Schemas and Scripts: Cognitive Instruments and the Representation of Cultural Diversity in Children’s Literature

Reading About Solidarity and Collective Action: Social Minds in Radical Fantasy Fiction

“…The interest in social minds has so far been absent from cognitive approaches to children's texts, which usually focus on one of the following: scripts and schemas (Stephens, 2011;Seelinger Trites, 2014;Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marecki, 2015;Oziewicz, 2015;Palkovich, 2015;Deszcz-Tryhubczak, 2016); on Theory of Mind (ToM) and empathy (Nikolajeva, 2014;Seelinger Trites, 2014); on emotions (Nikolajeva 2014); on embodied metaphors (Seelinger Trites, 2014;Purcell, 2018), or on Text World Theory and cognitive grammar (Giovanelli, 2016). My analysis also points to some wider implications of the study of social minds in children's literature; for, while differences and conflicts between younger and older generations have been abundantly acknowledged in children's literature criticism, a broader focus on intergenerational collective thought in texts for young audiences has not been considered, albeit it uncovers a diversity of child-adult relationships.…”

Construing the Child Reader: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of the Opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

“…This is surprising, given how readily stylistics has been applied to other literary genres and texts from a wide range of periods and movements. Some scholars have adapted cognitive approaches to textual study (Stephens, 2011;Deszcz-Tryhubczak and Marecki, 2015), but more extended studies by scholars working within children's literature (Nikolejeva, 2014;Trites, 2014) have tended to be grounded in cognitive literary studies rather than cognitive stylistics. The potential gains, however, for further work involving the stylistic analysis of literature for children are compelling.…”

Re-writing the Script: Representations of Transgender Creativity in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction and Television

“…This script or a similar version of it is enacted each time we eat at a restaurant. In relation to children's literature, John Stephens (2011) has employed the concepts of schema and script to argue that they are vital cognitive instruments in effecting cognitive change on the part of the reader. His discussion centres on six multicultural picture-books for young children, and I extend his application of script theory to discuss young adult fiction and television.…”