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Showing papers in "Journal of Literary Semantics in 2013"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that literary studies can contribute to the "imagery debate" (between pictorialist, propositionalist, and enactivist accounts of mental imagery) by exploiting language's capacity for indeterminacy and therefore elicit very different imaginative experiences.
Abstract: I argue that literary studies can contribute to the “imagery debate” (between pictorialist, propositionalist, and enactivist accounts of mental imagery). While imagery questionnaires are pictorially configured and conflate imagining and seeing with pictorial representation, literary texts can exploit language's capacity for indeterminacy and therefore elicit very different imaginative experiences, thus illuminating the non-pictorial qualities of mental imagery.

29 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that separating emotionally immersed and reflectively rational ways of experiencing fiction on the basis of ontological structures and spatio-temporal metaphors is hampering our understanding of the experience of fiction.
Abstract: Abstract This essay suggests that separating emotionally immersed and reflectively rational ways of experiencing fiction on the basis of ontological structures and spatio-temporal metaphors is hampering our understanding of the experience of fiction. Beginning in a rhetorical approach, I argue for a model where engagement with fiction is seen in terms of joint attention. Using joint attention rather than knowledge of ontological realms as a reference point has two distinct benefits: it refocuses attention on literature as a rhetorical mode, and it takes mental action to be a system of parallel processes, thus giving an alternative to the back-and-forth movement between the interior and exterior of imagined worlds. My focus is on Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), a memoir that embeds an autobiographical narrative within self-reflective commentary, and which explicitly calls attention to the issues of emotional sincerity and rational distance.

13 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored spatiotemporally parallel events in complex social systems in Ulysses and developed cognitive parallelism in the representation of Leopold Bloom.
Abstract: Abstract Research on neural models for cognition suggests that thought is far from a simply serial process. Nonetheless, there has been relatively little work on which parameters govern just what aspects of thought are parallel and what are serial. Clearly, speech as such is serial. In consequence, interior monologue (understood as subvocalised speech) is serial. Moreover, stream of consciousness – mental experience not confined to subvocalised speech – must be articulated in serial form in a novel. Due to this constraint on representation, it seems that novelists commonly imagine that stream of consciousness itself really is serial. Joyce, however, developed a sense of parallel cognitive processing in the course of Ulysses. Specifically, in the “Wandering Rocks” episode, he explored spatiotemporally parallel events in complex social systems. In the following chapter, “Sirens,” he in effect transferred this treatment of external parallelism to the human mind, systematically developing cognitive parallelism in his representation of Leopold Bloom. This development was perhaps reinforced by ideas of harmony and counterpoint associated with the episode's musical model. Understanding Joyce's exploration of parallel and serial processes in thought is important not only for what it tells us about Ulysses. It is also important for what it contributes to our understanding of cognitive parallelism.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a growing body of work has started to emerge from the biological cognitive neurosciences which look at these same processes with the aid of scanning technologies, and the questions that will be considered in this paper are can these scientific findings be extended to aesthetic objects that are studied in the humanities, and also can the way literary style figures operate shed light on how the mind and brain might function.
Abstract: Abstract Much work has been conducted in the social psychological sciences both modelling and predicting how the storage and retrieval of images and words in the mind operate (e.g. Baddeley 1974, 2000, Damasio 1999, Barsalou 1999). The focus has largely been on the interactions between short-term and long-term regions of memory. Such studies have also on occasion been complemented by behavioural experiments. More recently, a growing body of work has started to emerge from the biological cognitive neurosciences which looks at these same processes with the aid of scanning technologies (e.g. Dehaene 2003, 2009, Ledoux 1998, Eichenbaum 2011). The questions that will be considered in this paper are can these scientific findings be extended to aesthetic objects that are studied in the humanities, and in particular to the style of literary texts, and also can the way literary style figures operate shed light on how the mind and brain might function.

12 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a cognitive poetic analysis of the vision and prayer of Dylan Thomas is presented, where the dialectic weave of inverse structures and corporeal schemas that emerge from the poem illustrate the aesthetic ubiquity of cognitive chiasmus.
Abstract: Abstract Chiasmus has long been discussed as a rhetorical figure for the symmetrical reversal of linguistic structures in oral and written texts. Recent treatments have begun to challenge this parochial status in ways that are reminiscent of the embodied metaphor revolution in cognitive semantics. This paper further develops the argument that chiastic schemas are a rich source of embodied cognition in need of broader recognition and deeper understanding. A cognitive poetic analysis of Dylan Thomas' iconic work “Vision and Prayer” facilitates this discussion. The dialectic weave of inverse structures and corporeal schemas that emerge from the poem illustrate the aesthetic ubiquity of cognitive chiasmus. Its lived, intertwining nature is proposed as an antidote to the “missing body” problem, as a more complex approach to cognitive symmetry and as a primary source of conceptual blending.

11 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a set of linguistic and textual features which they relate to the complex notion of difficulty have been analysed, grouped and classified from a linguistic and unified perspective, and a checklist of linguistic phenomena demanding further investigation and even future empirical testing has been derived.
Abstract: Abstract In analysing a range of 20th century poems and excerpts, stylisticians and literary critics have individuated a number of linguistic and textual features which they relate – with various degrees of explicitness – to the complex notion of ‘difficulty’. While there is a fair amount of agreement in the set of phenomena identified, to the best of my knowledge these have never been analysed, grouped and classified from a linguistic and unified perspective. This is the chief aim of the present paper, in which I reconsider previously discussed poetic excerpts in order to derive a checklist of linguistic phenomena demanding further investigation and even future empirical testing. Another major aim is that of illustrating how widespread and problematic the use of ‘difficult’ and ‘difficulty’ is, often implying quite distinct senses. The meaning of this pair will be kept indeterminate throughout the whole paper, where it simply refers to the personal usage of the critic or stylistician at stake. At the end of the paper, by contrast, a clearer characterization will emerge in the light of the textual excerpts analysed: difficulty is regarded as a combination of semantic opacity and hypothesized processing effort at syntagmatic level. However, being part of a wider ongoing research project, a more satisfactory formulation is still to come. Finally, an additional outcome of the paper is that of adding some evidence to the study of poetic language by taking into account recent poetic developments that so far have been given little attention in stylistics.

10 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explain and illustrate the main principles of Contextual Prosodic Theory (CPT), developed by Bill Louw, the originator of the notion of semantic prosody (McEnery and Hardy, 2012: 135).
Abstract: Abstract This paper (based on a presentation delivered at the 2012 PALA conference in Malta) aims to explain and illustrate the main principles of Contextual Prosodic Theory (CPT), developed by Bill Louw, the originator of the notion of semantic prosody (McEnery and Hardy, 2012: 135). No less importantly, it aims to free the theory from unwarranted criticism it has attracted over the past few years. I deal with the theoretical objections to Louw's stylistics in McEnery and Hardy (2012) and in Hunston (2007). In doing so, certain basic assumptions of Louw's stylistics are restated, such as the roles of intuition, authorial intention and the individual reader's perception. Is Louw justified in assuming that a text may be interpreted by what is, prima facie, NOT in it? After showing how reference corpora can reasonably be taken to influence the act of reading, I give an illustration of a new development in CPT: logical semantic prosody – subtext (Louw 2010a, 2010b). The reference corpora I use include the BNC and COCA, available on Mark Davies' site, and Tim Johns' corpus of the 1995 edition of the Times newspaper, containing 44.5 million words.

10 citations



Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that contextual abnormality, a sub-propositional version of anomaly, cannot be rejected as one of the necessary identification conditions of novel metaphor.
Abstract: Abstract In this article, we assess some of the empirical work available in relation to anomaly in novel metaphor. This revision allows us to argue that the results of reaction time experiments do not provide, as many theorists have argued (Gibbs and Gerrig 1989; Keysar and Glucksberg 1992), evidence against any version of anomaly; at most they can be used against anomaly as categorial falsity. In addition, we assess the argument against anomaly based on the results of reaction time experiments to show that it is unsound. Thus, we show that contextual abnormality, a sub-propositional version of anomaly (Romero and Soria 1997/1998), cannot be rejected as one of the necessary identification conditions of novel metaphor. Furthermore, contextual abnormality is supported by the results of recent empirical studies on metaphor processing designed by neuropsychologists to test hypotheses related specifically with anomaly in novel metaphor (Tatter et al. 2002; Ahrens et al. 2007).

7 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a participant had just been engaged in a lexical decision task for a little over an hour and asked why the experiments were so boring, which was the honest question and complaint of one participant after taking part in an experi
Abstract: ‘Why are your experiments so boring? I almost fell asleep.’ This was the honest question and complaint of one of our participants after taking part in an experi­ ment. She had just been engaged in a lexical decision task for a little over an hour. In lexical decision you ask the participant to press one of two buttons as quickly and as accurately as possible to decide whether a letter string is a real word or not. So you see ‘retkop’ and you press the button for ‘no’. When you see ‘rash’ you press the button for ‘yes’. I had to think of this episode after reading the four contributions to this special issue for the Journal of Literary Semantics. Let me explain why.

5 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The reception of William Gladstone's nineteenth-century analyses of the vocabulary of the Homeric epics, Europe's first literature, has been obscured by a longstanding misinterpretation, according to which Gladstone ascribed Homer's surprising use of colour words to colour-blindness as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Abstract Anyone who urges that differences between languages may correlate with differences in societies' perceptions of the world is open to misunderstanding by those who do not recognise the arbitrariness of their own socially-conditioned perceptions. A striking example is the reception of William Gladstone's nineteenth-century analyses of the vocabulary of the Homeric epics, Europe's first literature. Gladstone anticipated themes that are commonly seen as original advances of twentieth-century anthropology and linguistics; but this achievement has been obscured by a longstanding misinterpretation, according to which Gladstone ascribed Homer's surprising use of colour words to colour-blindness. At present, that misinterpretation is being disseminated more widely than ever before. In fact, Gladstone explicitly did not believe that Ancient Greeks were colour-blind. He did express a range of ideas standardly credited to much more recent scholarship. The reception of Gladstone's Homeric writings demonstrates the strength of the human disposition to trivialize significant cultural differences.