Article Frontmatter was published on April 1, 2021 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 50, issue 1).

Article Foreword was published on April 1, 2021 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 50, issue 1).

This article explores how literary texts, in this case the novel “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, elicit metaphorical thinking as a major part of readers’ interpretive experiences. Our main argument is that metaphorical thinking does not arise only given our encounter with individual verbal metaphors, but emerges in various ways as part of our habitual forms of imaginative metaphorical understandings

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of the racial slurs nigger and negro in Heart of Darkness on readers’ perception of dehumanisation, discrimination, and racism. It compares data collected through online questionnaires to test whether the absence or different frequencies of the slurs influence how participants perceive the fictional representation of the African people in the text

The aim of this paper is to take a close look at John McGahern’s mind style through the language of the heroine Elizabeth Reegan and other characters, in his 1963 novel The Barracks . Specifically, attention will be drawn to how the linguistic choices shape the figurative language to cast the author’s controversial views on the religion-pervaded puritan Irish society that he knew so well. This will

The present paper explores the semantics of Hemingway’s ‘plain style’ in The Sun Also Rises by combining corpus linguistic methodology with event semantics theory. The focus of the study is on how the narrator of the novel segments experienced situations in terms of semantic events. Corpus linguistic analysis shows that the ‘plain style’ of the narrative section of the novel is realized by means of

Article Monika Fludernik: Metaphors of Confinement: the Prison in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy was published on April 1, 2021 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 50, issue 1).

Article Frontmatter was published on October 1, 2020 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 49, issue 2).

Article Foreword was published on October 1, 2020 in the journal Journal of Literary Semantics (volume 49, issue 2).

This article explores hitherto unexplored complexities in the positioning of the Modernist narrator. Taking as a starting point Banfield’s ‘empty centre’ technique, the article re-evaluates the difficulties posed by this phenomenon and develops a more thorough and a sounder understanding of ‘the empty centre’. Some of the evidence for a new theory of ‘empty centre’ passages comes from pragmatics and

A fundamental assumption in relevance theory is that human cognition has evolved in the direction of increased efficiency and, as such, tends, as Sperber and Wilson ( Relevance: Communication and cognition , 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995: 38–46, 260–66) put it in their cognitive principle , to be naturally geared towards the maximisation of relevance. The cognitive principle inter alia explains the

This paper reviews Louw’s (1993 and subsequent publications) deployment of reference corpora in the light of existing philosophical and linguistic milestones when it comes to the notion of the truthfulness of a proposition. Louw (William Ernest. 1993. Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds

This article establishes the theoretical bases for a more direct and detailed exploration of fictional minds in cognitive stylistics. This discipline usually analyzes narrative discourse in terms of how readers process language and conceptualize narrative meaning, treating literary language more or less explicitly as a window into readers’ mental experiences. However, it is also possible to treat literary

This paper examines the tragic sense permeating ancient Greek drama as a product of a special type of conceptual integration between two antithetic mental spaces, which prompts the simultaneous generation of two mutually exclusive emergent structures. The special tragic sense generated carries along the inferences of two equally impossible situations. The key-difference between this type of blend and

Abstract Cognitive stylistics provides a framework for analysis of conceptual metaphors in literature, as a way to approach fictional characters’ mind styles. Here, cognitive linguistic tools are applied to characterize the metaphorical expressions of emotion in James Joyce’s A portrait of the artist as a young man. A number of conceptual metaphors were identified in relation to anger, lust, shame

Abstract This article investigates the literary significance of two linguistic devices, repetition and negation, in the fictionalized biography “Northern Lights” by British-Caribbean writer Caryl Phillips, a narrative that focuses on David Oluwale, a Nigerian immigrant to the UK who died as a result of police violence in Leeds in 1969. To recount Oluwale’s story, “Northern Lights” uses a non-linear

Abstract So far the cognitively-oriented study of literature has largely missed out on the cognitive conception of situatedness, which holds that human mental activity should be seen through the lens of its grounding in the physical, social and cultural milieu of the individual. Accordingly, the article shows the value of this approach in a Cognitive Linguistic analysis of Wisława Szymborska’s poem

Abstract This article is an ecostylistic examination of Sub-Umbra, one of the six serialised novels in the Victorian pornographic magazine The Pearl (1879–1881). It explores the stylistic strategies utilised to depict landscapes and masculinity – stylistic choices at word- and phrase-level, collocation and compounding, semantic crescendo, humour and point of view – applying an ecostylistic approach

Abstract In this article, I examine tactile metaphors for voice in the work of Herta Müller. I use conceptual metaphor theory and consider the process of multisensory perception to argue that tactile metaphors can activate multiple senses. Müller evokes tactile experience to reason about voice in her works. These seemingly modality-specific metaphors relate voice to more than one sensory impression

Abstract Adopting the perspective of a “Harrisian” integrational linguist, this article identifies two conflicting ways in which Wolfgang Iser describes “indeterminacy” and its implications on the act of reading in his “reception theory”. It will be argued that while his understanding of contextualisation and recontextualisation is markedly similar to the integrational idea of the radical indeterminacy

Abstract With Joseph Brodsky’s poem “To Urania” as a case study, this article argues that a cognitive stylistic approach offers a new way into exploring literary representations of the experience of displacement. Drawing on the notion of the embodied mind in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, it presents a close reading of the poem’s portrayal of exile as a “felt” absence. The tension between the immediacy

Abstract Cognitive Grammar has emerged in recent years to become an established analytical method in cognitive stylistics. Although one of its key affordances is that it provides a robust framework for analysing the different ways in which scenes can be depicted, researchers have yet to develop an account of how Cognitive Grammar can support a detailed analysis of authorial creativity. This paper aims

Abstract Informed by cognitive narratology and specifically based on our metarepresentational ability, this paper explores how the subjectivity in Henry James’s tales is transferred to the summaries provided by critics for the orientation of readers. Since it enables real, and realistic, minds to process content along with sources and paths of propagation, the metarepresentational skill proves to be

Abstract This article explores the role absurdist humour fulfils in the narrative structure of novels as well as its impact on the process of literary interpretation. Tracing the historical and philosophical roots of absurdist humour, the article emphasises the importance of the concept of incongruity. It then critically evaluates current and influential cognitive and linguistic theories of humour

Abstract Our topic is an under-theorized type of closed simile in which the ground represents a non-salient feature of the source term (e.g., as quiet as a weight, as opposed to a standard simile, e.g., as heavy as a weight). The non-standard simile introduces a semantic difficulty, a result of the unexpected mismatch between ground and source. Since they are highly prevalent in poetic texts there

Abstract Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether

Abstract Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) is one of the most influential grammars used in stylistics, but more recently the discipline has witnessed a growing body of work using cognitive grammars to explain stylistic effects. This research has tended to make the positive case for cognitive grammar (CG) by demonstrating its similarity to functionalist approaches. However, it is also necessary to say

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the predominant metaphorical conceptualization of sadness in three Old English elegiac monologues whose main themes are the pain and solitude of exile and separation. Taking as a starting point the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor and briefly reviewing the experimental evidence that supports the experiential grounding of our conceptualization of sadness, as

Abstract Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film Full Metal Jacket (1987) dramatically represents US Marine Corps basic training during the Vietnam War as both gruelling and brutalising. The brutal, linguistically aggressive and physically intimidating scenes purport to detail the dehumanising process that Marine Corps recruits were put through in preparation for combat during that period. In the film, the

Abstract This paper focuses on the ways some recent British and Irish rewritings of the Bible estrange what has become the publicly accepted and dominant image of the biblical text. Recently, the Bible has been given the status of “home scripture” (Sherwood, Yvonne. 2012. Biblical Blaspheming: Trials of the Sacred for a Secular Age. Cambridge: CUP) and become a domesticated and conservative text, a

Abstract The aim of this paper is to evince the reasons why the viewers tend to ‘root for the bad guy’ in House of Cards in spite of his amoral undertakings. It delves into the linguistic, pragmatic and cognitive strategies employed by the protagonist, Frank Underwood, to ‘transport’ the audience in the narrative while distancing them from moral judgment. It is shown that the ‘Para-Social Relationship’

Abstract This paper applies the politics-based theory of Discourse Space to a literary text in order to investigate its flexibility and possible contribution to literary interpretation. As a case study, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, “A very old man with enormous wings” has been selected; this story most obviously evolves out of dichotomies on both inter- and intra-character levels. The theory’s

Abstract Debate in philosophy of language and linguistics has focused on conceptual representations/propositional thought; as a result there has been little discussion on the effability of perceptual or, more generally, phenomenal representations and the communicative difficulties associated with them. In this paper, I start from an example based on the relative ineffability of kinaesthetic representations

Abstract The concept of an unreliable third-person narrator may seem a contradiction in terms. The very act of adopting a third-person stance to tell a story would appear to entail an acceptance of a basic need for truth-telling, a commitment to what Wayne Booth terms the implied author’s “norms of the work.” Nonetheless, in the essay that follows, three of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories – “A

Abstract ‘Unnatural’ narratology has been a thriving new field of narrative theory in recent years. What its various sub-fields share is that they are concerned, very broadly, with narratives that transcend the parameters of conventional realism. One of the field’s promises is that it can also account for earlier ‘unnatural’ narrative scenarios, for instance in ancient and medieval literature. Focusing

Abstract Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey was published in 2014 and won the Costa Award for best first novel. Both humorous and sad, it has been categorised as literary fiction, detective fiction and a psychological thriller, and is thus a “hybrid” genre novel that is difficult to categorise neatly. The novel’s chief protagonist and narrator is Maud, who has dementia. As a narrator Maud is extremely

Abstract Marked linguistic structures in E. E. Cummings’ poetry have long been an issue within literary criticism and stylistics. In this sense, critical approaches to Cummings’ style have dealt mainly with grammar, lexis and morphology, while only few works have examined his graphology extensively. Departing from these trends, in this paper I analyse the use of unorthodox capital letters in 96 of

Abstract This paper investigates the ways in which immoral villains in contemporary fictional television are linguistically constructed as antiheroes that are appealing and even likeable to a wide mainstream audience. The underlying dataset comprises the first thirteen episodes of each of the three American TV series Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Dexter. In order to highlight the equivocal status

Abstract The problems of making and evaluating counterfactual claims about fictional characters cannot be adequately handled without taking into account the practices of literary criticism, interpretation, and re-creation. The direct-reference theory of names explains only a subset of the phenomena of fiction and explains away the rest as irrelevant or pseudo-problems, whereas some criticisms of that

Abstract Despite renewed attention to Katherine Mansfield’s writing in recent years, her work continues to be read largely for “its political and emotional sensibilities and so seldom... for the controlled effects of stylistic detail” (New 1999. Reading Mansfield and metaphors of form. McGill-Queen’s Press-MQUP: viii). In this article we consider her story “Bliss” in relation to how Mansfield choreographs

Abstract Following the theory of textual thematization at the level of fictional narrative discourse (Kikuchi 2001, Lose heart, gain heaven: The false reciprocity of gain and loss in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen CII(4). 427–434; 2001, Unveiling the dramatic secret of “Ghost” in Hamlet. Journal of Literary Semantics 39(2). 103–117; 2012, O I just want to leave this place:

Abstract In this article, we shall contribute to the theory of narrative closure. In pre-theoretical terms, a narrative features closure if it has an ending. We start by giving a general introduction into the closure phenomenon. Next, we offer a reconstruction of Noël Carroll’s (2007. Narrative closure. Philosophical Studies 135. 1–15) erotetic account of narrative closure, according to which a narrative

Research on image schemas in language and cognition (containment, path, blockage, etc.) is largely based on de-contextualized linguistic expressions. This results in a view of image schemas as somehow detached from experience, constituting source domains for fixed conceptual projections from the concrete to the abstract. By showcasing creative examples of the poetics of containment throughout the long

Abstract The sense of taste has been considered an “inferior” sense for a long time, both in philosophical and scientific fields of investigation (Cavalieri 2011. Gusto: l‘intelligenza del palato. Bari: GLF editori Laterza). However, the recent growing interest in Cognitive Science has driven scholars to a reconsideration of the role of taste in human cognition. This paper intends to investigate such

Abstract Deploying a cognitive grammar perspective, this paper reads Gustav Hasford’s war narrative, The Short-Timers, as displaying the way attentional windowing is reflected in the language. We have taken the methodological decision of becoming cognitively sensitized to the linguistic texture of traumatically loaded episodes, with the aim of looking at the specific linguistic choices that the producer

Abstract Language and literature can stimulate the embodied resources of perception. I argue that there is a puzzle about why we experience sequences of these embodied responses as integrated and coherent, even though they are not anchored in space and time by a perceiving body. Some successions of embodied representations would even be impossible in real world experience, yet they can still be experienced

Abstract This study presents a semantically-oriented theoretical and descriptive study of tense backshift and its literary effects in FID. Based on Fludernik’s study (1993), the detailed linguistic indicators of FID are described in order to provide the criteria for data collection for this study. The data are FID passages collected from four canonical English novels: Austen’s Persuasion, Conrad’s