When narrative takes over: The representation of embedded mindstates in Shakespeare’s Othello

Abstract

In recent times, researchers across a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have been interested in the human ability to process embedded mindstates, also known as 'multiple-order intentionality' (MOI): A believes that B thinks that C intends (etc.). This task is considered increasingly cognitively demanding with every order of embedding added. However, we argue that the way in which the information relevant to the task is represented in language (in particular, using a narrative) greatly influences how well people are able to deal with MOI cognitively. This effect can be illustrated by paraphrasing situations presented by a play such as Shakespeare's Othello: by the end of Act II the audience has to understand that Iago intends that Cassio believes that Desdemona intends that Othello believes that Cassio did not intend to disturb the peace. Formulated this way, using sentence embedding to express the intentional relationships, this is highly opaque. At the same time, we know that Othello has been understood and appreciated by innumerable different audiences for ages. What is it that the play's text does to make the audience understand all these embedded mindstates without undue cognitive strain? In this article we discuss six 'expository strategies' relevant to the representation of MOI and illustrate their working with examples from Shakespeare's Othello.

The advantage of story-telling: children's interpretation of reported speech in narratives

“…Our findings provide support for the idea that narratives enhance our perspective-taking abilities, allowing readers or listeners to more easily understand complex interactions involving multiple distinct perspectives (cf. Kidd & Castano, 2013; van Duijn, Sluiter & Verhagen, 2015; Zunshine, 2006).…”

Readers’ Mindreading Challenges, and how They Can Inform Cognitive Science

“…From a brief review of various key publications in psychology and the cognitive (neuro)sciences she concludes that this concept is ubiquitous, even though it is unclear what exactly its theoretical and empirical foundations are (cf. also van Duijn et al, 2015, also referenced in Zunshine, 2016). After some elaboration she takes the position that the recursive embedding of perspectives describes a real phenomenon, but that it remains unclear whether the layered structure is a product of the way we analyze and depict this phenomenon, or that this structure actually plays a role in our cognitive systems (Zunshine, 2016, p. 125, partly referring to Drucker, 2014).…”

Recursive embedding of viewpoints, irregularity, and the role for a flexible framework

“…Elsewhere (see Van Duijn et al 2015; Van Duijn 2016a) we have argued that such embedded propositions are problematic, even if they are 'only' used as a tool to represent viewpoint complexity at a conceptual level. 4 Besides the fact that they make the task a reader has to perform look unnecessarily complex and opaque, they easily mis-/underrepresent all kinds of nuances and details apparent in the actual text or situation.…”

“…These toolkits include linguistic items at the lexical, grammatical, and narrative levels that can be combined to express an open-ended range of multi-viewpoint arrangements. It has been observed that analysis of such arrangements often has a strong focus on the recursive embedding of viewpoint layers (Van Duijn, Sluiter & Verhagen 2015;Van Duijn 2016;Dancygier 2012, Chapter 3-4) and on shifting from one viewpoint to the other, where a general assumption is that viewpoint is with one party at a time. In this paper we argue that many situations involving multiple viewpoints (Evans 2006, see also Vandelanotte this issue and Zeman this issue) cannot be sufficiently described in terms of embedding relations and shifts from one viewpoint (layer) to the other.…”