Session 3

Question 1

What were the learning objectives for the third session?

Answer 1

Be able to define and explain:

1. Cognitive poetics and cognitive stylistics.
2. The distinction between figure and ground.
3. Defamilirization, de-automization and foregrounding.
4. Primacy and recency effects
5. Text-world Theory (TWT)
6. The different worlds distinguished in TWT, namely: Discourse World, Text World, Modal World, Blended World and World Switch
7. Being able to apply the above concepts and distinctions to literary texts.

Question 2

What is cognitive poetics?

Answer 2

1. It is a superordinate term for strands that are, generally speaking, interested in the psychology of reading (processes of perception).

Question 3

What is cognitive stylistics?

Answer 3

It is about applying cognitive linguistics to literary studies.

Question 4

What can cognitive poetics and stylistics do?

Answer 4

1. Both take basic strategies of the mind in meaning creation into account.
2. Both can explain for loosely consensual readings of texts, which are always based on basic cognitive parameters, i.e. frames and scripts and cognitive principles.
3. However: Culturally specific contexts of production and reception matter.

Question 5

How are Gestalt psychology and cognitive poetics connected?

Answer 5

1. Cognitive poetics uses insights into Gestalt psychology.
2. Wundt’s physiological psychology is the basis for modern cognitive psychology.

Question 6

What is the main tension in cognitive poetics?

Answer 6

Universalisty tendencies vs. idiosyncracy: We read alike vs. We read individual.

Question 7

What does the principle of creative synthesis in perception say?

Answer 7

The whole is more than the sum of the parts. (What we perceive is more than what is actually visible. We have concepts of things which can be activated)

Question 8

What is the central assumption of the Gestalt rule?

Answer 8

1. That we create a full coherent impression (The Gestalt) from disparate bits of sensory input.
2. It conveys a constructivist (or enactivist) attitude: “What we know results not only from the objective input from the outside world but involves the shaping processes of the mind.

Question 9

How are the Gestalt principles ar work in literary reading?

Answer 9

1. Processes of establishing similarity and difference between units. (e.g. rhyme and character constellations)
2. Processes of establishing continuance between units (e.g. plot and theme)
3. They are reacting to foregrounded elements of the text.

Question 10

What does Cognitive poetics do?

Answer 10

„Readings […] are the process of arriving at a sense and feeling of a text
that is personally acceptable. These are likely to combine individual factors as well as features that are common to the reader‘s interpretive community. [..] Cognitive Poetics models the process by which intuitive interpretations are formed into expressable meanings and feelings, and it presents the same framework as a means of describing and accounting
for these readings.“

Question 11

What are the fundamental principles of cognitive poetics?

Answer 11

1. There is a continuity of language. Literary language is not in itself special or unique, though it is used in particular ways.
2. There is a continuity of mind. There is no special module in the brain for doing language.
3. The mind is embodied. Our cognitive faculties arise from our physical condition.
4. The embodied mind is extended. The edges of embodied cognition often encompass other people’s bodies, thinking and experiencing. So the cognitive poetic study of literature is psychological and social.
5. Cognition includes feeling and experience & interpretation of meaning and significance
6. Subliminal effects are describable.
7. Texts and readings are inseperable. The object of study of cognitive poetics is not textuality nor interpretative readings, but texture is about the experience of reading.
8. Cognitive poetics is a method rather than a critical theory.

Question 12

Why is the cognitive poetic study of literature both psychological and social?

Answer 12

Because the embodied mind is extended. The edges of embodied cognition often encompass other peoples’s bodies, thinking and experience.

Question 13

Who introduced the notion of De-familiarization and De-automization?

Answer 13

1. Russian Formalism (“Making the stones stonier again”)
2. Prague School of Structuralists developed the notion of defamiliraization further into foregrounding.

Question 14

What is foregrounding?

Answer 14

1. Foregrounding as contrast to ordinary language.

Question 15

Where can foregrounding occur?

Answer 15

1. Foregrounding of phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic elements of language in a text.
2. Foregrounding can also occur via story, plot, characters, setting and time.
3. Foregrounding in parallelism (unexpected regularity) and deviation (unexpected irregularity).
4. Every text can create its own background against which it can foreground certain elements.

Question 16

Why is poetry considered as “super-structured” text?

Answer 16

1. Potential density/complexity of meaningful items on all levels of language:
   - phonological level (sounds)
   - morphological level (words)
   - semantic level (meaning)
   - syntactic level (sentence)
   - pragmatic level (communication situation)
   - graphological level (spelling, punctuation)
   Foregrounding can occur on all levels.
2. Relationships and repetitions, parallelisms and deviations between items on one level or across levels create formal structures and tensions; they interact with the meaning of the poem.

Question 17

What is the primacy effect?

Answer 17

The increased ability to remember the first items we are confronted with.

Question 18

What is the recency effect?

Answer 18

The increased ability to remember what we have recently been confronted with.

Question 19

How do the primacy and recency effects impact reading?

Answer 19

1. Beginnings and endings are of primary importance with regard to our understanding of literary narratives.
2. Our understanding of the first and the final events of a text will shape our interpretation.

Question 20

What is Text-World Theory?

Answer 20

1. A type of discourse analysis that can be applied to all forms of discourse (narratives, poetry, performances etc.)
2. A cognitive approach to literature (as a form of discourse) that is grounded in linguistics and psychology.
3. A major area of contemporary stylistics, a form of literary linguistics that is concerned with giving a descriptive account of language features of a text.
4. It looks at text and context.

Question 21

What is the focus of the Text- World Theory?

Answer 21

A focus on the experience and the mental processes involved in reading.

Question 22

Describe the Text-World Model

Answer 22

Question 23

What are the characteristics of the discourse-world?

Answer 23

1. It describes the immediate situation surrounding the production and reception of language.
2. It is a dynamic process of negotiation between the discourse participants, who are located in a material and pragmatic context that is highly culturally determined.

Question 24

Who are the participants of the discourse in the Text-World model?

Answer 24

The discourse participants are (1) the produce of the text and (2) the recipient of the text.

In the case of literature, the two discourse participants typically occupy seperate spaces and temporal points.

Question 25

What are the characteristics of the Text-World?

Answer 25

1. It is a mental representation conjured up through the interaction between the discourse participants. 2. It is a conceptual space constructed in the minds of discourse participants on the basis of the deicitc information supplied in a text. 3. A text-world involves world-building elements (such as references to time and space as well as enactors) and function-advancing elements (such as events or mind-related changes). 4. A text-world always has the potential to develop into a highly immersive mental space, as richly detailed as the real-world context from which it develops.

Question 26

What are World-Switches?

Answer 26

1. Temporal and spatial shifts. 2. They operate at the same level as the text-world. 3. World-switches result from any change in the spatial or temporal parameters of the matrix text-world from which they spring.

Question 27

What are the characteristics of Blended Worlds?

Answer 27

1. Metaphors and Similes lead to or create blended worlds. 2. Both metaphors and similes are constructed from two seperate input spaces: source domain and the target domain. 3. These two domains are blended together to create a new mental representation with its own unique characteristics or emergent structure. 4. Through metaphors and similes the text-world becomes more complex than the sum of its linguistic parts.

Question 28

What are the characteristics of Modal-Worlds?

Answer 28

1. They occur whenever a text expresses epistemic or ontological difference. 2. This can happen through the use of modality, conditionality, or hypotheticality of any kind. 3. A new and remote text-world is created through such expressions.