Personal pronouns have been shown to influence cognitive perspective taking during comprehension. Studies using single sentences found that 3rd person pronouns facilitate the construction of a mental model from an observer’s perspective, whereas 2nd person pronouns support an actor’s perspective. The direction of the effect for 1st person pronouns seems to depend on the situational context. In the present study, we investigated how personal pronouns influence discourse comprehension when people read fiction stories and if this has consequences for affective components like emotion during reading or appreciation of the story. We wanted to find out if personal pronouns affect immersion and arousal, as well as appreciation of fiction. In a natural reading paradigm, we measured electrodermal activity and story immersion, while participants read literary stories with 1st and 3rd person pronouns referring to the protagonist. In addition, participants rated and ranked the stories for appreciation. Our results show that stories with 1st person pronouns lead to higher immersion. Two factors—transportation into the story world and mental imagery during reading—in particular showed higher scores for 1st person as compared to 3rd person pronoun stories. In contrast, arousal as measured by electrodermal activity seemed tentatively higher for 3rd person pronoun stories. The two measures of appreciation were not affected by the pronoun manipulation. Our findings underscore the importance of perspective for language processing, and additionally show which aspects of the narrative experience are influenced by a change in perspective.
Style is an important aspect of literature, and stylistic deviations are sometimes labeled foregrounded, since their manner of expression deviates from the stylistic default. Russian Formalists have claimed that foregrounding increases processing demands and therefore causes slower reading -an effect called retardation. We tested this claim experimentally by having participants read short literary stories while measuring their eye movements. Our results confirm that readers indeed read slower and make more regressions towards foregrounded passages as compared to passages that are not foregrounded. A closer look, however, reveals significant individual differences in sensitivity to foregrounding. Some readers in fact do not slow down at all when reading foregrounded passages. The slowing down effect for literariness was related to a slowing down effect for high perplexity (unexpected) words: those readers who slowed down more during literary passages also slowed down more during high perplexity words, even though no correlation between literariness and perplexity existed in the stories. We conclude that individual differences play a major role in processing of literary texts and argue for accounts of literary reading that focus on the interplay between reader and text.
Mobile phones are reportedly the most rapidly expanding e-reading device worldwide. However, the embodied, cognitive and affective implications of smartphone-supported fiction reading for leisure (m-reading) have yet to be investigated empirically. Revisiting the theoretical work of digitization scholar Anne Mangen, we argue that the digital reading experience is not only contingent on patterns of embodied reader–device interaction (Mangen, 2008 and later) but also embedded in the immediate environment and broader situational context. We call this the situation constraint. Its application to Mangen’s general framework enables us to identify four novel research areas, wherein m-reading should be investigated with regard to its unique affordances. The areas are reader–device affectivity, situated embodiment, attention training and long-term immersion.
The objective of this article is to review extant empirical studies of empathy in narrative reading in light of (i) contemporary literary theory, and (ii) neuroscientific studies of empathy, and to discuss how a closer interplay between neuroscience and literary studies may enhance our understanding of empathy in narrative reading. An introduction to some of the philosophical roots of empathy is followed by tracing its application in contemporary literary theory, in which scholars have pursued empathy with varying degrees of conceptual precision, often within the context of embodied/enactive cognition. The presentation of empirical literary studies of empathy is subsequently contextualized by an overview of psychological and neuroscientific aspects of empathy. Highlighting points of convergence and divergence, the discussion illustrates how findings of empirical literary studies align with recent neuroscientific research. The article concludes with some prospects for future empirical research, suggesting that digitization may contribute to advancing the scientific knowledge of empathy in narrative reading.
The means and locations of reading are becoming increasingly significant. This is not only reflected in the academic world but also in the press. This chapter addresses the question of whether the locations and means of reading have changed in the past ten years since the advent of the e-reader. Have the places and manner of reading become more flexible? Has reading “on the go” replaced traditional locations of literary reading? Is more literature being read on mobile devices or is reading on paper still preferred over digital means—or are current readers hybrid readers? These are the questions that underpin this chapter. A connected series of experiments was conducted that seeks to explore the question of locations and means of contemporary acts of reading. It is hoped that the results that emerge may point the way to more qualitative and quantitative studies on this increasingly significant topic.
There is a paucity of neuroaesthetic studies on prose fiction. This is in contrast to the very many impressive studies that have been conducted in recent times on the neuroaesthetics of sister arts such as painting, music and dance. Why might this be the case, what are its causes and, of greatest importance, how can it best be resolved? In this article, the pitfalls, parameters and prospects of a neuroaesthetics of prose fiction will be explored. The article itself is part critical review, part methodological proposal and part opinion paper. Its aim is simple: to stimulate, excite and energize thinking in the discipline as to how prose fiction might be fully integrated in the canon of neuroaesthetics and to point to opportunities where neuroimaging studies on literary discourse processing might be conducted in collaborative work bringing humanists and scientists together.
The teaching of stylistics in the modern day university classroom is a useful and worthy endeavour. Knowledge gained in such courses assists our undergraduate and graduate students in understanding how language, grammar and rhetoric function in texts. The knowledge they acquire leads them first to comprehend the basic grammatical and rhetorical concepts. This is followed by a second level of 'practical' knowledge, whereby students are able to analyse texts with the tools they have acquired at the first stage. The third stage is when students go into a mode of synthesizing all they have learned, which, in turn, allows them to move on to the production stage. Such a process is valuable, for example, in the contemporary university creative writing classroom. It is important to note that the process described here is not simply literary stylistics, but fundamentally pedagogical stylistics.The fact that a close, stylistic analysis of texts, literary or otherwise, for formative ends, is pedagogically valuable was something that was not lost on the teachers of the ancient world. In democratic, classical Athens, for example, the classrooms of Aristotle, Isocrates and Theophrastus were full of young men eager to learn the analytic skills of rhetoric, the forebear of modern day stylistics. Similarly, in the schools of rhetoric in Imperial Rome, Quintilian and his Roman colleagues knew the didactic worth of the close study of literary works: texts designed not just to delight but also to teach, as Horace famously noted. Nor was it lost on the countless dedicated schoolmasters of the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. Indeed, right up to the end of the 18th century the grammatical and rhetorical study of style and language for pedagogical ends was still very much in vogue, at least in the UK: the work of Dr Hugh Blair, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres at the University of Edinburgh is a salient case in point. So, to return to my opening remark: if the importance of such instruction, and the key role of pedagogy in it, was not lost on the stylistics of the past, why does it appear to be less valued in the stylistics of the present? In other words, why is it that pedagogical issues appear not always to be given the prominence or prestige they logically seem to deserve in our universities? Why, for example, do we stylisticians tend not to solely focus on pedagogical stylistic research? And why is it
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.