empty text-world  41, 48, 51 enactor  4, 66-69, 160, 163, 166, 209-211, 213 epistemic modal-world, see modal-world error  35, 43 ethnography  200-202 everyman/everywoman, see character experiential knowledge, see knowledge experientiality  5-6 exploratory talk  188, 193, 194 extended discussion, see additional talk extratextual world  99, 100, 103, 109, 113-114

F factuality  103 fantastic literature  97, 103, 110-111, 113 feedback  54, 57-60 see also positive negative  57-60 felt absence  78-79, 85, 87-88 fictionality  17-19, 97-99, 103, 113-114 fictional worlds  1-12 fictive publisher  103-114 Fielding, Helen  119-132 figure and ground  77-78, 91, 138 flow  16, 18-20 focusing  137-138, 145 foregrounding  136, 144-145, 148, 152, 178, 189, 209-210, 211, 213 foreshadowing  83-87, 89, 146, 151 forward connections  35, 40 frame/framing  57, 97-114, 137 see also cognitive knowledge  37, 57, 98 paratextual  98, 103-105 textual  101 re-framing  108 frame knowledge, see frame/ framing, see knowledge function-advancing  4-5, 63, 77, 157-158, 167-168, 184 H hierarchy  34, 35, 41 High Fidelity  119-132 Hornby, Nick  119-132 horror fiction  75-95 I identification  17, 56, 123, 132, 159, 164, 166, 171-173 immersion  15-30, 82, 91, 103, 158, 164-165, 172-173, 220 implied narratee  163 incrementation  37, 47, 49, 78-79, 205, 212 inherent negation  78-79, 85-88 interactive interpretation  203, 205-216

inter-textual reference point chain  144 interthinking  188-189 intra-textual reference point chain  146 intratextual world  100, 105, 109, 113-114 IT  80-95 K King, Stephen  80-95 knowledge  4, 76, 86, 53, 54-57, 68-69 see also background base  4, 54, 55, 69, 76, 86 discourse-world  40, 162 experiential  195, 201, 204, 210, 216 frame  37, 57, 98 schematic  21, 25, 138, 140, 144, 145 structures  37, 57, 60, 137 knowledge base, see knowledge knowledge structures, see knowledge L lexico-grammar  75, 78, 92 likeability, see character literature classroom context  179-180, 191 M manipulation of attention  21, 80, 83-93, 86-93 manipulation of deixis, see deixis/deictic Marek, Adam  157-175 material action processes  164, 166 metonymic chaining  64 metonymy  54, 62-63 mind-casting  21-27 mind-modelling  22, 25, 57 modalisation/modality  5, 21, 22, 53, 91-92, 145, 184, 186 modal-world  5, 21, 22, 53, 85, 88-93, 150, 184, 186-188, 194 see also boulomaic deontic  5, 61, 169 epistemic  5, 39, 42, 43, 50, 89-91, 168, 186

Subject index 227

Monster Zoo  206-216 morphological negation, see negation multimodal/multimodality  16, 129, 189-190, 201 N narrative schema, see schema narrative urgency  89, 168 negated text-world  78-79, 88, 169, 186, 193 negation  77-80, 91-93, 186 see also inherent morphological  77, 79, 87-88 syntactic  79, 87-88 negative feedback, see feedback negatively oriented lexis  77-80, 83, 85-88 negotiation  99, 104, 140, 208, 215 Nesbit, Edith  23-30 NVivo  202 O objective, see construal ontology  5, 19, 42, 97, 106, 113-114, 160-162, 164, 172, 214-215 P paratext  99-100 paratextual frame, see frame/ framing participation-world  85-86, 89 personal growth model of teaching  179 perspective-taking projection, see projection Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte  97-114 physical appearance of, see character picture-book  200-201, 205, 210, 213 positive feedback  57-60 possible worlds  2-3, 102, 106, 219 pre-adult reading experience/ pre-school reading experience  199-216 prediction  34 predictive brain  56, 59

Predictive Coding  34-38, 51 predictive model  35, 42, 48, 49 pre-figuring  178, 183 pre-literate child  200 principle of minimal departure  3, 102, 110, 111, 144 priors  36 projection  110-113, 165, 171 see also deictic perspective-taking  165, 166 psychological  164 prolepsis  83 prominence  138-140, 148 proposition  54-55, 57 prototypes  121-122 psychological projection, see projection Q question and answer, see additional talk R read-aloud situation  200-201 readerly positioning  53, 69, 100, 164-166, 172 reader response  18, 136, 151, 159, 162-172, 201 reading-group discourse  165, 172 real readers  69, 178, 200, 205 reconstrual, see construal refamiliarisation  145-146, 149, 151-152 re-framing, see frame/framing re-reading  83, 97, 108, 135-152 resonance  27-30, 76-77 role-taking  129-130 S scaffolding role  211-212 schema  21-27, 59, 79, 101, 121-122, 137, 138, 144-145, 164, 180 see also accretion narrative  180, 183 refreshment  60 reinforcement  60 theory  60 schema accretion  180, 183

schema refreshment, see schema schema reinforcement, see schema schema theory, see schema schematic knowledge, see knowledge self-deprecating humour  120, 127, 132 self-effacement  19, 22 shared reading  200, 216 social categories  121, 123 specificity  137-138, 145 split discourse-world, see discourse-world storytime  199, 200-201, 202, 203-212 storyworld  98-100, 102, 104-106, 113, 219 subjective construal  140, 145 superiority theory of humour  120, 122, 123, 132 syntactic negation, see negation T text-drivenness  4, 37, 51, 76, 162 text-producer  203-204, 208 text-receiver  203-204, 208 textual attractor  76-77, 79-80, 86, 88, 91, 162 textual frame, see frame/ framing textual you  163-164 texture  20, 21, 27-28, 75-76, 81, 83, 86, 91-92, 147 text-world (Adult)  207-208 text-world (Child)  207-208 “The Freeze-Dried Groom”  135-152 The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum  53-69 the joker, see character The Railway Children  23-30 The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl  97-114 see also Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte tone  77-78, 143-144, 145, 147, 150, 151 transportation  6, 17, 102, 165

228 Experiencing Fictional Worlds U unnatural mind  161, 166 unnatural mind-style  162, 164 unnatural narrative/ narratology  158, 161, 172 unnatural narrator/narrative voice  158, 160-161, 166, 169, 172-173

world-building  4-5, 7, 19, 37-38, 42, 53-69, 77, 86-89, 157-158, 172, 184, 193, 205, 213-215, 219 world repair  48, 83, 145, 151 world-switch  5, 22, 37-38, 49, 51, 81, 88-93, 147-151, 164, 168, 184, 187, 194

W Words of Radiance  38, 49

Z zone of proximal development  211-212

Experiencing Fictional Worlds is not only the title of this book, but a challenge to reveal exactly what makes the “experience” of literature. This volume presents contributions drawing upon a range of theories and frameworks based on the text-as-world metaphor. This text-world approach is fruitfully applied to a wide variety of text types, from poetry to genre-speciic prose to children’s story-books. This book investigates how ictional worlds are built and updated, how context afects the conceptualisation of textworlds, and how emotions are elicited in these processes. The diverse analyses of this volume apply and develop approaches such as Text World Theory, reader-response studies, and pedagogical stylistics, among other broader cognitive and linguistic frameworks. Experiencing Fictional Worlds aligns with other cutting-edge research on language conceptualisation in ields including cognitive linguistics, stylistics, narratology, and literary criticism. This volume will be relevant to anyone with interests in language and literature.

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