Cognitive Linguistic methods for literature
Résumé
Can contemporary empirical linguistic techniques be applied to literary analysis? This study takes the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics and applies corpus-driven multivariate analysis to the study of narratorial commentary. The study shows that new quantified techniques, when combined with the theoretical tenets of Cognitive Linguistics, can offer insights into poetics research. More specifically, two theoretical constructs of Cognitive Linguistics, construal and encyclopaedic semantics, make possible the application of multivariate statistics to the study of narratorial stylistics of different authors. The case study focuses on four English novels, two from the 19th century and two from the turn of the 20th century. The novels, G. Eliot’s Silas Marner, J. Austen’s Northanger Abbey, J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and E. M. Forster’s Howards End, are chosen because they all have overt extradiegetic - heterodiegetic narrators who use narratorial commentary in an interesting way but differ in other aspects, such as style and period. The stylistic devices under investigation are metanarration and metalepsis. These literary devices can be realised in many different ways, but the stylistic differences are not easily distinguishable.
Loading...